The Art Museum of Estonia

Remember Circling, that linocut I made for the Analog Digital Disorder portfolio? Well, you can see it hanging on the wall at The KUMU Museum of Art along with the rest of the portfolio, courtesy of Hybrid Press.

I was delighted to learn today that the ADD portfolio will enter the collection of The Art Museum of Estonia. My work tends to get out of the house a lot more than I do these days, it seems!

Zero Sum #25

Zero Sum #25, taking advantage of that new moon etching of mine. It goes up for auction later tonight. Visit the Zero Sum Art Project blog for all of the details.

Teasers

If you were to dig around in my studio, shoving aside the empty Coke cans, here's a few bits and pieces that might catch your eye:


This is a detail from a linocut I just printed. The linocut includes four rats, four roaches, and seven flies, along with some other non-vermin imagery. It's part of a broadside I just finished, working with a poem by Ron Offen, to be published later this year by Pygmy Forest Press. When the broadside comes out, I'll let you see the entire print.


I've got a few etchings of the moon scattered about. These are going to be used as collage material, along with the stack of


cyanotypes that I just received in the mail. These were made from transparencies of photographs I made from my Box. All of the collage material will end up in pieces for the Zero Sum Art Project.


Speaking of the Zero Sum Art Project, the animation above is a record of the making of Zero Sum #24, which will be on display at the Agni Gallery in New York City during the month of November, as part of The Blogger Show. After it's stay in NYC, it will be auctioned off on eBay, consistent with the ZSAP rules.

I'm telling you, I'm up to my elbows in here. Lots of stuff kicking around. . .

The Blogger Show, in cyber- and meatspace.

John Morris, director of the Digging Pitt Gallery in Pittsburgh, PA, has organized an exhibition of 34 artists who all share a common interest in extending their studio practice through blogging. The show is spread between 4 galleries and 2 cities - the Agni Gallery in New York City, the Panza Gallery in Millvale, PA, and Digging Pitt and Digging Pitt Too here in Pittsburgh. And I'm delighted and honored to tell you that I'm one of the artists in the exhibition.

Besides having my Zero Sum Art Project included in the Agni Gallery and Digging Pitt exhibitions, FIMP is also hosting the cyberspace exhibition of the Blogger Show. Visit the show online to see works by all of the artists involved, along with links to all of their blogs. I'm excited about the way this exhibition is spread out over space and time - this seems to mirror the nature of the blogosphere and its goals quite nicely. The fact that the one place you can see work from all of the venues at once is on the web seems very natural (if anything can seem "natural" in cyberspace!).

The first part of the show to open is the exhibition in New York at the Agni Gallery - here's the vital information:

Agni Gallery
170 East 2nd Street, Storefront #3
New York NY 10009
November 3 - 30
Public Reception:
November 3, 6-9PM

Every artist participating in the Blogger Show will have a piece at the Agni Gallery.

A week later the Pittsburgh Shows open, and you can find them here:

Digging Pitt Gallery
4417 Butler Street
Digging Pitt Too
45th & Plummer Streets
Pittsburgh PA 15201
November 10 - January 12
Public Reception:
December 8, 6-9PM

Panza Gallery
115 Sedgwick Street  
Millvale PA 15209
November 10 - January 12
Public Reception:
December15, 6-9PM

It would be great to see you at the shows. Be sure to visit the online show as well. And tell the artists what you think - this exhibition has ample opportunity for "comments"!

Animated Etching Proofs

One of the many nice things about making an etching is that you are left with a trail of proofs, that document what you were thinking and the decisions you made along the way. I'm a firm believer in the thinking-while-making school of art - I do my best thinking when I'm pushing the materials around. So I like to jump into a plate, get something on it, scrape it off, put something else on, until things start to come together. And this animation gives a little sense of how that process looks.

The final image is a collage, Zero Sum #23


which is the most recent finished work in the Zero Sum Art Project. If you would like to see a larger image, visit the auction on eBay.


After I finished that Zero Sum #23, I went back to work on the etching plate. I decided I liked the vulture a lot, so I scraped out one of the bird heads and socked in a nice black aquatint, from which I will carve a vulture. We'll see what happens. . . if nothing else, a lot more proofs, no doubt.

Analog Digital Disorder

Circling
linocut
"Circling" is my contribution to a 26 artist exchange portfolio that will be exhibited at the Impact 5 International Multidisciplinary Printmaking Conference in Talinn, Estonia. The portfolio was organized by Dusty Herbig around the theme "Analog Digital Disorder", to complement the conference's overall theme of "Slices of Time".

The exchange portfolio, for those of you who may not have run across such a thing before, is one of the pleasures of printmaking. The basic idea is that artists are invited to create an edition of prints equal to the number of participants in the portfolio, plus one or two for exhibiting institutions. Frequently the artists will be asked to create work of a certain size, with imagery based on a certain theme; in this case, all of the prints are 12" square, based on the theme of "Analog Digital Disorder". The curator assembles all of the prints, making portfolios that include one print from each artist. These portfolios are then returned to the artists, who now have a print from each member of the exchange. The extra portfolio or two are exhibited or enter the collection of some sponsoring institution. So, an invitation to participate in an exchange portfolio means a sizable addition to your print collection, along with an exhibition opportunity or two. It's a pretty nifty deal.