Chrysalis 2- in My Drawers

Day #23 of What's in My Drawers.

Chrysalis 2
Etching, aquatint with gold embossed
rubber stamp
Image size: 7" x 5"
Paper size: 12.5" x 9.5"
Edition of 20
©NanciHersh
$150.00

                                                             

This etching with aquatint started out as a demo plate for my class when I was teaching printmaking at Monmouth University in Long Branch, NJ.

A highly personal piece (I do wear my heart on my sleeve) it later became the iconic image for the Art of Survival at Herspace, an annual art exhibition honoring women who have been touched by breast cancer.

Following my bilateral mastectomy in 2003,  I felt tight and sore, and was scarred physically and probably a bit, emotionally. I saw myself creating a healing cocoon around my raw body.

And like a butterfly who emerges from her cocoon when the time is right, I trusted, that I, too would emerge and take flight.

Click here to see the post about What's in My Drawers and be in the loop for the rest of the art and stories in this blog series.

On the Same Remarkable Spiritual Journey- Artist as Collector

Artist Deborah Johnson is this week's guest blogger for our Artist as Collector Series.

Tangeri Dreaming
©2013KrisVermeer

I was happy to be able to share this piece from my collection.  I traded one of my small raku sculptures for this small print by Kris Vermeer. Writing this post gave me time to re-examine why it is so important to me and placed in such a prominent spot in my home. 

I usually sit on the sofa for a few minutes in the morning while I wait for the coffee maker to do its thing and contemplate this piece which is directly across the room.  

Kris Vermeer is a friend I often showed with in Seattle.  Her work is very spiritual and often incorporates imagery from surviving works of First Peoples.  Kris uses many methods to communicate her love of ancient cultures.  She works primarily with glass and steel, but she is also a very accomplished printmaker. This print is one of my favorites.  I feel it speaks to the heart of her work.

I love the warmth and richness of color, the slight shine of the ink against the matt paper, and of course the imagery which seems to move against the background…these are reasons enough to appreciate this piece, but the reasons go a little deeper.  I feel Kris Vermeer’s combination of ancient imagery with contemporary means of mark making allows her work to transcend time and place. 

When I look at Tingari Dreaming it reminds me that we are all connected as humans on a fragile planet, we are on the same remarkable spiritual journey, no matter where we are located in space and time.

Deborah Johnson is adept in fiber, glass, clay, and paint. Her work is meant as a meditation on the beauty and fragility of our world. Techniques and processes which take years to master honor something about what it means to be human and are as integral to her work as the content. Currently, she lives and works in Delaware. 

A Trade with a History- Artist as Collector

Delaware based artist, Kai Bartram is this week's guest blogger for our Artist as Collector Series.  Here's what he has to say about what is in his collection.

Cynthia Phillips, Untitled
Etching
7" x 35"

I met Cynthia Phillips in a printmaking class at Alfred University when we were both art students there. I’ve found that one of the most valuable aspects of an arts education is the opportunity to watch other budding artists develop. As a process based artist myself, I’m often most interested in transitional pieces that document the process of exploration and discovery, and the best student work does exactly that. Alfred is a small school with an even smaller print program, so I had the opportunity to watch Cynthia’s unique pictorial language emerge over several years and several more classes at the same time as I was striving to do the same. I was drawn to much of the work that she was producing at the time, but this etching in particular spoke to me, and I traded her one of my own etchings for this proof. One of the unsung advantages to processes that produce multiple images of varying quality is the ease of trading.

Cynthia Phillips, etching (detail)
collection of Kai Bartram

I love this piece because it conveys a sense of a narrative by making use of the language of comics and/or animation, and yet it is a confusing and fragmentary narrative. It’s a well-worn dream, a looping video that suddenly skips, nostalgia punctuated with sudden anxious revelation. I have always responded to imagery that straddles the line between whimsical and sinister, playful and threatening. The idealization of childhood tends to obscure the dark side of innocence. Children often lack the context to understand their experience of the supernatural and are inclined to feel the shapeless forces that inhabit their interior world lurking just outside of their field of vision, ready to spring into the next frame. 

Kai Bartram is a printmaker and newly minted art librarian who lives and works in Delaware


What art school friends have you watched develop and kept in touch with?

Gifted In Istanbul, Artist as Collector

This week's Artist as Collector blog post comes from American Printmaker Celeste Pierson currently living and teaching in Istanbul, Turkey.

Garden of Ephsus

Solar Plate Print

©2012DanWelden

collection of Celeste Pierson

Last August after packing up my belongings and putting them in storage,  I got on a plane with my dog Nelly, and we flew to Istanbul, Turkey where I  had accepted a job teaching art at a wonderful school called Robert College.  A month later, my partner Jack joined me. We are happily settling in while exploring the culture and sights of Istanbul.

One day a phone call came to the house where we live on campus, from an old friend and former colleague, Dan Weldon who just happened to be teaching art on a cruise ship docked for a few days in Istanbul.  We journeyed down to the port to visit with Dan, and over tea we discussed many interesting things.  In the course of conversation Dan mentioned his concern because his assistant for this leg of the trip wasn’t able to make it… and would Jack like to join him for a week free of charge and travel throughout Turkey and Greece as his teaching assistant? Of course, said yes!!  Jack went on the  cruise while I stayed and worked. 

This solar plate print by Dan Welden, - the first print of our Istanbul collection, was gifted to us as a gesture of thanks and gratitude for Jack's help on the cruise.

That’s the bonus of being a printmaker- creating multiples to share and exchange of our work,  so we can surround ourselves with “soft and fuzzy” memories of friends, students and colleagues.

The Painterly Print: Monoprint Workshop

Here are some shots from my Painterly Print: Monoprint Workshop at Delaware College of Art & Design this past Sunday. The monoprint process is the most direct and spontaneous of methods of printmaking.  

Photos by Jessica Sturgis,
Director of Communications
Delaware College of Art and Design
A Creative Partnership of Pratt and the Corcoran

Working with a variety of textures the students experimented with color and process and enjoying fun surprises along the way.

Love these papers that one student brought from India.

Meeting new wonderful and creative people is always a bonus in a workshop

A workshop is a great way to make time for yourself!

Monoprints by DCAD student Joel Turner

The print on the left was the first run, printed on Rives BFK White,

the one on the right is the "ghost" print- we ran the plate through the

press a second time without adding any ink.

Printed on Rives BFK Buff.

Look for my Monoprint and Book Arts Workshop in the Winter Catalogue at Delaware College of Art & Design in their Continuing Ed Program.

Just one of those things about Art!

Texas based artist, Cynthia Alderete is this week's guest blogger for the Artist as Collector Series.

Brainstorm
Acid tint/ Lithograph
©2012SydneyCross

I first met Sydney Cross, a Professor at Clemson University, when I signed up for her workshop at Frogman’s Print Workshop at the University of South Dakota in 2000.

Failing terribly (4 tries with her assistants) at her Acid Tinting techniques, we finally gave up and laughed about it.    Just one of those things about art!

We became friends that year and and spend time catching up at various art conferences. We have also participated in many portfolio exchanges together. Brain Storm is one of my favorite pieces from one such portfolio.

Sydney still teaches at Clemson’s and offers workshops throughout the US. 

Cynthia Alderete is a fine artist, printmaker and educator who lives and works in the Hill Country outside of Austin, Texas.  Cynthia and I met at Santa Reparata Graphic Art Centre (now called the Santa Reparate International School of Art) in Florence, Italy many years ago.  There is something about printmakers and friendship that transcends time and miles!

Pressure Prints - Just for You

Minnesota based artist Diana Eicher is this week's guest blogger for the Artist as Collector Series.

Just for You, 2009
Pressure Print
©2012RachelNusbaum

I coordinate the Printmaking and Papermaking areas at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design and was working at the school art sale last November, 2012. It was there that I saw Rachel Nusbaum’s work. Rachel had been a student at MCAD and I had seen her prints before.

There are hundreds of prints at the Art Sale, but for some reason, these caught my eye. These were pressure prints that Rachel had done in a class on the Vandercook press, and I knew that I had to buy them. I decided to buy several of the prints so that I could have option of framing them all together or frame them each independently. 

I love the colors she chose, and the themes that she used in this series. With their small size and the pressure printing technique, she created very unusual prints that I found very unique from the rest of the work. I put them to the side, and at the right time, I purchased them when the Art Sale crowd was at a minimum. 

Diana Eicher is a printmaker and paper cut artist. She recently had a solo exhibition of her work in Shanghai, China at Donghua University.

Beyond Teaching to the Test

Display of some of my work in at the art room of Mary Ann Uhle at

Kennett Middle School for Career Day.

Just noticed that the student works behind my table are of Butterflies, and Rabbits.
Serendipity at its best!

 

Last week I was at Kennett Middle School for Career Day.  I brought samples of my studio work including my children's book Butterfly Kisses and Wishes on Wings- When someone you love has cancer... a hopeful, helpful book for kids, shared my website and blogs with the students. We also did a quick and easy printmaking project- creating personal stamps, using foam shapes with adhesive backing, small pieces of cardboard cut in 2" squares for the stamp backing and water soluable markers to "ink" them up.

Using water soluable markers to "ink" up their
personal stamps

I learned that last week was also Teaching Artist Appreciation Week.  As a teaching artist, I have worked with Arts Horizons, Young Audiences of New Jersey and Eastern Pennsylvania,  and the DCCA Contemporary Connections program, and numerous other organizations to bring art to our schools with projects that integrate their art practice with school curriculum.

Sample print made from a personal stamp

It is a great way to enhance, engage and expand the classroom- and get beyond teaching to the test!

Plein Air Painting in Collection

This week's Artist as Collector Series comes from painter and printmaker Ahni Kruger.

©2012CarolDiamond

I bought this at Prince Street Gallery … 

Carol (Diamond) & I met in college and I've always admired her dedication to her work.  We have had many lovely moments painting in the landscape, drawing together, sharing loves, parenting strategies, and losses over the years.  

This painting was done on location in the Brooklyn Navy Yards in 1997 when I was very pregnant with my son.  It shows her relentless, tentative searching for form while boldly messing with space and color.  Love the yellow diagonal!  She manages to capture these very complicated structures with suggestive strokes, and I think she truly gives us that sense of being in an industrial landscape, leading us up to and beyond various details, all the while leaving delicious clues about the act of painting.  

To me, plein air painting is about the transient light, shifting forms and impermanence of the weather, an urgency to seize the moment.  Sadly, the significance of the towers that no longer exist is now woven into this.  

About this week's Guest Blogger:

Ahni Kruger is a painter, printmaker and adjunct professor at Drew University and Montclair State University, both in New Jersey.  Her work reflects her travels, her passions and her thoughtful approach to the canvas or paper.

Their Art, Your Walls- Artist as Collector

Willow on State, Kennett Square offers artists a discount when they purchase another artist's work from their gallery.  Great idea. Incentive, encouraging, and helpful.

I have traded, bought and been gifted the work of other artists.  I am also honored when a colleague hangs my work on their walls.  So I thought it would be fun to share with you over time different artists and a selection of what they have chosen to hang on their walls.

I'll start. This is a shot from my home and a triptych in my collection.

Eileen's triptych, my favorite chair,
a Hot Pepper Magazine rack by Shari Epstein, and a small painting
on cradled panel by Laura B. Ferrara that
I picked up from the Pyramid Atlantic store in Silver Spring, MD.

Eileen Foti is a gifted artist and master printer.  She is also a good friend, so fortunately, I acquired this triptych through a trade.  Adept in all printmaking, it is her impeccable drawing and lithography skills that shine through.  Titled Caution: Hilo, the work is from her Images of Extinction series, and was her response to seeing so many things on her travels that were facing extinction. This work is about both a plant and a bird endangered from the Big Island of Hawaii.  

Caution: Hilo, 1999
Lithograph with gold leaf and colle`
©2011EileenFoti

Hauntingly beautiful, as well as quite personal, this 3 piece "altar" hangs in our bedroom. It also serves as a reminder of the power of art to celebrate, preserve and remember.

What do you have on your walls? Please send me a jpg and a few lines...

I will post it here weekly.

Made in Italy

Made in Italy 2
from the Walks thru Life: Shoe Portraits Series
Acrylic on Canvas
6"x 6"
©2011NanciHersh

Like these green and gold cork sandals, that were Made in Italy, the irregular cobblestone streets of Italy led me to new places on both sides of the Atlantic.

It was just 20 years (!) this summer that I spent 3 weeks studying printmaking at the Santa Reparate Graphic Art Center in Florence, Italy.  Not unlike Elizabeth Gilbert in her memoir, Eat, Pray, Love,  I embarked on an adventure to travel, study, and follow my passion.

Made in Italy
from the Walks thru Life: Shoe Portraits Series
Acrylic on Canvas
6"x 6"
©2011NanciHersh

 Those weeks were about all art; seeing, creating, and living it- with eating, walking, and some shopping in between.  Inspiration was everywhere and the time and distance also gave me clarity. Upon my return, I filed for divorce, finished the renovation of my plantation home in Hawaii, and began graduate school.

You just never know where a path may lead you.

What path have you taken that changed the direction of your life?

Changing More than Diapers

One print at a time.

Art for Social Change as defined by the Leeway Foundation is:

                                                                

                                           "... art with a vision. 

It is an artistic or creative cultural practice that may operate in traditional or 

nontraditional mediums, modes, or disciplines.  Art with a vision impacts people in many ways. It can: 

• Raise consciousness  

• Alter how we think about ourselves, our society, or our culture 

• Create a vision of a more just world 

• Be a tool or strategy for organizing and movement building 

• Preserve or reclaim traditional cultural practices using one’s artistic practice as a form of resistance or empowerment 

• Create space for expression and build a sense of community  

• Challenge racism, classism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, ageism, ableism, or other oppressions 

• Question mainstream culture and beliefs 

• Shift or transform the perception of power and/or privilege and the dynamics associated with justice, equality, and/or  

     accountability 

• Engage and utilize a reciprocal process—where there is teaching and learning simultaneously and the consent for  

     engagement is mutual as is the benefit for yourself as an artist and the community you are engaging "

Thursday was my first session with the Teen Mom group at The Garage in Kennett Square headed by Lisa McMain.

7 Moms, 6 Babies, lots of extra helping hands from wonderful volunteers, including photographer Carolyn Viens who took these photos of our session. 

What changes have you made lately?

See How Tiny Garments can tell Big Stories with a Collograph

Recently, Lisa MacMain and I met at  her house to sort through bags of donated baby clothing for my Leeway Foundation Art & Change Grant.  We will begin working with the Teen Moms at the end of this month.  To get started we decided to have some baby clothing ready for the girls to work with.

These tiny garments will become the catalysts and vehicles for stories told through images and words.

We will be making collographs together.  Collograph is a type of printmaking.

The root of the word is colle` - French for glue.It is the glue, or in this case Liquitex Gloss Medium & Varnish that will seal the porous fabric of the clothing so they can be inked up or embossed and run through a press.

I plan on having some pieces of clothing ready for the girls to begin working with when we have our first meeting at The Garage on January 27.

Coating clothing with Gel Medium

This is only the beginning of our adventure together!

What stories would your favorite clothing tell? 

For Love not Money: A Global Mail Art Collaboration

Some of the best made plans, don't always go as you want but turn out just as well- especially when it is a labor of love! Paul Bonnelli and I were each given mail art partners in Mauritius for this Global Mail Art Collaboration curated by Eileen Foti of NJ, USA and Eve Kask of Estonia. Our Mauritius counterparts never did send either one of us a piece so Paul Bonnelli of Manasquan, NJ and I exchanged pieces. Here are the results which have been forwarded to Estonia for the 15th Tallinn Print Triennial.

Teaching as Inspiration

Last Monday I had the opportunity to work with another wonderful dedicated art teacher named Mady Soukis who teaches at the Forum School in Waldwick, NJ. The Forum school is a private school for "developmentally atypical children." Some of the children have been diagnosed with autism, while others have various psychological and/ or behavioral disorders. Last year I worked with Mady with the younger grades, through Young Audiences of NJ. This year I was fortunate to be invited back this year to work with the older students. We did block prints made from personal stamps the students created using foam shapes adhered onto cardboard squares, then inked up and hand stamped. The kids were wonderful as were all the teachers and aides that worked along side the students. The prints were all varied and unique and it was great to witness the power of art to involve and transport the children to a creative realm where ability is not defined by limitations they may face otherwise.

Later that evening, I worked with my high school students through the Middletown Arts Council's teen portfolio class. It was our final session and I hosted the teens in my studio behind my house. Nick Simko, a senior at Middletown High School North took the assignment of creating a personal stamp using the same foam that was available for the Forum School kids and rather than adhering it to the 3" square I provided for him, he stuck the foam shapes onto the 8" x 10" plexi glass I had out to be used as pallets for the ink. Apologizing for using the plexi rather than the cardboard (which was a royal pain to clean) I totally appreciate the fact that Nick thought outside the box (square) and created this beautifully simple and elegant image.

I went to sleep that night inspired by my students- those with various abilities physically, psychologically, and emotionally, but completely able to live creatively in the moment.
Thank you.