june 16 2013 (106 days to go)

The printing phase of my project has begun…

where the printing will occur

guest bath takeover where the paper is soaked

My studio is now set up to do some serious printing. The press has been adapted to handle a bigger project. I have taken over the adjoining guest bedroom and bath so that I would have the space to set up for tearing, soaking, inking, printing, drying and storing.

guest bedroom takeover where the prints will dry

To answer my question…Did I say I was a printmaker?…Yes, I have referred to myself as a printmaker but the reality … I was a pretend, a spoiled, an anything goes printmaker. I worked in studios and classes that were set up…supplies were provided and at monothons at RAM they ran the press and cleaned up after me. 

where the plates are inked

My instructor at RCC, Denise Kraemer, put an end to the spoiled part as we did all our own set-up and clean-up and she tried to stop my …anything goes attitude. She told me in a jokingly serious way that if I took her class again I had to start printing on larger paper and that I could only run my pieces through the press a max of three times (not 10!)

This project is a much more precise form of printing than I have done in the past so this is going to be a somewhat painful process but I am excited about the growth I will have as a printmaker.

Day One of printing was an 11 hour day! My mentor artist for the printmaking phase, Kathy DeAtley, is spending the first few days with me  working through the subtleties of how to properly ink the plates and then removing the right amount of ink, templating the bedpress to get properly aligned and then figuring out just the right amount of pressure to use when running it through the press.

my small but mighty press

We worked out a lot of set-up issues….a couple more left to resolve. It is a slow process with a much lower success rate than I would like. Kathy has assured me that it will be a faster more accurate process as time goes on. I think I might have underestimated how long the printing was going to take. My goal was to be done by the first of July. I will keep you posted.

All is good…all of the time (though I must admit some anxiety has crept into my world! )

Thank you for following …I appreciate the interest and cheerleading…sue