Pilgramage to Printmaking

Every year, around New Years, Endi takes a trip to Toronto to work with ___________ on a series of prints. The images below are from this year as well as last, showing Endi's prepatory drawings and sketches and then _____'s work turning them into prints. These series differ from Endi's tradional woodblock prints, because they are made of stone, printed in a grey scale and give the allusion to a series of graphic drawings.

King Kong

I wanted to clue you guys into what we've been working on in the studio. 

We've been continuing the same series of prints, we're working on the creation of the color blocks. With each of Endi's blocks he adds a caption or phrase that forces the viewer to find a connection between the images and the text. Most of these captains are written in European languages such as French, Spanish, Italian or German. 

Endi choose the text for this series but stay tuned to see what it is

A Visit from the South: Beth Grabowski

Beth Grabowski, a professor of art at the University of North Carolina- Chapel Hill where she has worked since 1985 and a co-authored, Printmaking, A Complete Guide to Materials and Processes, published in 2009, came to guest lecture at the University of Michigan School of Art and Design. She discussed with students her methods of art and worked through the creation of some images with them. Below is a series of images from her trip to Ann Arbor. 

If you'd like to see more of Beth's work you can visit her website at:

http://www.bethgrabowski.com/

Exquisite Course LOL: Printmaking at A&D

Life is hard out there for an undergraduate at A&D. A lot of energy and commitment are exhausted in years spent moving between twenty page research papers and lofty attempts at solving the world’s problems through creative process. And that God forsaken weather all the time too! So what’s an aspiring artist to do when confronted with the shock and awe of a freshly shellacked, seductive block of birch plywood seemingly begging for a little action from a U-Knife?

            Don’t let my sarcasm fool you, when I was a student I was invested in some issues. I had a bone to pick with the Catholic Church, which seemed woefully preoccupied with shamefully skirting massive child abuse scandals. I had a feeling or two about Bush administrations and conflicts in Darfur to boot. But on the recommendation of a respected faculty, I decided to enroll in printmaking to see what kind of avenues I could explore. What’s the worst that could happen?

            Blocks of wood, rigid knives, splinters and a demanding instructor turned out to be the worst (inevitably best) things that could happen. With years of formal drawing training at U of M and other various art institutions throughout the country, I thought I could breeze through a few woodcuts and etchings to inevitably get back to my CFC soapbox. I was wrong. Carving that wood takes some elbow grease. There is also this thing called ‘margin for error’, which just doesn’t seem to exist with printmaking. Time is another issue. Making prints takes time, and when those massive research papers are piling up, and its just so darn cold outside, you might not know what to do with yourself besides slamming your head into that block of wood for a forced night of solid sleep.

            This is getting dramatic, but passion is what comes out of prints you know? One memorable project from my time in printmaking was the exquisite corpse project. This assignment, rooted in a surrealist game of blindly linking individually drawn segments of a body, brought our class and our work together in truly unique ways. The key to the project was the division of labor. Each student was randomly assigned a segment of the body. Registration marks for the spaces above or below each segment were the only guidelines. This in turn caused each student to approach a single idea with the knowledge that they could rely on the group to pull the final piece together.

            What happened when we combined our prints changed my perception of the process of establishing meaning in a work, and inevitably how I understood the act of creation itself. After what appeared to be weeks of individually focused labor leading toward random visual encounters, there stood the image of Bush attached to a monstrous body. There was the gaudy sorority buttocks locked in obnoxious sweat pants attached to a raccoon head. There was the Dutch oven. I mean what the hell right? We didn’t set out to make these things, yet they nevertheless revealed themselves through work in the studio. The reward for that commitment? A series of massive prints covering an entire hallway. Suddenly my soapbox looked kind of ridiculous, and suddenly I knew what I wanted to do with the rest of my time.

-Evan McLaughlin

             

Impending Doom, Studio Assistantships, and Inevitable Salvation

A lot of interesting changes happen to an individual when undergraduate study comes to a close. When considering creative practice, a graduate might discover euphoria once removed from the structured restrictions, schedules, evaluations, and challenges art school provides. On the other hand the popping sound of that comforting university bubble, full of prompts and advice, can simultaneously lead to horror. For myself, the end of my college career marked roughly 30 seconds of bliss. In this short-lived period, I gleefully made work that seemingly celebrated the act of celebration. Those 30 seconds ended swiftly however, and were followed by months of unnerving stagnation. I suddenly became aware of the extent to which academia had grown on me as a codependency. How it had manifested itself as a mental crutch that was suddenly yanked out upon graduation. Gone was the ease of a studio setting. Gone was the community of creative minds who filled that space.

This realization offers both pitfalls and rewards as key questions arise. Can I manifest my own work? Where can I find an environment to conduct the investigation? How will I gauge my level of success or failure? Answers to these questions are never concrete. But the raw reality of that self-imposed evaluation, in my opinion, yields authentic and ambitious creative output on a far more tangible level, something art school simply cannot simulate.

            One key element that helped me get through those dragging months was to find employment as a studio assistant. I began working for Professor Poskovic in his printmaking studio during the summer following my graduation. In working for Endi, I had the opportunity to take part in a professional practice completely devoted to studio investigation and output. By focusing on labor, a much-needed void of productivity was filled while I spent time creating my own studio space, reading on other artists, and discovering my own subject matter. In addition to staying sharp through the work, the atmosphere of Endi’s studio also offered rich conversation on future possibilities as well as research recommendations on other artists. While the nature of the job remained formal as an act of employment, this more relaxed type of dialogue proved highly useful in comparison to more rigged academic conversations.

            This entire narrative of employment and self-discovery was conducted under the umbrella theme of the print. Working on prints offers highly unique lessons if you pay attention to the nature of what you are doing. Unlike painting or drawing, the workflow is conducted in more distinguishable steps. Due to the completely unchangeable nature of work done at each step, an individual is forced to slowly perceive the process of approaching a goal. I like to think that methodical train of thought helped me build up my own amount of success and get me out of a dangerous rut. Always working toward an upward trajectory as opposed to stagnant apprehension.

-Evan McLaughlin