Below are some long overdue posts of student acrylic transfer work from my workshop at the Sitka Center for Art and Ecology last summer. I had a great group for those two days who all brought very unique interests and artistic backgrounds with them to this process (as evidenced below). Most everyone seemed a bit startled at just how labor-intensive the process happened to be, but there is no questioning that the results can be absolutely beautiful in their unpredictability. Each of the images below was transferred onto 12" square birch plywood panels using acrylic gel medium. Some of these panels were leafed with metal leaf (see examples 1 and 2), some were left raw (as in examples 3 and 4) and some painted. As always, the panels were provided by the one-stop shop for artistic substrates in PDX: art-substrates.

As is often the case, so much of the workshop's time was devoted to demystifying the transfer process that there wasn't much time for students to start incorporating other mediums on top of the image. I hope that some day I'll be afforded a week-long workshop so that students can move beyond the basics and really start to explore how to further incorporate drawing and painting onto the transferred images.

The above transfer on "gold" leafed panel is enhanced by a bit of powdered graphite rubbed into the corners to create something akin to a vignette technique. As is evidenced here, it's hard to go wrong when you're working with a great image, but the transfer process and the liveliness of the light across the metal leaf under the image provide an extra level of mystery that is difficult to fully appreciate in the above reproduction.

If memory serves, this photo was taken as a reflection in a door and much of the texture you're seeing here exists in the actual photo. This transfer onto "silver" leaf helps reinforce the sheen and texture of the surface that captured the image in the first place.

This image is a transfer of a copy of original artwork for a children's story. The grain of the plywood panel beneath adds another layer of texture and a soft warm tone to the image.

As a collector of vintage photographs it is impossible for me to not get excited about their application in this process. This picture harkens back to an Oregon Coast of long ago. You can see that there are just a few areas left on this image that still need to have some of the paper pulp removed (any area of fuzzy white) but it promises to be a very clean transfer.

After sharing with the class that I periodically use shellac as a finish, which is oil-based and therefore literally renders stray bits of paper pulp all but transparent and invisible this student brought in a can of Watco to run a few tests. It's effects were similar, although the nutty brown of the Watco will become a tone in the image to the degree that it is applied. Part of the benefit of instructing workshops is getting to learn a few things myself. . .

While I won't be at Sitka this summer there is no shortage of amazing workshops on offer and registration is now open for 2015. If you've got a few days, you'd be hard pressed to find a place more beautiful, with a staff more friendly than Sitka Center for Art and Ecology. 

I am pleased to report that I'll be returning to Portland for the first weekend in November to offer a 1-day workshop at OCAC (Sat, Nov 2) and celebrate the ongoing success of Sitka Center for Art and Ecology by taking part in their annual Art Invitational at the World Forestry Center (Sat-Sun, Nov 2-3). 

Atelier 6000, a non-profit print shop in Bend that provides access to presses for artists and those interested in learning printmaking, has put together an exhibit of works about the diverse iconographic elements of the regional landscape. While primarily a show featuring book artists and printmakers, the fact that so much of my process is informed by printmaking techniques, and that my work is, in part, a reflection on multiplicity, I was granted a place in the exhibit. I'm honored to be part of a roster that includes my friends Clare Carpenter, Christy Wyckoff and Barb Tetenbaum-- all masters of their craft and great inspirations!

The opening reception is tomorrow, Friday, August 2nd from 5:30-8pm at: 389 SW Scalehouse Ct. Ste 120
Bend, OR 97702

And if your weekend plans don't include a trip to the beautiful wilds of Central Oregon, well, perhaps you can make it out in the next two months as the show runs through September 30th.

In packing up the studio yesterday for the upcoming move to the SW I ran across this lovely painting Ariana did a number of years ago during a trip to Bainbridge Island. It is a large watercolor portrait of the detritus around the studio we were using during our visit, and will now be part of the wistful record of Pacific Northwest flora we'll undoubtedly pine for when living in the desert. 

This silhouette-based work has been part of a collaboration we've done in the past. As I've already created close to two dozen panels for a future iteration of this project it will be interesting to see if a new landscape inspires a similar approach.

I am pleased to report that I'll be taking part in two different group exhibitions this month, both of which open on Thursday evening. The first show is at Oregon College of Art and Craft, which has invited alumni working in photography, book arts and ceramics to submit recent work for a two-month long summer exhibit. There are alums from as far back as 15 years (just a little after the college starting awarding a BFA degree in Craft) taking part in the exhibit with a broad range of both functional and conceptual work represented. The opening for this show is from 4pm-6pm on Thursday, June 6th at the Hoffman Gallery (located at the center of OCAC's lovely 10-acre campus).

The second exhibit is with Gallery 114 in the Pearl District (just across the street from Blick Art Materials on NW Glisan) where my dear friend Myra Clark is a member. Myra recently mounted a solo exhibit there which featured abstract paintings charting her path to recovery following a head trauma-- and among these works was a small selection of exceedingly minimal paintings, predominantly in white, that contain elements reminiscent of Barnett Newman's Stations of the Cross series from the late 1950's. 

When Gallery 114 asked each member artist to invite another artist to participate in an exhibit about collaboration Myra kindly asked me to be her counterpart. The exhibit, titled +1, asks members to exhibit their work "side by side with mentors, muses, collaborators, comrades, and friends."  In planning out our part, Myra and I sought to identify harmonies that existed in line, color, and composition between her minimal white works and my photo based transfer works while simultaneously acknowledging (and celebrating) the great differences in representation evident. The resulting grouping is not, strictly speaking, a "side by side" display, but rather an activated grouping of works that creates its own unique symmetries and tensions. The process of devising it allowed me to see familiar work in a very new light, and brought an appreciation for elements within each piece that heretofore I'd perhaps glossed over when pairing them with my own works in past exhibits. The opening reception for +1 runs from 6pm-9pm on Thursday, June 6th at 1100 NW Glisan-- I do hope to see you there!

As I think was perfectly clear to the fifteen participants in my recent photo transfer workshop at OCAC, inkjet transfers are far more persnickety than acrylic transfers. The inks have a tendency to bleed into one another and/or slurry about under pressure during the transfer process, and then there's the whole issue of trying to seal them so that future introductions of water (i.e. if you take it in the rain or are suddenly seized with the desire to paint on top of the image) don't reactivate the inks and cause them to move around again. Nevertheless, I sincerely believe that this is a great process for those artists who find inspiration and direction in the random mark-making and peculiar color shifts that can occur when a process is not perfectly predictable. I certainly work that way, and relish in discovering a visual possibility that I could not have preconceived.

Pictured above are two lovely inkjet transfers of the same image. The one on the left resulted from too much water on the paper surface which was then rolled too hard with a small rubber brayer. Personally, I love the irregular edges and dampened (pun intended) color palette. The image on the right is cleaner, but either the paper was too dry in the lower areas or the transfer was not applied fast enough from the carrier sheet to the paper, and the blacks had an opportunity to coalesce which left a blotchy appearance in what should have been the darkest area of the print. If this were my image, I would probably focus my attention on unifying those darkest areas and punching up the blacks of the tree's silhouette. It would be exciting to see how this image ultimately gets finished by the artist. . . it was a lovely photo to begin with, and may need little more than the right frame and a bit of mat board to bring it to completion.

Today and tomorrow are it for Newspace's 2013 themed exhibition about images that exist at the perimeter of what is commonly accepted as photography. Or, to be more specific, fine art photography, which is perhaps a term better left vaguely defined so as not to ruffle any proverbial feathers. 

Within the exhibit there are conceptual investigations of what constitutes a photograph, as well as materials explorations with alternative processes like liquid photo emulsion. Many of the photographers on display (like yours truly) are really dealing with the conceptual framework through material process, which is probably the most unifying element to what is essentially a very visually disparate exhibit.

There is a heavy digital component to the show, as apparently the validity of digital images/manipulations continues to be a contentious subject among the photographic community (despite the fact that much of the world now produces images using digital means).  

In fact, the work that resonated most profoundly for me was a digital composite by Amy Elkins titled 11 Years out of a Death Row Sentence (river) which perfectly conveyed its spiritual tenor through a very knowing homage to the cathartic Pictorial tradition that is so rampant in landscape photography. This image alone is worth the visit to Newspace this weekend, but there are also great works by J. Swofford, Buzzy Sullivan, Shawn Darwent, Emidio Puglielli, Lauren Grabelle and Ben Panter.
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Photography at the Edge | 2013 Themed Exhibition
Newspace Center for Photography
1632 SE 10th Ave. Portland OR 97214
Mon-Thurs: 10am-9:30pm
Fri-Sun: 10am-6pm

If sweeping coastal headlands, herds of wild elk, and the waving grasses of a windswept estuary aren't enough to entice you to the coast this winter, perhaps the opportunity to meet a few artists while touring about the Sitka Center for Art and Ecology will be just the nudge you need.

This coming Monday evening the Sitka Center for Art and Ecology is hosting an open studio event that is free and open to the public. There will be food, drink, and a chance to meet the writers and artists in residence at Sitka this winter. My studio will be open for the duration with a number of completed works and works-in-progress on display. I do hope to see you there!

Learn more about the Sitka Center for Art and Ecology's residents from the 2012/13 winter season.