Field trip

Yesterday I broke my long studio weekend focus to visit Monkey-Rope Press friend and sometime-mentor Melissa Jay Craig at Ragdale. I knew of the Ragdale by reputation; it is a residency compound for visual artists, writers and composers in the north shore suburb of Lake Forest. The main house and barn were designed by Arts and Crafts architect Howard Van Doren Shaw as a summer retreat for his family. His wife was a poet and his daughter a sculptor, so it has been a space for creative production since it was first built. I contributed a book to Shawn Sheehy's "Haunted Library" installation at the Ragdale house in October, but was unable to attend the opening; in similar misfortune, I was invited to visit Melissa last autumn but fell ill and was unable to visit. She kindly extended the invitation again, and I was delighted to oblige.

The Metra train ride was pleasantly uneventful, but leaving the train and entering the Affluent Fairy Land that is downtown Lake Forest was disorienting. I grew up in middle-class apartments on the outskirts of small cities in the South, and as a relative newcomer to Chicago I have spent all of my time living in & exploring the city proper; as such, I've always assumed the stories I had heard about the suburbs were exaggerated. Fairy tales and myths! Not so. On my walk to Ragdale, I counted several houses with more than 5 chimneys, distinct wings, and "coach houses" off the back larger than any house I have even visited. (It was pointed out to me that these are the "less desirable" properties one can see off the main road. Yikes.)

The surreal walk through town made Ragdale even more lovely by contrast. I first visited Melissa in her prairie studio, with views of the open meadow & wild prairie on two sides and a generous skylight above. After a short visit, we walked through the adjoining grasslands and forest before meeting up with another resident for a tour through the barn studios and Ragdale house. I couldn't have asked for a more gracious and encouraging host--it was a wonderful afternoon, and I only wish the train schedules were more flexible so I could have stayed longer. 

(A view of the expansive prairie from the far end, lovely even in its dry winter colors: the prairie studio is near the tree line on the far side.)

I admit that I didn't really "get it" before I visited. Why disrupt life for a creative retreat? Shouldn't work be integrated fully into a daily routine? I still know it should and has to be a daily practice, but this option is a dream. To have a full space to one's own, to not have to go grocery shopping or any other number of daily-life errands, to not have to think about or worry over a single thing except working on your project for a whole month: I get it now. Although scheduling a month away from life is challenging, I think it's something to work towards.

Until then, back to work. I need to finish carving my block for the Jorgensen print, but I think I'm going to spend a few hours with the computer off & ear plugs in to work on my book. Happy trails!

Battleship Gray Friday

Monkey-Rope Press doesn't think much of Black Friday (although I will admit, I spent a few hours this morning looking for discounted book presses); after all, who needs Black Friday when you have a luxurious block of battleship gray mounted linoleum needing a few more hours of love and care? Christine J. and I spent a quiet afternoon together worrying over her dress, and I can't wait to see how it looks printed. Some of the more shallow cuts might need re-touching once I proof the block, but it's exciting to have so many more square inches finished! Press-time will be scheduled in the near future; until then, happy post-Thanksgiving hibernation, y'all!

Facts, Hercule, facts!

I spent this grey, windy Chicago Saturday working on the Christine Jorgensen print. My first step today was to tape the drawing to the linoleum block with graphite paper underneath. The image is just smaller than the block at 11" x 15", so I chose the best corner of the block and lined up the paper's corner against those two edges before taping. I will trim off the excess borders on the table saw at the studio before printing, to save myself the effort of extra carving.

Side note: one thing that I learned the hard way about printing linoleum blocks on a vandercook is that mounted linoleum blocks that you can buy at art stores or online are often not cut perfectly square, which can be a nightmare to print if registration is important. (Registration in printmaking refers to the amount of variance and accuracy in the overlapping of different colors in a single print.) An irregular block might look and feel like it is properly locked in to the bed of the press, but every time the rollers pass the block has a tendency to travel quite significantly. The first pass of my first multi-color linoleum print travelled wildly--more than half an inch--and I didn't notice until more than halfway through the run. Disaster! Although this is a one-color print, squaring the image is still good practice.

Now, tracing. Again. This is the 2nd time the image has been traced, after the mirror-flip trace on the light box.

Finally, the fun: carving! After honing my tools to be sure they are sharp, I started carving. This is a detailed print, so carving takes quite a while. It is an engaging process, but let's be honest: sitting down to carve for 5 or 6 hours at a time can make a girl's mind wander towards less hand-aching tasks. I get the least distracted when I carve by listening to movies or the radio; this was a Shot in the Dark/My Blue Heaven/His Girl Friday-length carve.

This might not look like much for 5ish hours of work, but I am quite pleased with it so far.

Back to the block!

Flow and the Wandering Mind

One of the purposes of this news section is to honestly document the creation, from beginning to end, of the projects in production at Monkey-Rope Press. Inevitably, it is not all good news.

In addition to the print series, Monkey-Rope Press is also in the early stages of writing and illustrating a book. Print production is old hat: I took all of the fine printmaking classes I could work into my college schedule, worked for a year as a pre-press and press operation apprentice in a small-production offset facility, and then a year honing my typesetting and letterpress skills with my friends at Starshaped.

I am reminded of the work of positive psychologist Mihály Csíkszentmihályi on flow. Flow is the creative production ideal: a loss of self-consciousness, a total absorption in the matter at hand, a loss of track of time & physical needs. It is pure, undistracted, rewarding concentration. When settling in to print work, flow comes easily. I know the process thoroughly enough to not need to look up answers to problems; I find every aspect of design and carving, ink-mixing and printing challenging and rewarding; I find myself irritated at daily necessities that get in the way of continuing on the project. Why do I need to buy groceries? This block needs hours more work! I can eat tomorrow.

Unfortunately, it has been markedly different with this book work. While I have made small "sketch" books and taken bookbinding & book arts classes with artist & educator Melissa Jay Craig, I have never before attempted anything on this scale. Every decision breeds two new questions, breaking any rhythm I had briefly found. In almost every way, this project is thrilling: it is the fulfillment of two years of daydreaming and testing and hind-brain planning, but it also has that carpet-pulled-from-under-feet feeling of working in new, untested media. Even worse, without settling into that easy rhythm of production-flow, I find myself seeking distraction. Cats walking by my feet? They must need entertainment! Computer in the same room? Surely something of life-or-death importance has been sent to my email! Suddenly I find my bicycle too dirty to function without a good cleaning, the day too beautiful not to walk in, and then the whole day has passed with my notebooks untouched.

The only solution I have found that works is to physically isolate myself from distraction. Without a Woolfian room of my own, I settle in to the comfortable cliche of Young Urban Writer Slash Artist Working in Independent Coffee Shop. This has been much more successful a strategy than working in my home studio, which is encouraging. Since changing spaces 3 weeks ago, I've made a lot of progress. I'm not as far as I'd hoped, but this forward movement is significant. I am still writing the story, with the goal of finishing writing by the end of the year to turn to production in January.

I can't wait for that production-flow. Until then: off to the coffee shop.

Printing Process: Part 1

For the first print in Monkey-Rope Press's ongoing collaboration with writeyourprincipal.com, we are creating a portrait of Christine Jorgensen, the first widely publicized person to have sex reassignment surgery (1952). She was an actress, a singer, a photographer, and a vocal advocate for trans rights, speaking with wit and candor about her experiences to university campuses and other venues across the country.

Inspired by Angel Zammaripa's bold portraits of revolutionaries, we decided to create two prints for each portrait: the first a single-color linoleum block portrait, and the second purely typographic, serving to (briefly) narrate the history of the icon.

After determining the final size of the prints, the first step was to draw a loose sketch of what the print would look like:

Since the image has to be reversed for printing, I traced the image on the back of the drawing on a light box with a brush pen:

Rather than shading, I fill in the gradation with directional contours. The final print will not directly follow the lines marked in the drawing above, but it will serve to guide my carving.

The majority of the decisions about light/dark balance will be made in the carving process. With the rough contour drawing complete, the next step is to tape the drawing to the linoleum block with a piece of graphite paper below and re-trace the drawing, transferring the image to the block.

Next: carving!