Book 130, Entries for 25-26 May 2008 with studies of a tree at midday and the bright star Vega reflected in the pond at night, watercolor, graphite and pen and ink on Arches paper in bound volume, page size 4 x 6″

In the Country

I hiked along a freshly asphalted lane through woods and fields past the occasional dirt driveway. Sprays of white blackberry and yellow buttercups brushed my legs. After a long walk the trees opened to a vista of red earth jumbled with roots and stumps. Recent lumbering had left acres of devastation. Beside me of hillock of stumps rose out of the wreckage. I was surprised when a sudden wind seemed to aim right at the point where I was looking. The small cyclone raked a single trunk and the bark scattered all around as if there had been a blast. I was showered in bark. A strange moment; I had to laugh out loud.

That evening I stepped out into the clear night; the sky brimming with stars. Yellow Saturn sat beside Reglus in the constellation Leo above. I made my way through the pitch black down a familiar dirt trail to the pond. Feeling the way with my feet, I turned slowly toward the frogs and other creatures clicking, creaking, and shouting in the brush. Moving closer, the sound became so intense it pelted me, shaking my bones. I looked into the pond where bright Vega sat, brilliant, undiminished in reflection. That light left the star 27 years ago, a point near the beginning of my journals. I laughed again and felt a small part of the pantomime.

Hats off to Wallace Stevens; see Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird, III.

New Print Project: Part 4

Our first task when I arrived at Center Street Studio was to transfer my drawings with inscriptions photographically to film positives. Here Jim Stroud trims one of the films we created that will be used to transfer the images for our Accordion Print project to the printing plates.

Subsequently these films were placed against the photo sensitive printing plate and exposed to bright light; the plates were placed in a bath and developed. The purple coating that hardens on the surface of the plate protects areas of the plate when immersed in the acid bath (image below). Anywhere bare copper is exposed to acid, recessions will be cut which to hold the ink during printing.

In the photographic transfer process, we found that in order to make my original ink writing appear light enough, my graphite drawings (originally done in pencil) had almost disappeared. As a result I decided to incise each image by hand onto the plates. I used transfer paper to outline the compositions and then drew with a sharp stylus across the plates, cutting through the purple resist to expose copper (image above). The drawing process took a long time, but I liked the idea of hand-drawing the images. I had not tried line etching in many years. Rather than sketch quickly, I slowed down my line and enjoyed the feel of the stylus point across copper. Printmaking often takes you places you least expect to go and the dictates of the process can bring healthy new experience. As Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “every wall is a door.”

When we printed the plates (above), I felt very happy with the result. I had constructed a clear linear armature that I would then augment with tone using aquatint when I return to Center Street Studio to finish the project later this summer.

(above) Interior view of the Center Street Studio workshop with one of my Accordion Print proofs and plates on the press bed. John Wilson’s intaglio portrait of Martin Luther King, Jr. is on the left. Paintings by Jim Stroud are on the back wall.

(above) View of Center Street Studio workshop in Milton, Massachusetts. My deepest thanks go to Jim Stroud and Janine Wong my friends, hosts, and collaborators.

Photograph of project models for Accordion Fold Print; (top) Current journal book 130, open to one set of pages to be used as a motif for the print. (middle) Two horizontal rows of photocopied images from journal 130 that will serve as the image base for the accordion fold print. (bottom) The folded half-size maquette features the sequence of images sketched in watercolor on Arches paper.

New Print Project: Part 3

An accident opened a path.

I was cleaning the studio, making room for projects when a long strip of paper fell from beneath the cover of my drawing table. Two inches wide and forty inches long, it was a panoramic drawing on Arches paper I began in 1992. On the front were the bare outlines of a landscape I never completed. The back was unused white paper. Looking at the long format of the sheet, I instinctively knew that it would be my maquette for my accordion print. I had planned for the pages of the print to be the size and shape of my current journal pages: 4 inches high by 6 inches wide. By sheer coincidence, the paper I found was one half the height of my actual journal pages: 2 inches high. I began to fold the long strip of paper in the planned format. When I folded the whole 40-inch sheet, there were twelve panels and a half. The half page could be the title page for the project.

I still had no subject. Rolling through the pages of my journal, I sought images, a place to start. The past month had been an intense one both emotionally and artistically. It dawned on me that I could revisit a section of my current journal. Counting the pages in the month of April there were seventeen. If I removed a few of the images, I could make the whole month of April fit on twelve pages. A majority of my written entries could also be included.

After photocopying the pages from my journal that I wanted to include (see recent New Work entries for closeup views of these pages), I trimmed the photocopies to the 4 x 6″ page size and arranged them side by side in chronological, journal-entry order (see image above, 2 rows of middle panels). Next I took watercolor and did quick rough sketches on the long strip of paper to evoke the presence and flow of the folded object I was creating (see image above, bottom row).

After talking to printer and artist Jim Stroud, my collaborator, I learned that the plates we use would only accomodate 4 panels set side to side. I laid out 3 new sheets of paper, each comprising 4 of the panels (see image below). I sketched out the outlines in pencil and inscribed my journal entries in pen and ink. These 3 pages will be passed to Jim who will have a photographic negative made that can transfered the images/texts to the printing plates. The outlines will serve as the armatures on which I will work various printing processes. I head to Center Street Studio to work this week.

(above) Three sheets of 30″ wide paper each containing layouts for four of the pages to be included in the Accordion Fold Print. Written entries are inscribed in pen and ink. Drawings are in pencil. Each of the three sheets will be photographed and transfered to a printing plate as structures to be interpreted and expanded in a range of printmaking techniques.

Study from Book 130, Self-Portrait with Planets and Gibbous Moon, 2008, watercolor, graphite, and pen and ink on Arches paper in bound volume, 4 x 6″. This watercolor study was executed using two colors; Indigo and Raw Umber Violet.

Colors of Black

Around 1980 I abandoned color.

It wasn’t hard for me as I was no extravagant colorist. I grew up cultivating the practice of pen and black ink, keeping pen and fingertips in the medium to explore the topography of the page. The challenge of placing dark irrevocable marks against bright paper was for me; get it right the first time or else. Color seemed superfluous to my practice.

Nevertheless, I pressed my comfort envelope by trying acrylic paint. I muddled along, hating the spring of stretched canvas and the distance the brushes kept me from my surface. No intimacy. And by the time a canvas was prepared, inspiration was lost. I shifted to acrylic paint on paper and felt more at home. But color confused me; too many choices. Slowly, I distilled my work to elemental black and white

Living in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania must have stirred some of my fascination with light and dark. I had traded a life in the suburban south for a stint in the urban north and bumped against a different universe. Pittsburgh had a mini-Manhattan setting; an island between rivers that stretched to steep hillsides. By day the topography was dark and rich, from steely to earthy warm; particularly in winter when the snows patterned the earth. But at night the city was transcendental; I felt I was driving through a box of stars, tracing the water’s edge, parking my car at intervals to make studies (see Pittsburgh Night image below). On clear nights the lights of buildings, bridges, and highways reflected off the water, earth, and sky it seemed. Black and white was all I needed.

Move forward twenty years. Who knows why self-imposed limitations are outgrown; the blue sky needs demarcation from brown earth. After trying multiple combinations to make gray I discover one that makes black: Indigo and Raw Umber Violet (see photograph below). This discovery offered reasons to articulate warm and cool. Perhaps this eureka launched me on a path toward more color. Or perhaps I’m on my way to deeper blacks. I’m still on the trail.

(Below) Photograph of watercolors Indigo (left) and Raw Umber Violet (right) mixing to near-black.

Charles Ritchie, Pittsburgh Night Series: Number 1, c. 1978, 23 x 30, black and white acrylic paint with acrylic matte medium and lithographic crayon on Fabriano paper, uncatalogued.