Studio Series: Leucadendron Collagraph

Leucadendron leaves collagraph © Karen Thiessen, 2016

Leucadendron is my favourite flower. A few years ago I prepared a pile of collagraph plates that I didn't print until recently. On one of the small plates, I glued Leucadendron leaves as an experiment. I didn't expect much, but although the result isn't spectacular, it is better than I had imagined. The collagraphs are starting points for other prints using other techniques. 

Studio Series: Blister pack collagraph

Blister pack collagraph © Karen Thiessen, 2016

The sidewalk is my friend. I've been holding onto this blister pack (probably from throat lozenges) forever and finally put it to use. If I were to "Marie Kondo"  my house, I'd have nothing to work with.

Studio Series: Egg carton collagraph

Egg carton collagraph © Karen Thiessen, 2016

The future is now. Today I inked this up and ran it through the press. I quite like it. I'm already planning to push it further.

Studio Series: Shake-n-make Collaboration

Hexagons panels © Karen Thiessen, 2016

The Shake-n-Make Collective, composed of Liss Platt and Claudia Manley, is mounting an exhibition called The Hand of Craft in May 2017 at the Cotton Factory and they are enlisting help. (I last wrote about them here). On exhibit will be a massive quilt top (approximately 16 feet by 6 feet), which will spell out "Labour" in shades of taupe against a purple background. The textile will be entirely pieced by hand using the English paper piecing technique. Liss and Claudia are piecing the letters, and volunteers are invited to piece the purple panels that are 3 hexagons wide by ten hexagons long (7.5" X 29").

To facilitate this collaboration, Liss and Claudia have been hosting English Paper piecing events where they teach the technique. They provide the hexagon templates printed on freezer paper, fabric strips, and thread. Volunteers are welcome to incorporate their own purple fabrics.

When Claudia asked if I would contribute to the quilt top, naturally I said yes. This summer high heat and humidity zapped my energy. English paper piecing was one studio activity that worked best in my "Zombie" state. It worked so well that I've pieced nine panels so far. It's addictive. In the process of fleshing out my own stash of purple fabrics, I learned that compared to other colours, few fabrics are available in purple colourways. The next time you are in a quilt shop, take a look –– you'll be surprised. I know I was, especially since purple is one of my favourite colours.

Future collagraph

Egg carton; Photo © Karen Thiessen, 2016

I spotted this gem in a parking lot close to the Farmers' Market and had to have it. It's now in my studio waiting to be adhered to stiff cardboard so that I can ink it up and run it through a press. I hope the print is at least half as interesting as what I imagine it could be.

Studio Series: monoprint

Cabbage monoprint © Karen Thiessen, 2016

New studio rhythms means time to muck around. This cabbage monoprint really does look like the cross-section of a brain. What do you think?

Studio Series: Chortitza oak leaf silhouette

Chortitza oak leaf silhouette © Karen Thiessen, 2016

Twyla Tharp, via her excellent book The Creative Habit, taught me to dedicate a box or two to each significant project. I have one for each my tags project and an ongoing Mennonite project. The latter box gets more action and is filled to the brim. The other day I was searching for a specific image and after some silent swearing, I found it in another place. There is something to be said for the collision of images in a very full box: It can be great for ideas to emerge unexpectedly. 

That being said, I realized that I needed a categorized repository of images. Deep in my office closet teetering on the top shelf, I found an empty binder and my filing cabinet offered up some empty page protectors and some page dividers. With these previously used office supplies I set to create order. It's still a work in progress, but I'm excited to be able to simply go to the "flora and fauna" section for my drawings of wheat, Chortitza oak leaves, and outlines of doves. For now my images of the Red Gate mingle in the "places" section with outlines of Pelee Island, and copies of Mennonite villages. In time, I may move the Red Gate images to a "structures" section that I hope to fill with images and drawings of windmills and the like. The "words" section is filling up, whereas the "food" section contains one lone drawing of Zwieback. The above image of the Choritza oak leaf silhouette will be filed in the "flora and fauna" section once I've finished writing this post.

Studio Series: Mennonite series tags

Mennonite series tags; Photo © Karen Thiessen, 2016

Off and on, I've been playing with words and symbols of my Dutch German (Russian) Mennonite material culture for more than twenty years. Until I discovered the tag format I hadn't been able to pull it together. Above is a random assortment of the strongest tags pinned to my studio wall. I'll present them differently in a gallery setting with proper spacing, probably in a long line and I'll install them with specimen pins.

Mennonite series tags detail; Photo © Karen Thiessen, 2016

I have over fifty completed Mennonite material culture tags, but only thirty work well together. The collection now has a voice and an aesthetic has emerged.

Mennonite series detail; Photo © Karen Thiessen, 2016

As of this week I have thirty textile tags set up for stitching. The collection is growing. It's about time.

Studio Series: Mennonite screen prints

Mennonite series Red Gate and threshing stone pattern screen prints; Photo © Karen Thiessen, 2016

My ironing table doubles as a print table, but I've never used it to screen print. A first step in setting up the table was to clear the foot high piles of fabric that covered most of it. To accomplish this, I went through most of my fabric bins and did a significant purge so that the fabric on the ironing table finally had a proper home. Two friends will be the beneficiaries of my deaccessioned stash. 

I hadn't printed on fabric since my Sheridan days. My husband set up a hose in the laundry room sink so that I was able to wash my screens with enough pressure to prevent clogging. My husband held the screen while I printed. We make a great team. I printed on commercial and naturally dyed fabrics. The honey locust bean pod dyed fabric looks great printed with rust fabric ink.

Mennonite series Mulberry leaf pattern screen prints; Photo © Karen Thiessen, 2016

While I was printing fabric, I printed some paper so that I can collage with it. What I learned from going through my bins was to buy and print fabrics in small, usable quantities. I print larger quantities of paper because collaging is more immediate than hand-stitching fabric.

Studio Series: screen prints

November 2015 screenprints © Karen Thiessen, 2016

My winter screen print class is already one-third over and I still have at least fifteen designs that I'd like to print. Each week I arrive with a work plan where I've made all the decisions about ink colours to mix, and papers and designs to print. This helps tremendously. Above are designs that I printed during the fall session. I've already collaged with many of these papers and one pattern made it into an early 2016 birthday gift for a friend.

Studio Series: printmaking

Birch-dulse-o-rama © Karen Thiessen, 2015

My fascination and appreciation of leaves has not waned. The above print is an amalgam of a collographed birch leaf and a screen print (the chartreuse flowers). They are both printed on foxed pages of Mennonite books. I printed these during my autumn Printmaking class. The winter session class begins soon and I have fifteen new designs to print.

Studio Series: Slides collograph

 Slides collograph on Shoji paper © Karen Thiessen, 2015

My grandparents were avid photographers. Grandpa documented family gatherings and travels with their Airstream trailer. Grandma documented flowers... thousands of them. They died six months apart, in 2007, and once my uncle scanned Grandpa and Grandma's slides, they came to me. Over a few Christmases I had slide show marathons, viewing several thousand slides. I then set out to edit and organize the collection, only keeping the best. I tossed over 2000 slides (yes, I really did count the discards), many of them flower photos, over and under exposed images, duplicates, etc. The slides are from the 1950s to the 1990s and the oldest slides have beautiful cardboard mounts with nicely rounded corners. I kept these. One day I'll collage with them. I took a handful and glued them to an illustration board mount and created this collograph. It is beautiful in its simplicity. As a bonus, I only had success making this print. Could it have been grandparent karma?

Studio Series: Tea packet collograph

Tea packet collograph on Shoji paper © Karen Thiessen, 2015

Every day I drink a few mugs of tea. Two of the teas are packaged in sealed plastic-lined paper pouches. I save the torn tops in a bowl and they add up. I glued an assortment to illustration board, inked it up, and ran it through a press. My first several attempts were failures, so I had to make another plate. Thank goodness I have lots of tea packet tops on hand. This is my only successful print. Patience and persistence pay off!

Studio Series: Screenprint fragments

Screen print edges collage © Karen Thiessen, 2015

When I screen print small or fragile papers, I tape them to a larger piece of bristol and layers of prints accumulate along the edges. Here's a collage of those edges. I've been very busy!

Studio Series: Chortitza Oak Leaves prints

Chortitza Oak leaves prints © Karen Thiessen, 2015

Happy days are here again: my printmaking class has resumed for the fall! I'm screen printing as usual, and I'm printing with found materials. My personal leaves of significance project continues in new ways. This summer I visited several Chortitza oak descendants (Quercus robur) here in Southern Ontario and gathered leaves: some to take rubbings from and some to print. To preserve the leaves, I soaked them in a glycerin, water, and surfactant concoction (1 part glycerin to two parts water, plus 3 to 4 drops of castile soap to act as a surfactant) for a week. Once the leaves were preserved, I inked some up with a brayer with black Akua ink and then ran them through a press. In the above photo, you'll see prints on abaca (a.k.a. tea bags), Japanese kozo paper, and old German book pages. My thanks to Christine Mauersberger for the idea to preserve the leaves and then print with them! In the near future, I plan to print with preserved mulberry leaves and birch leaves from the tree that shelters my late-brother's grave, although I'm certain that the birch leaves will be too fine to print with. Nothing ventured, nothing gained.

Ritsuko Ozeki @ Froelick Gallery, PDX

Ritsuko Ozeki, Down Up, 2014; Photo © Karen Thiessen, 2015

While in Portland, Oregon, I stumbled across Japanese artist Ritsuko Ozeki's exhibition Distance at the Froelick Gallery. It ran from July 21 to August 29, 2015.

Ritsuko Ozeki is a Tokyo-based painter and printmaker. She studied painting and intaglio at the Musashino Art University in Tokyo, Japan and earned both a B.A. in 1994 and an M.A. in 1996. Down Up is massive: it's 98" X 137" and arrived at the Froelick Gallery neatly folded in an envelope. Ozeki printed the artwork in modules of Japanese paper using about six different plates and then joined them together to create one large whole. She employed etching, aquatint, and collage in her process. According to Froelick Gallery director Rebecca Rockom, Down Up references the earthquake and tsunami that hit Japan in 2011.

Ritsuko Ozeki, Down Up detail, 2014; Photo © Karen Thiessen, 2015

Ozeki's prints, especially Down Up, drew me in immediately and they have had a significant impact on how I think about my work, especially her spacing, line, and repetition of modules. 

Her use of folds is right up my alley too. This week I started reading Sarah Thornton's 33 Artists in 3 Acts and her mention of the folded work of Mexican artist Gabriel Orozco (his Corplegados) and Chilean artist Eugenio Dittborn caught my attention.

To learn more about Ozeki:
http://ritsukoozeki.tumblr.com
http://ritsukoozeki.com

Studio Series: Mini screenprints

Screenprint patterned tape © Karen Thiessen, 2015

Recently I had the pleasure of taking a full-day (six glorious hours!) screen print class. The day before the class, I wrote out a work plan for the day: colours of ink to mix, screens to expose, and patterns to print. This worked like a charm and I was able to print far more than I expected. A few prints resolved nicely; many will be over-printed when class resumes in autumn.

One role of the artist is to pay close attention. I'm glad that I was looking carefully when I was sorting my prints because I noticed that the tape that I used to adhere small pieces to bristol were miniature artworks.

Of Note

We have finally reached zucchini nirvana and for the first time ever have far more zucchini than we can possibly eat. This is a good problem that I have been aiming for. Today I learned that a zucchini can double in size in just one day. 

Here's what's rocking my world this week:
1. Japanese Outsider artist Satoshi Morita's stitching is out-of-this-world. Satoshi's work was exhibited in Souzou: Outsider Art from Japan at Wellcome Collection in the U.K. in 2013. Oh my!

2. This week I finished reading Stuffocation by James Wallman. The one tidbit that set my mental lightbulb ablaze was an endnote that cites the research of historian Eve Fisher about what a shirt made during the middle ages would cost in today's dollars. It's brilliant. The $3500 Shirt is a good read.

3. My printmaking class may be over for the summer, but I'm still looking at contemporary screen prints to feed my mental image bank. Linda Linko's prints are delicious. Found via Anthology

4. I am in clean up mode around here. In the process of unearthing two tables in my studio, I found an old Surface Design Journal article (SDJ Spring 2001) about Jeanne Williamson's weekly quilts, and monthly 12" X 12" artworks. She's still at it.

Studio Series: Collograph

Toothpick collograph detail © Karen Thiessen, 2015

My printmaking class is nearly over and this term I focussed on two processes: screen printing and collography. Collograph printing is new to me and it captured my imagination and enthusiasm immediately. One week I prepared seven plates of various found objects adhered to presentation board and the backs of old sketchpads for class. My first print was a failure and this was a very good thing as I learned right away what not to do (don't start with yellow ink, don't press too hard when inking your plate, don't over-ink your plate). As I work with this technique over time, I'm sure I'll learn more do's and don'ts. The above image is a collograph of flat toothpicks (inspired by Kai Chan's early work) on Japanese paper. I like working with Japanese paper because it's affordable, very forgiving, and I don't have to soak it before running it through the press. I'll share more of my results in coming weeks.