Woo! End of the semester.

Currently, we are in the last few days of the semester and work is getting crazy. This would be why I have not posted much, but here are some more images. These going into the realm of reality and adding actual structures and urban pieces into landscapes. Lemme know what ya think.

Thesis Work (Real Estate Possibilities)

Alright, up to the present. I am currently knee deep in my thesis work and diving in head first. Basics, I am creating fabricated images, some obvious, some harder to tell but in the end its noticeable, but in the end I want to be "found out." The works all depict different possibilities for real estate, some past, some present and some future ideas about where real estate could be going and what could happen to the wilderness of the country. I start with creating images through the use of untouched landscapes (wilderness) and adding in architectural renderings, colored depictions of house designs, to represent the possible to the viewer. Now, I have expanded the series into adding in real structures from urban settings, houses, apartments, office buildings, gas stations, metro stops, and have been adding those into wilderness images and into historical American landscape photographs.
The full series with some installation elements is meant to have the viewer being to question or at least try to justify, our societies continued expansion into the wilderness and surrounding landscapes, which adds to the damage we have already done. Overall, the images are trying to motivate the viewer to question our predicament and begin to look for alternatives, like rebuilding on land that has become rundown, or building up instead of out, all aspects of smart growth.
 Below is a sampling of the first images created in this series, I will add more selections as I continue working on the project.

Carried Away

Seems I got carried away with my own work and such, since I have not posted in over a week. As always I am working hard on my thesis work and dealing with the stresses of graduate school. At this point I have gotten almost up to the present with my work, there is just one more semester to add. In my forth semester, I took only 6 credits worth of classes, the two were Digital Printmaking and Screen printing. Not a ton came out of the semester, work-wise, but I did begin to form my ideas for my thesis. I also began to explore digital printmaking and the digital translation of imagery. Below are some of the prints I produced that semester, not all because many I have discarded, but those I keep will be shown. There are two laser-cut relief prints and two screen prints. I have some other screen prints I need to photograph, but they are collaborations with my whole class, so not very specific in imagery or idea just graphic creations.
Now, quickly laser-cut relief printing is a new form of relief imagery. By creating an image in grayscale format in Photoshop, the artist can inverse the values, and flip the image. Then the file can be sent through a laser-cutter and the system will translate the image in a halftone pattern. Tiny dots will be burned into the piece of wood, and the value differences are created by the space between each of the holes. Where the image should be pure white, the cutter will cut it completely out, black will be left alone, and grays are created determinant of their value. This creates a photo realistic image in a woodblock printed form, but you have to have a piece of wood larger than your image to use the outer strips as runners because the halftone fills in easily with too much ink. Imagine, in the end, a wood block that is rolled up like a lithography, with thick, but thin amounts of ink.

"Up From the Canyon" Laser-cut Relief

"Up From the Canyon" (detail)

"Cowboy" Laser-cut Relief

"Desert Lighthouse" Screen print

"Phoenix, AZ" Screen Print

Third Semester

In my third semester at ASU, I took Printmaking as Photography, Seminar, and two independent studies; one with Kathryn Maxwell to learn to teach Introduction to Printmaking and one with Dan Mayer to further explore Polymer Plate printmaking. Below is a selection of images from those classes.

Collaboration made with Gabriella Munoz (great printmaker!)

Detail of Collaboration on Figures

Mixed Media Print

Polymer plate experiments, example 1

Polymer Plate experiments, example 2

Polymer Plate experimentation, example 3

Thats all for now, I will continue to update as I get work documented.

Second Semester

In my second semester, I took lithography again, to be able to learn how to use a stone for the process. Along with lithography I took a class in polymer plate printing and a critique class. In the polymer plate class, I had my first introduction make a book as a piece of art and I really liked that direction. Below are some images from that semester.

Desert Junker

This was my first jump back into lithography.

Landscapes

This is my first attempt at a lithograph on stone. You use a specific kind of Bavarian limestone to be able to print this way. Having never used one before I just made a series of 2 in by 4 in drawings to try out different marks.

DC Blood

First time I played with polymer plates and the reversal capabilities. Polymer plates are a plate made of a plastic material that is soluble in warm water, but hardens with exposure to light. By creating films and exposing the plate you can create relief and intaglio plates. This image is two relief plates, but the same image, just one film was positive and the other negative.

Capital Importance Cover

Title Page

Sample Page

Sample Page Detail

 These images are of the Japanese side stitch book I made. It's called "Capital Importance" and it contains 50 images, all polymer plate with 2 pages of handset type. The images are line maps of the state capitals at the size they are represented in an atlas. Questioning the importance of different capitals based on their depiction.

First Semester

My first semester of graduate school, I took things slow. Something I somewhat regret now but in other ways am glad I did. I took an art history course, a teaching course and Photogravure. Photogravure was a great class to start graduate school off in. An amazing printmaking process but exposes you to the ideas of photography, like shooting multiple images and then editing down to get the final set. It uses black and white film to shot images so that they can be etched onto copper plates. Below is a set of three images I created for the end of the class. These images, like my others, relate to the land and our relationship with it. More specifically how I related to the beauty of death in the desert as it pertains to the foliage found out there. Macro images of fallen trees, cacti and shrubbery and the beauty in the line work that is created from the water being drained from the plants.

Photogravure Suite #1

Photogravure Suite #2

Photogravure Suite #3

Undergraduate work

So this are just some images from the beginnings of my print career and my focus on the human relationship with our surround landscape. These images are of my thesis set of work. They are all 5 layer lithographs based off of landscape photographs that I took. I look back on this series now and see all the ways that they could be improved and understand how much I have learned in the past 3 and a half years.

Nature Mapping #1

 

 

Nature Mapping #2

Nature Mapping #3

Nature Mapping #4

Nature Mapping #5

Nature Mapping #6

Starting from Scratch

I have tried this kind of thing before. but I'm going to give it another shot. Currently, I am in my third year of graduate school at ASU for a Masters of Fine Arts in Printmaking. I work mainly in the areas of digital and digitally enhanced printmaking. By digitally enhanced, I mean any process where by at least on step of part was created digitally. My main focuses in that area are laser cut wood relief, polymer plate (or solarplates), and screen printing.
My work has been exploring the ideas of how humans use our natural surroundings, how we view them and what we intend for them. While there are some of us who feel we need to protect more land from destruction and construction, a vast majority of the population are addicted to the idea of manifest destiny like a drug. The need for the American Dream and the white picket fence that comes with it has driven us to spread over the countryside without a thought. My work attempts to critique this thinking and cause the viewer to reconsider their place in life and their personal relationship with the land. I will start with some images from the past and then start adding in work from the present as I go.

Lets see if I can make this happen.
Best