MELON, PIE, AND FIRECRACKERS

From the Amy Art archives:

Fourth of July | 1989 | linoleum cut printed on Japanese paper

 12 in. x 8 in.

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HAPPY FOURTH OF JULY

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ROAD TRIP REWIND: A PRINTMAKER'S HEAVEN

On our walk through the Pearl District on our way to lunch, we stumbled upon the most wonderful little store. Oblation is equal parts print shop, ephemera wonderland, party of paper and place of learning. If you don't already know, I was a printmaker in a former life--I have a degree in printmaking, actually--so this place made me feel right at home. It also made me miss my days spent behind a press, mixing inks, and smelling solvents.

















And it made me want to scoop up every little thing in the store and bring it back to Mississippi: the tags, the cards, the tools, the books, the gadgets, the toys and, oh, the paper. Such beautiful paper! If I lived in Portland, I would be done for. My studio would be filled with stuff collected on regular trips to this place and my bank account empty from my lack of restraint. I'd also be signing up for many a workshop, you can be sure.


Can't you just smell the inks? I wish this photograph were scratch and sniff.

FOR THE LOVE OF CACTI

After looking through the sketchbook I kept on my semester abroad, I was inspired to pour through my photo albums. Man, there are a lot of photographs.

The picture above was taken in Spain, which was part of my travel itinerary with friends after we finished our studies in Cortona. I fell in love with the Spanish landscape--and people and food and culture--and was especially taken by all of the gigantic cacti that dot the countryside. This cactus is inside the walls of the Alhambra in Granada. If you look closely, you can see my hennaed head poking out from behind a few of the leaves.

I studied printmaking and book arts while in Cortona and made quite a lot of work. But when I returned to Baltimore, I was even more inspired. The Spanish landscape cropped up in lots of my imagery. The print pictured here is a small hand-painted lithograph I did after my return to Baltimore, and it was inspired directly by that cactus at the Alhambra. You can see a few more of my cactus prints right here.

I'm still wooed by cacti. There's a wild one that grows in the back of our acreage. We found it once, but it's eluded us for a while now. And there's a neighbor down the road who has quite a large cactus in his front yard. Still, I'd love to see those Spanish cacti again.

GLORY

I've been meaning to share the story behind "Glory" ever since I posted it as the Painting of the Week.

When I was teaching at the High School for the Performing and Visual Arts (HSPVA) in Houston, I taught a printmaking class. So much of printmaking is so technical and requires such lethal chemicals--acid, turpentine, and the like--I made sure to incorporate a more gentle and by default, I suppose, more immediate approach to making prints: the potato print.

I think all of us, at one time or another, made potato prints. Unfortunately, the process has been relegated to classes that also include finger painting and paste eating. But when I was in art school at the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA), Archie Rand visited our campus. I'm not sure exactly why or for how long, but I definitely remember him being there. Anyway, he was making these incredible mural-sized works that were collections of--you guessed it--potato prints. They were impressive due to their sheer scale, but they were also quite beautiful. I developed a new respect for the marriage of potatoes and ink.

So part of my printmaking class at HSPVA incorporated vegetable prints and eraser prints. The base of my "Glory" painting is part of a quick eraser print demo I did, wherein I carved the image of a tooth into a gum eraser and printed it multiple times on a large piece of paper. The whole thing took me all of about ten minutes. When I was done, I was so fond of the resulting image, that I used it as a ground for a painting. Part of the print is mounted onto wood, then painted and drawn on, creating the finished piece above.

Now the theme of the painting is a different story entirely. Ever had those dreams where your teeth are falling out. I seem to have them when I'm particularly stressed. When I made this painting, I had just turned thirty and was about to make a big move to Mississippi (ahem, that was six years ago), which I guess I was a little anxious about. The other elements of the painting are, of course, the number 30, the word cake, the pink around the tooth (sweet tooth that ate the cake), a glass (for a toast), wishbone (for good luck), and the word glory (glory, glory hallelujah kind of thing that I'm embarking on this wonderful adventure), and then a stamp with the date of my birthday that year. If memory serves, the flood of orange is simply a design element--a vehicle for highlighting part of the word and many of the teeth.

My artists friend Bennie Flores Ansell owns this painting. Bennie creates beautiful installations of butterflies that are actually photographs of pairs of shoes reduced to the size of butterflies. Beautiful stuff. I miss you Bennie! Hope you're enjoying your painting.

A LITTLE PRINTMAKING PROJECT

Part of my time in the studio yesterday was spent making tags for my etsy shop (tags to go on sold prints, that is). I made fifty of them. That's 200 hand-stamped "s"s and 100 "m"s. That's also fifty slices of hand-drawn pie. If I could have fifty slices of actual pie before me, I would be a happy girl.

FREE GIFT WRAP WITH PURCHASE

Good news: I've experienced my very first etsy sale, which, I must say, is a pretty exciting thing. It's kind of thrilling to put all of that vintage Amy Art out there and actually have people respond to it. And it definitely feels good to share the Amy Art love.

So with the etsy sales comes the creative challenge--opportunity, really--of how to pack the prints for mailing. I am a big fan of wrapping and tagging and labeling and tying and all of that, so this was a welcome task. The challenge is, though, to come up with a method--a style of wrapping that can serve me for my entire etsy existence. I think I came up with something cheery, yet utilitarian, which is what I decided I needed to be shooting for. And, as an added bonus, every package gets an extra little happy or, as my friend Katy would call it, a sercy. The photo above is a just a little hint of the whole kit and caboodle. Fun stuff.

When I think about wrapping and art and prints, I can't help but think about Christo. If you're not familiar with his work, he wraps entire islands and buildings and things. His installations are, in a word, impressive. But I'm more a fan of his drawings and prints. They're much more accessible, obviously, but they also show process and the evolution of an idea. The lithograph below is entitled "Wrapped Bottles and Cans" and is from 1958, the year he began wrapping objects. His first large scale public project was in 1961: Project for the Wrapping of a Public Building.

I think I'll stick to wrapping prints.

OPEN 24 HOURS

My etsy shop is officially open. Stop on in for original etchings, linoleum cuts, lithographs, and silkscreens that were, ahem, not made in Mississippi but Baltimore. While it’s a pretty schizophrenic portfolio of work—so may styles and images and ideas!—it’s also a rare peek into my former life as a printmaker. I hope you get a kick out of it all and maybe—just maybe—decide to collect some vintage Amy Art.

If you head on over that way, you’ll notice that there are only six prints in the shop at the moment. I plan on adding new things daily so keep checking back.

Thanks, in advance, to anyone who points their browser to Made in Mississippi on etsy. Happy looking!

PIGEONS & PEARS

As you may or may not know, I have a BFA in printmaking. I haven't made a print in years. Sure, there's been the occasional linoleum cut Christmas card or wedding invitation detail but nothing more. When you graduate with a degree in printmaking, the press—and the chemicals and the plate cutter and handy drying racks—stay behind. Another thing that is true when you graduate with a degree in printmaking is that you amass reams of prints. That's the thing with the craft of making prints: you work in editions, so there's always at least ten of everything. Like I said, reams of prints.

My project this holiday weekend has been to create an inventory of all of my prints, scan them, and work towards opening an etsy shop from which to sell them. I've been sitting on this work for years—twelve to be exact—hording it as a testament to my life as a printmaker. I’ve found that this unruly collection of prints has turned into a scrapbook of sorts—a history of influences and experiences. But now I am ready to share them. They should be shared. They should have lives of their own.

I'm still scanning an organizing and—the best part—revisiting my life in a printmaking studio in Baltimore: my first etching, those pesky lithographs, my favorite silkscreen. The print I've featured here, "Pigeons & Pears," is a linoleum cut I did while spending a semester abroad in Cortona, Italy. I think I did some of my best work there. And today, as I uploaded this image, I was struck by the similar sensibility found in today's Painting of the Week, the alliteration in the titles, especially (what is it about the letter "p"?). But there's something there that connects these two images for me. Part of it has to do with place. Part of it is process. Something else speaks to food. Most of all, though, I think it has something to do with that sketchbook idea.

Like Ethel Wright Mohammed, I create images that document—however abstractly—specific moments and experiences. Instead of putting together an album of photographs, I create art. Which is ironic, considering the fact that I am a documentarian, too. My professional world revolves around the photographic image. I suppose my art is a more private, personal expression. And it happens to be filled with the letter "p."