“The Storytellers” is my print for the 2012 PNCA Printmaking Portfolio Exchange. This is the fourth PNCA exchange in which I’ve had the pleasure to participate. It might be my last, and represents a milestone for the printmaking department: this is also the last year of teaching for Christy Wyckoff and Tom Prochaska, two teachers who have been with the department for many years. Change is inevitable, and not necessarily bad, but there is a little part of me that is sad about their retirement. The printmaking department has been like a second home to me for the last few years, and it’s hard to know that it will change. I’ve been very lucky to be Tom’s teaching assistant this academic year; I will be there for the last class he will teach.

Perhaps this kind of melancholy is partially responsible for the mood of my print, though the direct influence is the collection of Slavic folktales that caught my eye some months ago. Each of the three women has a distinct personality, as if each woman is reacting to the same stimulus in her own way. I imagine that they are the storytellers who shared those dark, funny, and cynical folk tales with a curious Englishman. The translation isn’t very good, but it gives the text the feeling of having been told in another language. Traditionally, folk tales are handed down orally from one generation to the next, picking up the lint of changing times and the personality of the teller. Some parts are emphasized, others left out, embellishments are thrown in on a whim. These women represent the link between one generation and the next through oral storytelling.

The theme for the exchange is “fact or fiction” (paper size is 9″ x 12″). Oral traditions occupy a nebulous space that is not fact or entirely fiction. They are by their very nature subjective; the stories express some kind of truth (the character and concerns of a given culture), but certainly do not relate historical facts. As a story changes from one teller to the next, does it lose integrity?  I believe that in our world of empirical knowledge, we often lose sight of the value inherent in the non-factual realm of story.

This is why we have people insisting, against all evidence and common-sense, that the Bible hasn’t changed since it was first penned (despite multiple translations, typos, and varying editions). People fear that if it is not factual that is has no meaning or value. This leads people to insist, very irrationally, that the Bible is a history book full of facts. The Bible really is a collection of stories, told orally for generations, that were eventually written down for sharing and preservation.

These women in my print certainly didn’t tell the stories in the Bible, but I imagine them telling me folk tales, many of which revolve around characters from the Bible and other important mythologies. I wouldn’t mind sitting in a room with them as they share and spin their tales. I’m also looking forward to the exchange, when I will get to see everyone else’s prints, and hear them tell the stories of how those prints came to be.

Everybody misplaces something sometime. But it is not easy for the University of California, Berkeley, to explain how it lost a 22-foot-long carved panel by a celebrated African-American sculptor, or how, three years ago, it mistakenly sold this work, valued at more than a million dollars, for $150 plus tax.

Ah, the foibles of the art world are never-ending!  I am pleased to hear that this misplaced and cheaply-sold work was acquired by the Huntington Library, at least.  Their collection of books and other paper articles is mind-boggling!  I didn’t even make it over to see the art because I was so seduced by the book collection.  It is on my list of museums to visit again, and I encourage everyone to visit the place if the opportunity arises.

Click the link at the top to read the article from the New York Times.

A few weeks ago, I flew down to San Diego so I could spend some time with Rachelle Houle-Maiser (of Five Feet of Dynamite). She is a very dear and long-time friend of mine, and it was wonderful to spend a weekend with her in Southern California, even if I managed to bring the overcast skies with me. (I was hoping to go home with just enough of a tan to make all my vitamin D deficient friends jealous. Tant pis.)

When I went down, I took a grounded copper plate with me. Why I did that when I couldn’t bring any of my very pointy drawing tools with me (I only packed a carry-on), I couldn’t say. I suppose I hoped I would find something suitable, but I didn’t look very hard.

This image is from a sketch I did from memory. I used absolutely no reference of any kind (a sort of scary situation for me), and just scribbled out a few marks. I won’t even show you the initial sketch because there was so little information in it.

When I landed back in Portland and got home to my etching tools, I finally got to draw on the plate. I redrew the sketch and added more detail. The image you see above is the first print I pulled from the first etch on the plate. There is more to be done, but I’m not going to invest too much in it.

This is my first embarkation into a world of sketchy, less-planned etchings. I will continue to make my meticulous ones too, but this approach allows me to stretch different muscles and exercise different skills.

I cannot leave this unsaid: I write backwards in cursive rather well. It is a trifle of a skill, but one that gives me joy to do well. Not many can do it; I suspect it’s because hardly anyone has a reason even to try, though I do suspect that the likelihood of being able to write backwards is higher among printmakers.

Finally, a drawing that looks like it belongs there! In my dream, it might have been the bust of a man sporting a Hulihee, but I could never quite get that to pan out. Perhaps that’s why when I dreamed the image, I was struggling to make the drawing fit with the etching.

I still feel a certain obligation to my subconscious to make the image with the portrait bust as well, and I want to play with multiple color printing. So I will have three plates: one with the crow heads, one with the dell, and one with the portrait bust, and I will get to mix and match them at my leisure. Sounds fun, doesn’t it?

To see a digital merge of the crow heads and the dell sketch, visit my Flickr site here.

I would like to take a moment to remember Dorothea Tanning, who just passed away at the ripe age of 101.  I’ve long admired her wit, sense of humor, paintings, and (my favorite) her thoughts on being an artist who happens to have been born female.  Why are we still saddled with the label “woman artist”?  Can’t we just be artists?

Tanning’s Birthday painting is one of my favorites, and it’s a goal of mine to see it in person.  It was one of the few influential works that I discussed in my thesis paper at PNCA.

That is all I’m going to say, because so many others will say whatever else I could wish much more eloquently.  I’ll leave you instead with an interview from 1990 that I quite like:

Dorothea Tanning by Carlo McCormick – BOMB 33/Fall 1990.

Birthday by Dorothea Tanning, 1942. In the collection of the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

The relationship that the living have with the dead fascinates me. Americans, in my experience, fear death. Our history is short, we shy away from talking about the uncomfortable times in that history, and our culture values eternal youth. Death is uncomfortable; we don’t know how to mourn, and we don’t know how to deal with people who are mourning. I learned this early, but the reality of it is affirmed periodically. Today is the second anniversary of the death of a friend, Dante, and even I – who has spent time examining death and the cultural rituals surrounding death – don’t know what to say.

Memento mori tattoo on my chest.

Just over two years ago, I got my first tattoo. Part of it is a shaded heart in a decorative frame, tattooed on my chest above my left breast. The design was adapted from a piece of Victorian memento mori jewelry. I imagine it containing all my memories of the people I’ve known who have died, a constant memorial that acknowledges death and affirms life (my life, at least). I got it for my father, my grandmother, my cousin, my friend’s mother, and others. I remember when I found out that Dante had died. My hand when to my heart – my second heart, the new one needled into my skin. I remember thinking that I got it to remind me, but I hadn’t expected to add any more memories to it so soon after getting it.

In The Empire of Death, the author mentions how the living would visit the dead in the ossuaries. Families would bring flowers and periodically redress their dead loved ones in new clothes. In Hallstatt, Austria, the ossuary at the Chapel of St. Michael houses a collection of decorated skulls, where the names and death dates were recorded on the foreheads in elegant scripts (the most recent from the 1990′s). Some of them were made for more practical and far less sentimental reasons; one pile of bones was made because the local gentry wanted to reclaim the land of the dead for hunting.

I like the idea of a more hands-on relationship with death. Remembering our mortality (memento mori) does not seem bleak to me. The minutiae of life is more beautiful when one knows it is fleeting; gestures carry more meaning when they must end. Rituals that acknowledge death and help us find beauty is the suffering of loss are rituals that help us to live because they help us move through necessary experiences.

A lot of the imagery from Stories From the Stone House danced around these ideas, sometimes directly and sometimes less so. The print “She was blinded by her will,” was directly influenced by the Capuchin cemetery. The more recent print “Kmotřička Smrt” is about Death as Godmother (which is what the title generally translates as). It’s from a folk tale of the same title; I was enchanted by the picture of Death filling the role of a fairy godmother because it flies in the face of my cultural concept of the figure of Death as a merciless, scythe-weilding figure of doom.

Death is hard on the living. I like the idea of allowing death to come closer, to accept it into our lives. I think it helps dull the ache, though it’s certainly no cure. I also like the idea of Death as capable of mercy and kindness, because it is that version of Death I hope collects my loved ones, both passed and still living.

She was blinded by her will., a photo by Miss Birdsong on Flickr.

Remember that post I wrote about how describing a reproduction as a print is a pet peeve?  Well, the link above got my hackles up about the term printmaking.  It’s possible that there is some essential information  missing from that little article that would soothe my sense of wrong; I do not, however, see how scanning in a digitally-created image, digitally manipulating it, printing it out on an Inkjet or Xerox machine, then gluing on “vibrant additions” of yarn, colored sticks, paper, and–yes!–stickers, constitutes in any way a “printmaking process”.  That doesn’t even fit liberal definitions of printmaking.

MoMA!  What are you doing?  Calling this interactive installation “Print Studio” I get; okay, participants are at some point printing images using printers–but distinctly not through anything that could be called a printmaking process.  I was really excited about this article until I read it.  I know that printmaking is a bit esoteric, but it’s far from dead!  Is it unreasonable to expect fine art institutions to use the correct terminology when naming techniques and processes?

And now I am off to help teach an actual printmaking class, where students will learn how to set an etching press and ink up a plate.

]]> http://smidgeonpress.wordpress.com/2012/01/26/oh-moma-thats-not-printmaking/feed/ 0 smidgeonpress http://smidgeonpress.wordpress.com/2012/01/22/blog-for-choice/ http://smidgeonpress.wordpress.com/2012/01/22/blog-for-choice/#comments Sun, 22 Jan 2012 14:00:23 +0000 smidgeonpress http://smidgeonpress.wordpress.com/?p=410 ]]> I didn’t create this blog with the intention of using it as a platform to discuss my personal political beliefs.  There are, however, a couple of things I feel very strongly about that I would feel, as a U.S. citizen, remiss in neglecting to bring up.  You saw my participation in the Internet Blackout, to protest SOPA and PIPA.  (If you still don’t know what those bills are, or why so many people who use the Internet are opposed to them, click on the black banner at the upper right of my blog to learn more and take action.)

I have also pledged to participate in Blog for Choice day.  There are two issues that will determine who I support in the polls; the first is Internet freedom, and the second is abortion rights.  I am an unapologetic and avid supporter of a woman’s right to choose, not the least because it is an issue that belongs between a woman and her doctor(s), NOT a largely white, older, affluent, male body of representatives who cannot know what a doctor knows, and certainly can have no idea of what women go through when they experience unwanted pregnancy.

If you’re a United States citizen on the fence about the issue, take a good look at the info chart below.  If you believe that a person of normal mental and emotional health has a fundamental right to make monumental choices about their health and life course without a body of politicians intervening; if you believe that someone else’s religion should not determine what options for personal health and well-being are available to you; if you believe that women and their partners are capable of determining when and whether having children is an appropriate path at any given time, you must stand on the side of choice.

We are facing the biggest opposition to abortion rights this country has seen since the Supreme Court’s decision on Roe v. Wade made abortion a national legal right; the last ten years have shown a worrying trend of whittling away that right.  Republicans in Congress are increasingly entertaining extreme views that do not reflect the beliefs and values of the majority of Americans.  We have contenders for the Republican nomination to run for President who are openly against birth control (Santorum-whose own wife underwent a life-saving abortion procedure with his full knowledge and consent), openly declaring that they will defy the Supreme Court based on personal whim (Gingrich), and a candidate declaring he will do everything to fight against the right to choose, despite having sought endorsement from Planned Parenthood in previous campaigns (Romney).

The world seems like it’s gone insane, and it is up to us, fellow citizens, to do our part to ensure a restoration of sanity and valuable discourse.  We are desperately in want of political leaders who serve our interests, rather than the selective and narrow-minded goals of private interests.

I stand with Planned Parenthood, as much for their open support for the right to choose as for their excellent, affordable and necessary medical services. Women need Planned Parenthood, particularly low-income women (like me). I am blogging for choice in solidarity with NARAL Pro-Choice America. Please speak out and let your representatives know that the right to choose is important to preserve. I wouldn’t ask it of you if it wasn’t important.

Smidgeon Press joins the strike. Visit: http://sopastrike.com/

Smidgeon Press will go dark on January 18th from 8am to 8pm in support of the movement to protest SOPA and PIPA, two anti-piracy acts that will, if passed, result in an unprecedented censoring of the Internet. If you are a U.S. citizen, please contact Congress now: http://sopastrike.com/strike/

Kmotřička Smrt by H. L. Birdsong

This print was conceived for a print exchange organized by the proprietor of San Lucia Press here in Portland, Oregon (check out the fan page on Facebook).  The theme was “V.S.”, and could be interpreted as verses or versus.  Many of the folk tales I’ve been reading are about a common man’s wits against the wiles of a supernatural being, whether god, the devil or a culturally-specific creature that occupies a morally ambiguous (and therefore much more human) place.  One story, about a peasant man and Death (Smrt in Czech), caught my interest; it’s a gentler tale than many of the stories I’ve read recently.

Many–let’s say most–of my prints begin with stories.  This edition is no different, so let me share the story with you.  I have my own way of telling it, but since this blog is full of writing and not speaking, I will share the story as I first read it in that magical old fairy tale book that I stumbled across at Powell’s back in November.

You can read the text in a digitized book form HERE, or in plain text form after the jump.  I broke the text in a few places, for ease of reading.

Death as Godmother

[Moravian]

There was a man of extreme poverty in the world, and his wife fell into labour and bore him a little boy. No one wished to stand sponsor for him, because he was so very poor.  The father says to himself : “Dear God!  I am so poor that no one wishes to serve me in this matter.  I will take the boy, will go, and whom I meet him I will ask to stand sponsor; and if I do not meet anyone perhaps the sacristan, anyhow, will serve me.”  He went and met Death, but he knew not what sort of personage it was.  She was a pretty woman, like any other woman.  He asked her to stand godmother.  She did not excuse herself, and immediately greeted him as godfather, took the boy in her arms and carried him to church.  There the little fellow was duly baptised.

As they went from church, godfather took godmother to an alehouse and wished to treat her to something as godmother of his child.  But she said to him: “Godfather, none of this; come instead with me to my little dwelling.”  She took him with her to her sitting-room, and there all was very fine.  After this she led him into immense cellars, and through these cellars they went in obscurity down into the underworld.  There burn tapers: small, large, middle-sized––three sorts; those that were not yet lighted were the largest of all.  Godmother says to godfather : “Look, godfather; here I have the age of every man.”  Godfather looks at it all, finds there quite a small taper burning close to the ground, and asks her:  ”But, prythee, godmother, whose then is that little taper close to the ground?”  She says to him:  ”That is yours!  As any taper soever burns out, I must go for that man.”  He says to her: “Oh! godmother, I pray you, just replace mine.”  She says to him: “Oh! godfather, that I cannot do.”  Afterwards she went and lighted a large new candle for the little boy they had just baptised.  Meanwhile, unperceived by godmother, godfather also took a large new candle, lighted it, and stuck it up just where his own small taper was even now burning out.  Godmother looked round at him and said : ” Oh! godfather, you ought not to have done so to me; but since you have already added a new candle, added it is, and you have it. Come from this place out into the open air, and we will go to my good gossip, thy wife.”

She took a present, and went with godfather and the child to godfather’s wife.  She came and laid the little fellow on her good gossip’s bed, and asked her how she felt and where it ailed her.  Godfather’s wife complained, and godfather sent for some beer and tried to honour her as godmother in his cottage, that he might show her his gratitude and be grateful.  They drank and feasted together.  After this, says godmother to godfather: ” Godfather, thou art so extremely poor that no one was willing to serve you in this matter except me; but never mind, thou shalt keep me in remembrance!  I will go for well-to-do people and will make them ill, and you shall doctor and cure them. I will tell you all the remedies; I have them all, and everyone will gladly pay you well; but only pay heed to this: him at whose head I stand give up all idea of saving.” And so it was. Godfather went to the sick, when godmother afflicted them, and saved every one of them. Thus all at once a first-rate physician was made out of him.

A prince was on his death-bed, aye, was at the point of death; all the same they sent for this doctor.  He came, began to anoint him with ointments and to give him his powders––and saved him.  When he had cured the prince they paid him well, they did not even ask what his fees were.  Again, a count was on his deathbed: and again they sent for this doctor.  The doctor comes; Death stands behind the couch at the head.  The doctor exclaims: “Already it goes ill with him; but we will see what can be done.”  He summoned the servants and ordered them to turn round the bed with the two feet of the sick towards Death, and he began to anoint the dying man with ointments and to put his powders into his mouth, and saved him.  The count gave the doctor as much as he could carry away; he did not think of asking what the fee was; he was delighted to have been cured.  When Death met the doctor, she said to him: “Oh! godfather, the next time you see me stand so, don’t play me such a trick again.  True, you have saved him, but yet it is only for a brief moment.  I must, for all that, take him away to the place where he belongs.”

And so things went on with godfather for some years; already he was very old. But at last life was a burden to him, and he himself asked Death to take him. Death could not take him, because he had himself replaced his own candle with a new long one; he must wait until it burns out.  Once he was driving yet again to a sick man’s, to cure him.  He saved him.  After this, Death presented herself and drove with him in his coach. She, began to tickle him and to sport with him, and smote him softly with a green branch below the neck; he rolled into her lap, and slept away into an eternity of dreamy slumber. Death laid him down in his coach and fled out of it.  There they find the dead physician lying in his coach and drove him away home.  All the town and parishes round mourned: “Alas for this doctor, what a good one he was!  Skilful was he to save; such a physician we shall not see again.”

His son survived him, but this son had none of his capacity.

The son once went to church, and godmother met him.  She enquired of him: “Dear son, how art thou?” He said to her: “At present, well enough.  So long as I have what my little father saved up for me, it is well with me; but afterwards, God knows how it will be with me.”  Godmother says: ” Inu! son of mine! fear nothing.  I am thy fontal mother; what thy little father had, I helped him to; and to thee, too, I will give subsistence.  Thou shalt come to a physician for instruction, and thou shalt be more capable than he is himself; only behave finely.”  After this, she anointed him with ointment over the ears and took him to a physician.

The doctor did not know whatever lady it might be, and what little son she was bringing to him for instruction.  The lady bade her little son behave himself finely, and requested the physician to teach him well and place him in a good position.  After this, she took leave of him and departed.  The physician and the boy went together to collect herbs, and to this pupil of his every herb declared what remedy it contained, and the pupil gathered it.  The pupil’s herbs were of service in every malady.  The doctor said to his pupil: “Thou art cleverer than I am; for if anyone comes to me I never hit upon anything, and thou knowest the herbs against every sickness.  Knowest thou what? we will be partners; I will hand over my medical papers to thee and will be thy assistant, and I wish to be with thee until death.”  The boy doctored and cured people successfully until his candle burnt out in limbo.

“Death as Godmother.” North-West Slav Legends and Fairy Stories. Trans. W. W. Strickland. London: Robert Forder, 1897. 18-20. Print.