This weekend marked another successful Wayzgoose print festival at King’s Books, one of my favorite things to look forward to during spring in Tacoma. My housemate and I arrived this morning just in time to see the traditional steam roller print taking place, with a beautiful design carved by Tacoma’s own guerrilla art group, Beautiful Angle!
Image courtesy of Beautiful Angle’s Facebook page
SENIOR ART MAJORS TURN IN THEIR THESIS PROJECTS ON MONDAY!! AHHHHH!!
I’m one of those panicking art major seniors. (Which means I’ve basically been living in the studio, along with my fellow majors.) But all is well! The projects are coming along nicely, and everything is falling into place. The senior show is fast approaching, with the reception on April 27th (including food curated by yours truly and fellow senior Rachel Kalman). The PR committee put together this fab poster to advertise the show, featuring all the art seniors!
Just before fall break, I finished my second printmaking project of the year. I’ve done some work with relief printmaking before and wanted to experiment a little bit more, so for this project I worked with speedy-cut (a rubber-like substance perfect for carving) on a medium scale. I chose to do a monoprint series that addressed the theme of femininity. I’m very interested in the classics (I would be a double major if I had time for the language requirement!), so I worked with figures from Greek mythology. In particular, I chose to represent two women of Ancient Greek mythology that represent different sides of femininity for me: Persephone and Artemis.
My carved and inked plate of Artemis with my first test print
This semester, my upper level printmaking class allows for a lot more freedom and experimentation, which means new techniques! The first project we worked on involved a method of screen printing called photo screen printing. I designed an image digitally and then printed it onto a transparency, coated my screen in an icky substance called photo emulsion, and then exposed the image to my screen with a machine that uses concentrated light. It was basically a bunch of cool chemical nonsense that I honestly still don’t completely understand, but it ended up perfectly exposing my very intricate image to my screen! This method is super useful because of it allows for lots of detail and a screen that can be printed and washed many times. I decided to do some test prints with just black ink before I worked on my edition.
My image and black ink, pre first pull
This week was the opening of the senior studio art majors’ art show! As a studio art major myself, I love going to see the art my peers and friends have spent the semester creating. I took a lot of photos; everything was so interesting and inspiring!
One of the first pieces seen when entering the gallery, Preserves by Chloe Boulay
The charming Andrea Eaton poses in front of her screen printed work
This semester there’s a course being offered on the art, architecture, and spacial studies of Ancient Rome. It’s a Connections course that culminates in one particularly awesome thing: an ACTUAL trip to Rome!!
For the first three weeks of summer, our small class will be staying in Italy and visiting all sorts of incredible cities, museums, and landmarks. We’ll be staying at the university of Washington’s Rome Center which is in a courtyard where a lovely market is held, and using their studio space to study and create art.
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Just before last semester ended, I finished my first ever intaglio print! (in-TAL-ee-o) The assignment was “inside/out,” so I went with an image I’m quite fond of including in my art: the blossoming of a rosebud. I’ve always liked to continue themes within my work across various mediums, and since I’ve done roses in both lithography and screen printing, it seemed fitting to do an intaglio print as well. Here’s what my preliminary sketch looked like.
