Summer Workshop in Skopelos, Greece

Clay Mono-prints with Mitch Lyons - August 1st - 15th

As you know I went to Skopelos, Greece last year for a printmaking workshop. I would go back in a heart beat. Not only are the facilities of the printshop wonderful, but Jill and Gloria are wonderful people who took time out everyday to ask us if we were doing alright and made us frappachino's. The workshop is on a beautiful Island with beaches and mountains. It's a truly magical experience!


This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to study a printmaking method developed by the instructor himself, Mitch Lyons. Students will create their prints on clay and then transfer the print on to paper. This is an excellent way for ceramists, painters andprintmakers to explore new techniques. Costs to include opening/closing dinner and breakfasts is $1,400. Price does not include housing. An early bird special is offered by registering no later than April 30th.....more

Mitch Lyons

Skopelos Print Shop

Summer Workshop in Spain

A Two-Week Solar Printmaking Workshop
with Maureen Booth in the Andalusian Sun



You'll be taken with solar-plate printmaking; everybody is. This two-week intensive workshop with Maureen Booth in solar-plate techniques also includes some innovative relief techniques based on liquid metal.

Studio located in Sierra Nevada foothills, river below with nightingales, wonderful area for walks and sketching. Riverside walking/bike path goes all the way to Granada, also frequent bus service.

Sun, sun and more sun...

Katarina Vavrova

Katarina Vavrová is a very talented painter and graphic artist from Slovakia. Her work is highly poetical, imaginative, dreamlike and very suggestive. The quality of detail and draughtsmanship is extraordinarily well visible. The motives have their roots in literature and arts, historical events and persons. One can see traces from biblical events and from the time of the great discoveries, but also something from the outer world and something from the inner parts of the human soul. In her work the world of fantasy melds with reality, dream with actuality, and desire with experience.
Typical elements in her work are people, animals, men with wings, some hats or headgear and something in red colour. In many of her pictures we see a lady with a sad contemplating expression on her face.

The many prizes and awards received by Katarina Vavrová and the number of private an group exhibitions she has had, do prove that her art is of the highest quality.

Vavrová is born in 1964 in Bratislava, Slovakia, and today she lives and works in Pezinok which is nearby native town.

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Paul Wunderlich

While I was farming in Italy, I came across a book of an exhibition of artists who created kites. Paul Wunderlich was one of the artists, and I fell in love with his work after doing some more research on him. Some surprising information I found out was that Horst Janssen switched from lithography to etching as a pupil under Paul Wunderlich and later regarded Wunderlich as a rival. How surprising that these two are related. I can definitely see the resemblance, but some how I'm more drawn to Janssens work, but yet I like the surrealist aspects of Wunderlichs work. This is fantastic information to me! I need to find out more about this relationship.


Painter, sculptor and Printmaker
Wunderlich studied at the Hamburg Academy and after a three year stay in Paris returned to Hamburg to be Professor of the Art Academy there. He now lives and works in Hamburg and for part of the year in France.
His early work was in an "abstract-figurative" style, but in the sixties he adopted a more symbolist, even surrealist style. He painted and printed many images taken from the fine photographs by his wife, Karin Szekessy He has held many major exhibitions world wide and has won innumerable International prizes, particularly for his colour lithography. He has been immensely prolific and has a vast oeuvre of prints, paintings in many media, sculpture, jewellery and furniture design. His renditions after classic paintings by artists such as Dürer, Ingres and Rembrandt show his inventiveness





Red Fern Gallery-drypoints
The Hart Gallery-sculpture, lithographs, and painting.
Gallery Brockstedt-prints
Limited Editon Graphics-prints


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woodblock

I'm embarking on a new adventure. I'm teaching myself how to do woodblock printing using Gabor Peterdi's methods. I didn't remember that he had a section in his book about woodblock printing until I was searching through it yesterday. I really like his instructions and I think it will be enough to get me started. So, I went out and bought some materials that I didn't have which was a lot of fun. I usually despise shopping, but getting art supplies is always fun. I bought some cheap woodcut tools because I didn't find any that I liked. I'll probably have to order them online. Besides I wanted to make sure I liked this process before I spent a lot of money on things, but maybe that's the wrong philosophy to start a hobby with? Since I don't have a car getting wood is very hard. I had to bike a long way to my favorite store in the whole wide world Home Depot! Actually, I hate this store with a passion. I got some strange ink called adigraf ink which is waterbased. I'd rather work with waterbased ink since I'm working at home with a crazy cat who'll eat anything. The ink smells like acrylic paint and is a bit glossy, but I'll give it a go when I get to that point.

I like Gabor Peterdi's book because the way he writes is as if you were in the classroom with him. He offers some fine suggestions on mistakes that his students have made, and offers a lot of advice and philosophy on how woodblock printmaking should be approached.

The project that I am taking on that I have been thinking about for years now is tarot cards. I've been doing readings for myself for six years now, and I'm still fascinated in the imagery of the cards. Ever since I heard that Salvador Dali created his own set, I've wanted to do it. There is a challenge that has been proposed by my Prof.J to find the earliest print in western civilization. I have looked and looked and cannot find one that dates earlier than the 1423AD woodcut of St. Christopher. On my searches I came across some information on suggestions that the earliest images on woodblock besides religious iconography could have been a deck of cards, but nobody has any images of them. Cards were banned by the government soon after they were widely distributed using woodblock, so I'm sure a lot of them have been destroyed.


I stumbled across Salvador Dali's woodblock/etchingsand realized that I had never seen these images before. There are wild and creative. I really like these a lot more than I his oil paintings. These images are so fresh and free I can't help but compare this work to a lot of art I see in the contemporary galleries in San Francisco. I went to the Dali museum which is located outside of Barcelona. It's a really great museum if you have the chance to visit it. It's in a really small town which has devoted itself to selling Dali trinkets. I really was amazed by how much work Dali did in his lifetime. Forget having a solo show this guy has floors and floors of work in all mediums. It's really inspiring to be in there.