Iota's "The Poetry of Printing" at RiskPress

Iotians are busy this month preparing for the exhibit in February. Mark your calendar!

Iota Press & Co-op present:

 


 The Poetry of Printing

The Poetry of Printing

Featuring letterpress works by Megan A. Arnold, Serena Coltrane-Briscoe, Lyn Dillin, Lucille Friesen, Judi Goldberg, CK Itamura, Eric Johnson, Maia Kobabe, Tiana Krahn, Tami Lovett, Lin Max, Katie Nealon, Birgit Neilsen, Micah Schwaberow, Ash Weiss and me.

February 1 - 23, 2014

Opening Reception: Feb 1,  3 - 7

Love Letter Writing:  Feb 6,  5 - 9

A Speak Easy - Sounds in Print: Feb 16, 2 -4

Printing demos every Friday afternoon

Gallery Hours  11 - 7    Tues - Sun

RiskPress  Gallery  7345 Healdsburg Ave. Sebastopol, CA 95472  Contact: iota@sonic.net

Please stop by and be prepared to experience a wonderful exhibit!

 

More cuts: walks and poetry

mtlaugwalkcuts_1-7 installation at RiskPress Gallery  

The installation, mtlaugwalkcuts was inspired by a walk that I took to the summit of Mt. Laugarvatn in Iceland.  I recorded the shapes of the walk with a GPS device and then printed out into 23 sections. The line sections influenced the contours of the constructions. More images of the individual works can be found on my website on the third page of  mixed media/ constructions.

 

mtlaugwalksections

During the exhibition at RiskPress,  I hosted poetry walks in and outside of the gallery and recorded their shapes with a GPS device. We chanted the words, "walking like reading like cutting like..." while looking at the artwork on the walls. Words appeared and found their place on the concrete floor of the gallery.  These words and more may find another place as I continue this work with cuttings.


IMG_0184 IMG_0179 IMG_0183 IMG_0185

Other words that surfaced but didn't appear on the floors  but may appear elsewhere in the future are:

multiple lines, icey undulations, cold empty, sequential, serial striations, slivers and slices, shafts and shifts, gray-day shuns, uninterrupted, light of rain, shimmering ground, curves, edges, distillation, energy, music, enigmatic void, an architecture of color, meandering texts, gun metal striations, white ice open, the architecture of a cut, cuts squared, grounded sticks and stones, graphite lines go by, waves, piano keys, subtle shifts, tracking, folding, bird perches,....

 

 

A cut: 'the'

Twenty-four 'thes' covered the front display wall at RiskPress during the month of October.  Six additional black textural 'thes' were displayed elsewhere in the gallery.  I loved watching people walk through, look at the work and discover the 'the'.  Many comments and discussions followed about this ubiquitous word in the English language.  And there were many who asked "Why the 'the'?"  Rather than answer the question I preferred to talk about the word. 1) 'The' can be pronounced with a long or short 'e' sound depending on its usage.

2) 'The' is the most commonly used word in the English language.

3) As an adjective or adverb, it is a part of speech; it is also needed to mark a noun.

4) As an article, it is a determiner that makes the indefinite definite.  So 'the' matters a lot!

5) In the English language, it matters a lot.  However, many Asian languages* do not have articles.

'the' series

Image 20

the

the black the_s

*And other languages of the world, not mentioned here.

 

 

A Eureka Fellowship Nominee and Applicant

   

 

 

 

 

 

 

Lots happening this fall:

Recently I received a letter from the Fleishhacker Foundation inviting me to apply for the 2014-2016 Eureka Fellowship for the Visual Arts.  I was one of 118 Bay Area artists nominated from which twelve will be awarded the fellowship, a $25,000 unrestricted grant.  The twelve will be selected in the fall by a panel of noted visual arts experts from outside the Bay Area and awards will be announced in December.   I am honored to have been nominated!

By the time you read this, the exhibit 'Cuttings'  will have closed.  As with most of my shows, I  love  the interesting discussions and interactions I have with those who come and look. I'm  often left with more to ponder.  Thanks to all who attended!  Look for more postings on sections of this exhibit.  And I will be looking for other venues to exhibit this work.  If any of you have any suggestions or leads, please let me know.

And now that the exhibit has closed, I can start work on a project/ collaboration with musician, Jesse Olsen Bay.  In August I met with him about his project, "Makings"; he set music to his grandmother's,  Tillie Olsen's  journals  that she called the 'blueys'.  He has commissioned me to make artwork for the CD cover.

'Cuttings' Opens

I was touched by all of you who came to celebrate the opening of Cuttings.    A festive evening and many thank yous are in order. Special thanks to Lin Max for her support, many hours of help with the installation and opening festivities.  Also thank yous to Eric for his assistance with lighting, Hope, Deborah, Sean, Sally, Laurie, Steph, Satri and Rich for their help with and at the reception. And finally to Charlie and Kevin, proprietors of RiskPress, for offering an alternative gallery space to artists in this county.  We are fortunate for their patronage and generosity.

The work is up. Some have sold and still many days left for viewing, walks and talk.  Here are a few glimpses of what you will see.

2013-10-04 16.08.10

2013-10-04 16.38.24

View when entering

Another view

'Cuts Make You' in the making

You can learn more about this exhibit on Satri Pencak's blog at www.satripecak.com/

And finally come to the first walk this Sunday, Oct 13th  at 1:00.  Note the prompt for this walk:  walking like reading like constructing If you can't come to this walk, there will be others on Sundays,  Oct 20th and 27th.

RiskPress Gallery is located on 7345 Healdsburg Avenue Sebastopol, CA 95472.  Gallery Hours: Wed, Fri, Sat, Sun.  11-6  & by appointment 707 494-8534

'Cutting' as Process, Form & Making


'Cutting' is on my mind as I prepare for the 'Cuttings' exhibition.  In an earlier post, I wrote that I have been letterpress printing at Iota Press--printing the matrix for a book that I am calling "Cuts Make You".  As a way to brainstorm for it,  I have been printing synonyms for  'cut'.  The list is getting longer;  here is a selection:  clip, incise, sever, saw, select, dissect, section, fragment, bisect, survey, amputate, behead, miter, dice, chop, hurt, edit, wound, part, blinks, focus, prune slice, die, edged, snippet, excise, shun, snip, trim, crop, divide, piece, mutilate, lop, mince, frame, cleft, segment, slit, split, blaze, truncate, curtail, rift, curt, decapitate, shear, partition, trim.  Post if you should come up with more words!

Iceland Travels:

Back to Iceland,  a land of elemental forces in shape of volcanoes, geysers, glaciers, rivers, waterfalls, ice and wind.   It's a  land that is continually making and unmaking itself.

Rebecca Solnit in her latest book, The Faraway Nearby, wrote that "These are the forces that will flourish no matter what goes extinct, where the poisons migrate, and how the weather changes. The sun will rise, the winds will blow, the waves will lick the shore, the earth will tilt on its axis so that there is more light in summer, less in winter, rains and snows will fall, if not as they used to, and the waters will turn to solid ice and melt again. This is the world that existed before life and will exist after us."

making and remaking iceland

 Back to the studio:

As I explore 'cutting' as process and form, I am interested in how I might apply this process to a material and arrive at a form that refers back to its making. This is a focus at the moment and I was inspired by the basalt formations in Iceland.  More to come.....