Stop work
Binding the tasks
Almost daily the visionary for the Seattle Printmakers Center
takes up tasks which he believes could be the core activities of the center if
the Seattle Printmakers Center were a reality. He is working on a
collaboration with a Brazilian artist—and stops.
Stop work order
Walking near home I saw a sign on an unfinished deck the neighbors were
building—an orange sign with bold letters, “Stop Work Order.” When you see this
sign, it usually means the project started without the necessary permits, and
somebody noticed it and, hence, the stop work order. This is like my own case,
only I am not building a deck, I am building the Seattle Printmakers Center.
The Seattle Printmakers Center is not as real as that sun deck on our
neighbor’s house, but in my mind it is super-real (the art history term is “surreal’).
It’s what you might expect from an artist who one journalist described as a
surrealist to describe my prints, drawings and sculpture. However, I gave
myself a “Stop Work’ order moments ago to write this entry for my collections
of ‘Zine essays.
I was working on a collaboration with a Brazilian artist named Cecelia. She
has posed a technical question about making printing plates to print on the
press I designed for her—called a Frigate Halfwood Press. Cecilia took
ownership of this press last year, and since then we have exchanged emails
regularly to discuss all kinds of subjects—from printmaking to screenplays.
Currently she asked me to test an image she made, and sent to me, for an Ex
Libris print project. Because her day job is that of an engraver for the Brazilian
mint, the image is extremely detailed and, if it were to be engraved, would
require months of her hand work. She asks me if my laser transfer method might
give her the results she wants; she asks me, too, if my theory of using laser
engraving blended with old-world etching, can be proved.
At the Seattle Printmakers Center
This would be a project for one of the groups in the Seattle Printmakers
Center. They might themselves a student group or apprentices; they are
task-handlers and problem solvers. Because these are mostly young people,
technology is interesting to them. Laser engravers, for example, offer
possibilities they would like to know more about and have hands-on (and
computer graphics) skills in using.
Cecilia poses a real-world, and international, problem to solve, and this
kind of project is what might excite a group at the Seattle Printmakers Center.
It would involve not only the high-tech issues, such as the question of resolving
the differences between an analog image which Cecilia has drawn by hand and a
digital image, but also the question of types of silicon-coated transfer paper
that would achieve the best results.
Then there would also be the matter of etchants—should we use plain ferric
chloride or the kind of etchant called Edinburgh Etch? After several of these
options have been explored by the group, then comes the printing.
Because the Seattle Printmakers Center is a multimedia center, while all
the above is going on, members of the group with cameras are taking note with
both still photos and short videos. These become content for the Center’s
newsletter and the online magazine, Printmaking World Online.
In the offices of the Seattle Printmakers Center, such diverse programs as
digital publishing, social networking and online social games based on
printmaking are happening concurrently with the messy work of getting
information to Cecelia in Rio de Janeiro.
Conclusion
The artist’s way is not a stop and start situation, but it is circular, or
recursive. We find ourselves having stopped work, but it is only an illusion.
Inside, work is continuing until we find ourselves where we began and, hopefully,
we know the place for another time.
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