Clifford
“Halftime Kid” (My Rooster x Fla Halftym Diana)
June 2, 1998- April 15, 2011
“You think dogs will not be in heaven? I tell you, they will be there long before any of us.” ~Robert Louis Stevenson
Also known as, THE COLOSSAL FAILURE. Or… THE END.
Got to the third reduction and am having horrible difficulties. My ink is either WAY too goopy and tacky (1st, 2nd reductions) or way to oily and ‘wet’ (3rd reduction)–it’s Graphic Chemical ink, about 4 years old now. Is it going bad? Am I mixing it wrong? I added Linseed oil to the tacky ink, but it didn’t help much. Not sure how to thicken the oily green- at first I thought I was just adding too much to the block, but that’s not the case . Ugh. I hate problems.
Then, much to my horror, a certain Naughty, Naughty Greyhound got up into the Loft (where I had all my prints laying out to dry) and left *muddy pawprints* all over half of them. Ahhhhhhhhhh…
Back to Square 1. After much weeping and gnashing of teeth last night, I’m going to try doing a Provincetown/White-Line print. This is a type of printmaking that was ‘invented’ in Massachusetts and although I’m not totally sold on how they usually look–a kind of odd flatness about them– I’ve recently seen a few artists utilizing the method and their work has Boggled. My. Mind. It has been so inspiring and kind of tickled my fancy. Some cool links: BarenForum, Kathryn Lee Smith (omg, her stuff is amazing), Sally Brophy (love, love, love).
In other weeping & gnashing of teeth… Clifford seems to be declining rapidly. My heart is breaking. 
Jen
It’s been a super-busy week. Work, vet appointments, running, doggie walks, yard-cleaning, and lots of art, art, art. It’s keeping me out of trouble –that’s good. 
My newest project is a woodcut for the Baren Forum Mythology Exchange. I love Baren Forum- anything you could possibly want to know about relief printmaking is there! And they have an awesome Listserv. When I heard there were spots still available for the Exchange- well, I couldn’t resist, even though it wasn’t a project I had been planning on for the spring. Ah well, you have to go with the flow I guess. So- my interest piqued- I submitted my information. And I got put on the waiting list. And I waited. And waited. And then some people dropped out, and I got the official call- rounding out #29 of 30 artists! Yay!
Although my first (natural, ha) reaction was to do a woodcut based on some sort of dog mythology – Sirius, Goddess Diana and her hunting Greyhounds, one of England’s Black Dog legends- I decided to do something more personal.
Here’s the very odd, and very strange, story:
Back in June 2009, I joined my parents for a camping trip to one of our favorite areas of the Adirondack Mountains- the Northwest Lakes Region. Specifically Fish Creek Pond Campground (I HIGHLY suggest Fish Creek, or her sister Rollins Pond, campgrounds if you are ever in the area!). It was a wretched4 days of dampness, rain, drizzle, black skies- everything you DON’T want in a camping trip. This campground is super-popular and usually packed to the gills, but was eerily empty as all the (smart) folk must have decided not to come. However there my family was, surrounded by empty campsites- My parents in their 26′ foot long camper and myself (and Lucy and Clifford) in our Coleman tent. We tried to make the best of it. Anyway I -think- it was the second wet night we were there, I was woken up sometime in the middle of the night by the strangest sound- like someone was running back and forth behind my tent, and through the (empty) campsite next to us. I could hear the footsteps *distinctly* through the drizzle. It couldn’t be a person- the sites around us were empty, and it was raining. Why would someone be horsing around in the rain, in the middle of the night?? And although Black Bears do stand on two legs occasionally, they don’t *run* on them, and whoever was out there was clearly fast and bipedal. I remember straining my ears, heart beating wildly… WTF?? What WAS it? Lucy and Clifford –whose watchdog capabilities rank(ed) just above a blind & deaf cat– were sleeping RIGHT. THROUGH. IT. I remember jabbing Clifford with my foot, trying to wake him up. The running would go. Then stop. Then change directions. Come back. Close to the tent. Far away from the tent. It was odd. I continued jabbing the dogs, and finally the two Groggsters woke up.. I fearfully slipped on my sandals… groped for the leashes… zipped back the tent flap…
And the running stopped. I couldn’t see anything in the blackness.
Lucy, Cliff and I carefully shuffled around in the dark, straining to see or hear something… but it was gone. Forever.
So when I got back home from our wet and creepy camping trip, I began researching whatever I could on Adirondack legends. Bears acting weirdly?? Hauntings?? Spaceship sightings?? Bigfoot?? Strangely enough, there wasn’t a lot. However… I did find something very interesting. The Adirondacks never had a permanent indigenous Native American population but the Haudenosaunee/ Iroquois- specifically the Oneida and Mohawk tribes- used the mountains extensively for as hunting grounds. Legends tell of their encounters with Jo-Ge-Oh, or Little People- elvish/gnomey types that lived along the mountains and streams, usually benevolent but mischievous and apt to get into trouble (especially, it seems, while squirrel hunting). There were three clans of Jo-Ge-Oh: Little People of the Rocks and Rivers (Ga-Hon-Ga); Little People of the Harvest and Grains (Gan-Da-Ya) and Little People of the Underneath Shadows (Oh-Dan-Was).
Was that what it was??
I don’t know if that’s what I heard that night, way up in the Adirondacks. Do they really exist? If they did, would they show themselves to a non-Native American? But if it wasn’t that… what else WAS it?
Anyway, that’s what my Mythology Woodcut is going to be about: Jo-Ge-Oh. At first I tried to draw what I thought Jo-Ge-Oh might look like but nothing came out “right”. Then I tried some drawings of myself, Lucy and Clifford in our tent with Jo-Ge-Oh running around outside. Nope. Not feeling it. Too cartoony and silly. Finally, after scouring through my pictures from that trip, I decided to do a woodcut called Fish Creek, Land of Jo-Ge-Oh… based on this photo I took while kayaking (kayaking in the rain? Yeah. Don’t forget your FroggToggs). This totally looks like Jo-Ge-Oh territory, doesn’t it?
Or this??? Creepy, rainy, haunted camping trip! LOL.
Once I decided on what I was doing, the sketching, then carving, went easily. Of course, it’s much easier carving on your drafting table, with a Bench-Hook, than on the bed. Just a note for next time.
First color on the block was a light gray. I want to try to capture that dark, dreary, rainy, miserable camping trip WITHOUT making the woodcut too muddy looking. I’m horrible with color though, so I went light… thinking it would dry a bit darker? And maybe it would be less muff-up-able?? I had out the linseed oil to make the GC ink a bit easier to work… man, that stuff has gotten REALLY tacky on me. It’s a few years old now, whew. I think you’re technically supposed to use Burt Plate Oil, but hopefully Linseed is close enough. Seemed to help.
I’ve reached a truce with Blue Bomber (my etching press). We were at odds for awhile, but I realized that cranking the block through is MUCH EASIER if you put a block in front of your carved block, and another behind it. And then I used a piece of illustration board as my ‘blanket’. By having so many blocks on the press, the roller has something to always ride along/sit on… so there’s no shoving the bed through, no “bump” when the block finally goes under the roller (and lemme tell you, that bump always wiggles the block a bit, and leads to a fuzzy print). I’m very happy I was (finally) smart enough to solve the problem. Now if I can only figure out the Red Bomber, my bottlejack press! Sigh.
Ta-da! I love the Reveals! Especially when they come out the way they look “in my head.”
I’m very happy. And I feel successful- although the exchange has 30 participants, I printed 46 (48?) . I always loose a few (or a lot) so I wanted to be *doubly sure* I would end up with 30 in the end. They are safely drying up in the Loft, away from dog hair and muddy paws.
I’m not sure whether the second color with be dark gray, or if I should start the greens first. The way you layer colors makes a total difference. Hmmm… well, we’ll find out tonight. I have only a couple weeks to finish this up, so no time left to dilly-dally!
Jen