Prudence and Patience

I'm slowly getting started on a new series of prints about two little girls and their adventures, called Prudence and Patience, presumably their names. Here's a test print of a plate that will be the border for most (or all) of the prints, which will be mostly wood cuts and engravings. The images will be similar to the Heavens to Betsy series, and will include captions, but I'm ready to really focus on my engraving skills, no matter how daunting.

While these girls are off having adventures, here are some peeks at the homelife of Jessica:

the start of a new moss garden and my new strawberry patch.

Human Book in Barcelona

My book "Secrets"  will be on display at the Human Book exhibit in Barcelona, Spain, during the Sant Jordi Festival on April 23, 2010! I've visited Barcelona once, many years ago, and fell in love with the beautiful city of wide promenades and fountains. I'm so glad to finally be there again, in spirit if not in person. My Spanish is a little rough, but I'm pretty sure all of the details are here:

   III Festival de libro de artista y de las pequeñas ediciones

 HUMAN BOOK 

el libro como necesidad humana de contar, de expresarse y de editar

23 de abril de 2010, Festividad de Sant Jordi

Barcelona, Plaza Sant Just (Barrio Gótico)

Plaza de Los Libros Imaginados

Invitación

Horas 12.00 del 23 de abril: apertura del Festival

Presentación del catalogo-ensayo sobre la muestra, con intervenciones de Alberto López Bargados, Eva Marxen, Aníbal Salazar Anglada, Roser López Monsó, Ignasi Blanch, Nani Tedeschi, y de representantes de instituciones y centros de arte relevantes en todo el mundo. El volumen (coordinado por Elisa Pellacani, 246 pp., ilustrado, encuadernado en hilo, 20.00 Euros) estará disponible durante el Festival y en las principales librerías. 


More information about the festival can be found here.

Water people

Spent a beautiful spring/summer morning yesterday at the lake with my dad. He taught me the basics of fly fishing, then I went for a lazy-paddle kayaking around the lake while he fished some more from the dock. Found some awesome little mossy-ferny spots along the banks, under the overhanging trees. Every time I get back on the water I'm reminded that I'm a descendant of water people. Especially my dad and his mother/my grandmother, but while they preferred to be near water catching fish, I'd rather paddle or sail, or swim. I haven't been sailing since before the big flood in Iowa, and I think it's time to look for a nice lake to sail around again.

Honestly, though, I had dreams about snapping the line just right to get the fly in the right place along the shore. Maybe there will be more fly fishing in my future...

Here's a photo of the sunrise on the bridge taken with my phone.

Robot says it's spring!

A sign of spring at our house: the Robot sprouts.

It also, apparently, moves around the yard.

Information Desk

Finishing up the drawing for the final Heavens to Betsy print. So far, I've been calling it "Information Desk". This drawing will be made into a photopolymer plate, and another integral part of the print will be a pressure print.

The Loot

Spent a sunny day with Scott out at the lake yesterday, and walked around Chimney Rock before it's overrun by tourists. We stopped at one of those mine-your-own-gems set-ups, and I realized that I lived an entire childhood without mining gems even once. Especially surprising since a lot of that childhood was spent in North Carolina, apparently the gemstone mining capital of the world (Google it). I kept every single little rock that got caught in the wire mesh, but here are the highlights.

Comparing these to the little 'gem chart' they gave me, I think I have (starting with the purple stone, and spiraling clockwise):
a nice big amethyst
blue calcite
mixed agate
sodalite (?)
desert jasper
citrine
clear quartz
red jasper
another sodalite
and another desert jasper.

The gems/jewelry shop was *way* more interesting after this mining experience.

Click! Brrrr-ka-chunk!

Started a little spring cleaning in my studio today, and discovered this tucked away neatly in a box! My old Polaroid and two brand new boxes of film. The films are developing with a very strong sepia tone, like I've traveled back to the 1970s to take these shots. And now, I'm off to re-learn how to make Polaroid transfers.

This is why spring cleaning at my house takes for-ever...

Books make great gifts, pt. 2

A friend of mine recently moved to Korea, and to lighten his load, he sent a box of his heaviest books to my doorstep. Some hightlights:

An illustrated book of herbs (did you know that the marshmallow plant is an herb?),

and a 1937 reprint of Audobon's The Birds of America.

I especially like the title page,

and I think the title page of my next book will need to include &c., &c., &c.

Books make great gifts

I love getting books as gifts, and my friends know it. The main problems with having too many books are 1. I tend to move a lot, and 2. I've run out of shelf space, but there's no room in this little apartment for another bookshelf. I'm really excited for the day when I can dedicate an entire room to books, and call it my library. It'll have shelves up to the ceiling and a wooden ladder on wheels so I can easily get to each and every beautiful book.

Over the weekend, I got an old Encyclopedia Brittanica with anatomy lessons:

Last week I got a whole box of sweet old books from a friend moving to Korea. I'll post more on those later.

New Shops!

I'm so excited to open a few more new shops for Heroes & Criminals Press wares! If you're an online shopper, visit Felt & Wire, a curated shop dedicated to paper goods. While you're there, take a peek at their blog - it's updated regularly with news from the paper, books, and print world.

If you're in the Asheville area and like to shop in person, stop by Atelier 24 in downtown Asheville. This is a gallery that showcases art by lots of local artists (I think they're up to 70 artists now), with an amazing variety including wall decals and handmade guitars. I'm starting out small, with a wall that's all my own, with plans to (hopefully) expand down the road.

I'm also pleased to be in the Penland School of Crafts Gallery, to be in the company of some of the best artists and craftsmen working now. I've admired many of the artists that they represent for a long time, and I have to pinch myself some days to make sure this is real! Right now, they carry planners, journals, and cards, but I'm working on getting my prints and books up to par so they can be included as well.

Get smart, have fun

Upcoming workshops I'll be teaching at Asheville BookWorks are now officially posted! Go to their website here to register. Sorry for out-of-town folks, but these are evening classes most convenient for locals. If you want these classes made available as weekend classes, let them know!

Stiff Leaf and Drum Leaf Bindings
April 7, 14, 21, 28, 2010

Image-making on the Vandercook: Variations on Relief
May 4, 11, 18, 25 and June 1, 8, 2010

The Printed Book
August 11, 18, 25 and September 1, 8, 15, 2010

Introduction to Letterpress Printing
August 27 - 29, 2010

Cause manatees love books

I was recently invited to participate in a bookplates exhibit, and I took the opportunity to work on my engraving skills. I tend to make bigger prints, so being forced to create something small-ish made the prospect of engraving much less daunting. This was done on Resingrave, my engraving block of choice these days because I've noticed that I'm easily distracted by the wood grain on regular wood blocks! I really had fun with it, despite some problems with chipping, and am fairly pleased with the results. Well, usually pleased with the results - I'm learning by looking at work by my personal hero engravers out there: Barry Moser, Gaylord Shanilec, and local artist Andy Farkas, and by comparison my little engraving looks pretty sad. I'm trying not to get down about it, and at the very least each one of my prints are better than the last!

These manatee bookplates will be on display in a traveling show starting in eastern North Carolina this month. More details to follow!

fellow traveler Max Ernst

I remember learning about Max Ernst's brightly colored surrealist paintings back in art school, but it wasn't until I saw his book "Une Semaine de Bonte" that I really got hooked on his work. This was when I started playing with captions, realizing the power of words to change one's perceptions of an image. I haven't looked at his work in a while, but this week I finally got my own copy of "A Little Girl Dreams of Taking the Veil", and again I'm hooked. There are more images from this book here.

Showing at Twist Gallery

I've started off 2010 with a show at Twist Gallery in downtown Nashville, TN, "It's Not Hellfire". I had fun painting the gallery with my dear friend Liz, who has her amazing artists books and collages on display for this show, and we had lots of help from my boyfriend Scott, his dad, and Beth Gilmore, the curator at Twist. The icing on the cake was being chosen as Nashville Scene'c Critic's Pick for the January artwalk - "White's animal oracles don't go for cheap laughs or creep-show schlock. Her picture-book renderings provide a believable setting for their asides, which, at their best, are touching and heartfelt."

After setting everything up, we headed out into the cold new year's festivities. There was a good crowd, lots of music, and even some very nice cops (picking on us for eating ice cream outside in near-freezing temps), but we headed back to the hotel before the big "guitar drop". Liz and I settled in for slumber-party-girl-talk while Scott and his dad watched football in the next room, and we nearly missed the actual passing into the new year. Scott busted in, turned on the tv, and we saw the ball in NYC drop just in time. Ok, that meant it was actually 1am where we were, but whatever. We didn't miss a thing.

 

 

more to come

I'll post stuff and photos soon about the show at Twist Gallery, and new year's fun in Nashville. Until then, here are my cats in winter sunlight.

  

Bi- and Uni-cycle love

I've almost run out of the "I heart your bike!" tags, so last week I got to work printing new ones. These have the same bike illustration, but I used "nice bike" for the text instead, after hearing through the grapevine that the heart ones are too girly for guys to use. Are these a little more gender neutral?

I ran into so many problem when I tried to letterpress them that, out of sheer frustration, I set aside the Kelsey 5x8 and pulled out the trusty old Gocco. I'd forgotten how much I love the Gocco, and I think you'll be seeing many more Gocco prints in the near future (as long as I can still find supplies for sale).

Along with the bicycle tags, I decided to include our single-wheeled friends, so here are unicycle love tags too! Both tags can be purchased at my Etsy site.

 

 

Banjo Boy

Just finished this drawing, for the "Be Still My Darlings" series. It'll be available at Rebus Works tomorrow.

new drawing

I'm working on some drawings for my upcoming show at Twist Gallery in Nashville, TN in January 2010. It's going to be a series of book illustrations, torn from a book tentatively titled "Be Still, My Darlings", about a journey involving fear, courage, and collapse. Here's a sketch of one part of what will be in this series.

Other drawings will include windmills, a banjo, ferns, a forest fire, and possibly a narwhal. You can buy a print of this sketch from Rebus Work's Daily Images.

I got blogged

I'm usually pretty startled when I find out that I've been on other people's blogs. Startled, and flattered. One that I was recently featured on is Panel Patter, a blog dedicated to comic and zine reviews, by Rob in Pittsburgh. He reviewed my Art School Chronicles zines, and was incredibly insightful - even gave me few things to think about, along with the fact that the final issue is way past overdue. For the handful of people out there who have asked about the conclusion of this story, yes it is going to be made, but no it will not be done anytime soon. I'm working on it, but it is definitely on the very bottom of my priority list. I know, not fair to all of you (and maybe not fair to me, either). One reason it's taking longer than the others is because I've decided to combine my 4th and 5th years into one book, and call it "The Graduater", because that's what I did. I graduated. And then the following year I graduated again. I'm done graduating now, so I'll put it down on paper in pictures and let everyone know how it went.

Another fun little blog I was featured in is I Dreamed I Saw, a blog of mostly images. One of my drawings made it to her "Grin and Bear" posts, of various bear drawings she finds intriguing. I must admit, I like her taste.  :)

(Art School Chronicle zines and prints of this bear drawing can be purchased at my Etsy site.)

Big Questions

Anders Nilsen, my most favorite comic artist, has finished the next issue of Big Questions, #13. He's inspiring both visually and through the stories he tells. I definitely recommend you check him out.