laura berman - kc printmaker

• Well, I am really trying to neutralize the hierarchy, I don't want one rock to be more prominent than the others, that is not the point. It's really about how they ALL COMBINE TOGETHER.

1- She creates elements that belong together

• Certainly it is a series, and it can all work well together, but I want each print to look like it is a SECTION of something, that's taken from. So there's more that might continue, but, of course I am not showing that it does, it's just that it's pulled out.

Laura Berman (LB) and Karl Marxhausen (KM) discuss the illusion of creating space and the translucency of hand mixed inks. She uses Graphic Chemical and Gamblin oil base inks.  The monoprints are on a Rives heavy weight printmaking paper (250 gsm) and run through a press bed. Each of this series measures 19 inches square. Plastic wrap is put over the inks to keep them from drying out.  She documents each color she mixes.  Video runs five minutes.

KM: What are you working on?

LB: OK. I have these monoprints over here that I am finishing up. They are really close. And what I ended up doing was cutting down a bunch of old prints that I had started editioning, or they were already proofed and things I just hadn't finished. I trimmed them all on the same sides, a series of ten now going. So, there are lots and lots of layers. The idea is "to fill them edge to edge, crop them, as much as I can, almost like a pointillist painting." This is a series in progress, almost finished right now.

KM: And you said the edges are really important?

LB: Yes, they are. I'm trying to, certainly it is a series, and it can all work well together,

 but I want each print to look like it is a SECTION of something, that's taken from. So there's more that might continue, but, of course, I am not showing that it does, it's just that it's pulled out.

KM: So, in a sense, you are creating a space...within the picture plane.

LB: Definitely, yeah.

Hand mixed inks

Monoprints are hung using clean

strips of print paper and clips.

 Dried prints between gessoed boards and newsprint

  

The large round colored shapes in her monoprints are based on a specific collection of 125 small beach pebbles from Topsail Island, North Carolina, USA. Her rock shapes celebrate an event from her life, her marriage. For Berman, the rock shapes are unique and have personalities like that of people. The value she places on her collection brings her a sense of security and identity no matter where she lives. That said, she treats the enlarged forms in a different manner. As an artist she stays open to new possibilities.

             2 - She pays attention to the moment

       "These forms take on a LIFE OF THEIR OWN, the way you are thinking-- it is sort of like stepping stones. You have the rocks first, but when you are at this stage you are thinking: "OH WOW, WITHIN THIS SHAPE, WITHIN THIS SPACE, HEY, I LIKE THE WAY THIS (HERE)  IS MOVING, I LIKE THE WAY THAT (THERE) IS MOVING. AND, I WONDER, IF I COULD DO SOMETHING DIFFERENT WITH THIS, AND TRY THIS (NEXT PRINT OVER)" So THAT is taking you further. As opposed to saying, "oh I have got to make it look exactly like this photo that I took. Or, exactly like whatever reference material I have. So it (the choosing) is more INTUITIVE, and like that." Karl Marxhausen

       "Definitely. Definitely. I probably could never be an "editioning" printmaker. I must have A LOT OF PLAY when I am thinking. Otherwise I get really bored with the process. And it is not teaching me anything if I am just a "factory," and just executing one idea, the same idea over and over. I try to build in a LOT OF SURPRISE for myself as I print."  Laura Berman

Tint extender

Four minutes. Laura Berman (LB) and Karl Marxhausen (KM) discuss what makes her colors translucent, her attention to the surface quality when using multiple layers, and the intuitive process of looking at your color choices, being open to new surprises, and letting ideas follow their own course. 


3 - Her love of pattern -- from Barcelona.

Berman showed me the 63 photos on her studio wall. These remind her of the origin of the patterns that fuel her work. The colored ceramic and mosaic tiles used by the architect of her birthplace, Antoni Gaudi.

     "I was born in Barcelona and my biological father was Spanish. I lived in Barcelona for my first year and my mother walked around the entire city with me daily. I suspect that the sights of Barcelona settled into my own aesthetic values from these very visual beginning points." 

      "I am a dual-citizen of Spain and the USA. My mother moved to Spain in the steps of her older sister, my aunt, who also married a Spanish man. They all lived in Barcelona before and around the time I was born. My aunt then lived in Madrid, and now lives in Alicante, Spain. My mother lives in North Carolina (her marriage to my father was short-lived– we left Spain when I was 1 year old and she remarried when I was 6 years old)." (courtesy of Berman email 5/29/13)

    "My favourite architect is Antoni Gaudí. My most favorite building of his is Casa Batlló."

Three videos on Gaudi in Barcelona follow.

Three minutes. Gaudi structures in Barcelona.

(Tile background Park Guell Barcelona Spain.
courtesy of Thumbs Dream Time, http://thumbs.dreamstime.com/z/tile-background-park-guell-barcelona-spain-15377459.jpg, accessed June 13, 2013)

Eight minutes. Ten Things You Need To Know. 

(courtesy of Dreams Time, http://thumbs.dreamstime.com/thumblarge_421/12481889905f3v3U.jpgaccessed June 17, 2013)

 Eleven minutes. Barcelona, my city. In 2011
the population of Barcelona was 1,615,448 people.

Berman's home town.

Laura Berman (LB) and Karl Marxhausen (KM) discuss the mosaics of Antoni Gaudi, her interest in pattern, memories of her mother walking her around the her birth city of Barcelona, her interest in things with history like the one hundred and three year old Kansas City Livestock Exchange Building, where she keeps a studio for her printmaking. Five minutes.

LB: (Of Gaudi) You know, breaking the definition of everything. But another of his trade

marks is this mosaic. So he would apply mosaic to the surface to almost everything he did. All these chimneys at the top of this building are covered in little mosaic squares. (see side photo)

KM: Say where these photos came from again?

LB: These are from buildings in Barcelona. This is where I was born. When I was a baby my mom would stroll me around the city, just looking at these sites. And I actually had a great aunt that lived in this building (points to La Perdera) (see side photo)

LB: I think the patterns and colors of the textures of tiles and ceramics in Spain really influenced me on a fundamental level, cause I saw them a lot when I was a child.
KM: It is interesting that they are ceramic in nature as opposed to like patterns in nature...

LB: Yeah.  But it's a very urban city. This is a building façade. It is a printmaking thing, they will carve into the tile and put a glaze color on top. So it is almost like a relief print on the ceramic tile, I forget the term,  maybe, sgraffito?

KM: I was going to say sgraffito. That is what you usually do on bowls, pots, like that.

LB: But the whole buildings are covered with it. It's just beautiful. That one too up on the right.

Speaking on history out in the hallway:

  "I love things that have history to them, old things. We live with a lot of vintage furniture. My son plays with vintage toys. I just love things that come with that kind of history. When I travel I like to research more about 'where I am' at than the art that has been collected there.  Art does not affect me when I am traveling like a natural history museum does. I love those kinds of things that have that kind of story, it is sort of an excavation of history."

  4 - Her dream has been to be accepted by her home locale.

     Berman told me how she connected with Circulo Del Arte.

       "Círculo del Arte published 5 prints of mine last year (each in an edition of five). I printed these editions in my studio here in Kansas City and shipped them to the gallery once they were printed. The prints were on exhibit there this past spring, and also featured at    Arts Libris in Barcelona last April. It is Barcelona's equivalent of the
Fine Papers and Prints Kansas City, and the EXPO KC." LB

Three minute video about Circulo Del Arte, above.

Six minute video about Arts Libris expo, next)

 

       "I was invited to publish and exhibit a set of new prints with this gallery after meeting with them in the fall of 2011 during my sabbatical from teaching at the Kansas City Arts Institute.         Circulo del Arte is a gallery and also a print publisher.  They work with many artists to publish unique editions of their prints and they make these prints accessible to the gallery members. Members of the gallery receive a discounted price. I receive a set commission for every print the gallery sells." LB

   "I rarely edition my work – it is possible– but I prefer to work in a more spontaneous manner. This project required that I create an edition, and we agreed on a small edition number of 5 for each print. My hope is that the prints will sell sooner than a larger edition would so that we can make another project together. So far, about half of the prints have sold!" (courtesy Berman email 5/31/13

"It has been a dream come true for me to exhibit in my birthplace and have collectors in Spain and in Europe for my work."

5 - Art consultants have been a plus for her

Laura Berman discusses finding a home for her monoprints, the advantages of having art consultants/ dealers, eleven monoprints sold to a hotel in Abu Dhabi, how the prints can stay together as a family, her rock prints at the KU med center take on a  cellular look, and about being in relationship to arenas outside her studio, not working just for herself. Two minutes.

The hotel that purchased 11 of my monoprints last spring: Rosewood Hotel in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates. ( http://www.rosewoodhotels.com/en/abudhabi/ )

This interview took place Saturday morning, May 11th, 2013.

Laura Berman is an Associate Professor in the Printmaking Department @ the Kansas City Art Institute. Her studio is located in the Livestock Exchange Building, 1600 Genessee Street, Kansas City, MO 64102 (suite #350 on the third floor).
Her website is http://www.laurabermanprojects.com/.
Her blog is http://laurabermanprojects.com/lablog/
She was one of 20 vendors at the KC Expo in April 2013.

.

(Barcelona chimney tiles courtesy of Paris Parfait Typepad.com, http://parisparfait.typepad.com/.a/6a00d8341c8d9f53ef010535b35489970b-800wi, tile background Park Guell Barcelona Spain.
courtesy of Thumbs Dream Time, http://thumbs.dreamstime.com/z/tile-background-park-guell-barcelona-spain-15377459.jpg, http://thumbs.dreamstime.com/thumblarge_421/12481889905f3v3U.jpg, accessed June 17, 2013. Matfield Green exhibit link, courtesy of http://us7.campaign-archive2.com/?u=68c13d6cc1e401eb9066cc6ed&id=49693cb984&e=0e8069acc7, accessed July 4, 2013. Barcelona videos: Gaudi in Barcelona, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I3Lk5YwaVtE,  Ten Things You Need To Know, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qMryMf2hOzU, Tour of Gaudi Buildings in Barcelona, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JsHVE9Lvr4Q, Barecelona, Mi Ciudad, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sGrKTiEOMUw, 
accessed June 14, 2013. Kansas City Livestock Exchange building courtesy of http://livestockexchangebldg.com/home.php, accessed June 19, 2013. Circulo Del Arte link,
http://artslibris.cat/en/expositors/2013/circulo-del-arte/, http://www.circulodelarte.com/en/bcn-experience-0,http://www.circulodelarte.com/en/autor/berman/es,  accessed July 1, 2013)

paula winchester - kc printmaker

Monotype created by wiping ink off acetate surface, Paula Winchester used the edge of cardboard, an ear swab, toothpicks, and a rag to clear areas. It took half hour to make this image. She took an adult art class at the Nelson Atkins Museum in Kansas City, under Suzanne Geringer. Video is two minutes.

Double click on images to see enlarged.

" I took the Picasso and More class at the Nelson where I got to make a monotype print and an intaglio print. By my doing it even makes me appreciate more that which I see. I am in awe.  I hope my depth of knowledge grows and that someday I will purchase some (prints).  " Paula Winchester



Picasso exhibit at Nelson Atkins Museum inspired freehand images by Paula Winchester. In the Picasso and More class, students created monotypes and intaglio prints. Ink was removed from acetate plate with wipe motions. Impressions measure 12 by 9 inches. Video is two minutes long.

 

A fourteen year old daschund named Zen is all heart in two monotype impressions by Paula Winchester. How she embellished the work with pastels after the ink had dried. Both impressions measure 12 by 9 inches. Video is three minutes. 

Drawing from which Winchester created Swallow impression. 

Blue acetate is thin plastic. Sharp tools draw gouges which will hold ink.

 Intaglio and monotype by Paul Winchester.



In the last class of Picasso and More, Paula Winchester used a drawing of Portland swallows to combine two processes, intaglio and monotype. The results are multi-colored and new to this Kansas City resident. Paula shares her experience. Video is six minutes.

Winchester is a member of the Nelson Atkins Print Society. She took part in Picasso and More, adult art class in education department of Nelson Atkins Museum of Art in October of 2012. For more information on upcoming adult art classes contact http://www.nelson atkins.org/education/AdultProg.cfm.
Her website is http://herbgathering.com/. You can see her pastel drawings here.

miguel rivera - kcai printmaker

 "I was looking at this sense of expression. It fulfills me."    Miguel Rivera

This artist printed to INVENT SURFACES. 

Particles. The interface of materials on top of the next. What is below peeks through layers above. An inked impression from a routed woodcut with a specific design meshed with atmospheric elements. Karl Marxhausen

Rivera told me to look at Dr. Atl and David Alfaro Siqueros. I did. Each of these experimented with materials in order to invent the surface.

Look at the Mexican painter and writer Gerardo Murillo Cornado (1875-1964), who was known as Dr. Atl. He was the first to work with pigments. In the book of his 1914 Paris exhibit: Exposition Atl: les montagnes du Mexique, Atl introduced fellow artists to what he perfected in 1906, a solid material one could paint with. He named it Atlcolor. He had figured how to lay pigments on pigments. And how to keep them from falling apart. In his book The Landscape, an essay (El Paisaje, un ensayo), 1933, Atl described his solid resin-based pigments under the heading of  "Las inovaciones (The Innovations).     It was Atl's experimentation with wax, pigment, resin and gasoline that Rivera wanted me to find. 
[https://www.vialibri.net/years/items/348980/1933-atl-dr-pseudonym-of-gerardo-murillo-el-paisaje-un-ensayo-landscape-an and http://www.artnet.com/artists/dr-atl-gerardo-murillo/biography and http://inverarteartgallery.com/artist/dr-atl/ and  http://chnm.gmu.edu/transatlanticencounters/items/show/4639 (accessed July, 18, 2017]


Here is an entry I found about Atl's stencil prints: take note of the use of resin varnish - the experimentation - inventing of the surface.

"The two remaining stencil prints, here called Red Volcano and Erupting Volcano, are untitled, lack stenciled friezes, and have other characteristics that suggest they were both made as experimental proofs around 1921-23 (Erupting Volcano is printed on the same type of laid paper as the Philadelphia album cover) and may in fact be rare examples of the type of enameled Atl-color prints-- estampes émaillées (procédé special)-- he exhibited in Paris in 1914. In both prints the artist animated the surfaces of the stenciled images with a fine mist of spattered Atl-color pigments, which he most likely blew onto them through the twin pipes of the metal fixative applicator commonly used to stabilize powdery pastel and charcoal drawings. In both cases he also made use of the resin varnishes that he described under the heading "Las inovaciones" (Innovations) in his 1933 book El Paisaje - un ensayo." (18. Dr. Atl, El paisaje--un ensayo, p. 13.) 

"In Red Volcano he stenciled his colors on top of a ground of transparent varnish that covers the entire sheet of paper. In the more complex Erupting Volcano, the artist built up the composition in layers, first painting onto a sheet of gray paper a ground of zinc white mixed with casein the same size as his intended image, followed by stenciled colors, then spattered colors, and ending with a coat of transparent varnish over the entire image except for the cone of the volcano rising above the clouds, which he embellished with Atl-color crayon that extends the composition of the spewing volcano into the margin of the sheet. Like many graphic artists in the West during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Atl incorporated in his designs many features typical of the traditional Japanese color woodblock print --stark outlines, flat expanses of color, and the playful visual conceit of allowing an element of a composition to intrude into the otherwise empty enframing margin--and made them distinctively his own.      John Ittmann, Mexico and Modern Printmaking: A Revolution in the Graphic Arts, 1920 to 1950 (2006). 

Look up David Alfaro Siqueros. He used pumice powder with resins, mixing, to build surfaces. He used it for murals as long as a wall. He was working like a construction worker.      Miguel Rivera

 “Beginning in 1935, Siqueiros began using Duco, a nitrocellulose automobile lacquer developed by General Motors and DuPont in the 1920s. These tools and pigments countered what Siqueiros termed Mexico's "folk art for export," by which he referred to artists' proclivity to produce an art for tourists.(pg.77).. At the start of the 1930s, Siqueiros produced a series of crusty easel paintings made while under house arrest in Taxco, Mexico. In these works, he began experimenting with materials, as in the painting Proletarian Mother (1930) in which he combined local clays with resin, applying both to a fibrous jute surface (pg.81) …  the role of "accidents" --the spill, the stain was central to the experimental procedures of Siqueiros's workshop. While one handling of the spraygun could assure a quick-drying and slick surface unmatchable by oil paint applied by paintbrush, a more experimental approach to Duco led to unforeseen results.

As Siqueiros wrote in one letter to his friend and occasional benefactress Maria Asfinsulo

in 1936:

“I make use of a painting accident, through which two or more colours are sprayed on and as they become absorbed into each other produce the most fantastic and magical forms that can be imagined; it can only be compared to geological formations, to the multi-coloured and vari-shaped seams seen in mountains, to the cell-construction which can only be seen under a microscope. [...] a kind of tumultuous, stormy dynamism, a sort of physical and social revolution, which is quite frightening.” (pg.96)   
 ["IMPORT/EXPORT: RAW MATERIALS, HEMISPHERIC EXPERTISE AND THE MAKING OF LATIN AMERICA ART by Niko Vicario M.A. Curatorial Studies Bard College, 2008“,  http://dspace.mit.edu/bitstream/handle/1721.1/101545/940564400-MIT.pdf?sequence=1, accessed July 1, 2016]

This fascination for creating surfaces sounded more like what one did when painting. I shared with Rivera the delight I felt when I used crushed oyster shells, elmer's glue, and acrylic paint. The way the pigments separated and created spontaneous patterns which I enjoy. See next detail. More at  SEE 1 and  SEE 2.

As we sat chatting in Cafe Nerman Thursday afternoon, Rivera told me of the time he once baked a painting in an oven. It was while he was an exchange student at South Oregon University in Ashland. He had painted layers of gesso on masonite. He couldn't wait for it to dry, so he went next door into the ceramics room and set the masonite in a raku kiln that was still warm after a firing. He went on to say that he pressed objects into the wet gesso with his hands. When the masonite was completely dry he used oil paint on the hard surface, and then wiped it off in places with his hand. Just like an etcher wipes excess ink off the copper plate with the palm of his hand. Miguel Rivera said: "I was a pr-ainter. The cross between a printmaker and a painter." He had a smile in his eyes.

His most recent explorations on BFK paper employ drawing and layers like a painting but with the unfolding process of a print maker. One can dissect the components. There is a woodblock design. There is printers ink. There are tiny black particles. There is a manner of making. Miguel Rivera's way. But Rivera downplays the use of technology. Preferring the outcome. All methods were a means to an end. This is what he told me:

I had this concept of virus spreading through culture for a print. I designed the geometric of the virus. The woodblock plates were made with routers. But I did not want just the geometic. That would be boring by itself. I wanted to create “shadows of embossment.” As a resist for the next stage, I draw with toner powder. Using a magnet under the paper to move the toner around. I use a transparent base. This (work) is not process based. It is not a technical thing. It helps create this hidden metaphor.    Miguel Rivera

 

Three minutes. The first plate of his print was on cedar plywood. It had a vinyl stencil of a "retina" cut with a router. The second plate used in his print had the  of a bacteria virus scanned from Washington State University, a school  he attended. The second plate was tinted with toner powder instead of ink. That is, the toner particles sat in the grooves of the second plate and was run through the press. Together, the subtle layers of inked color, paper embossing, and particles of toner dust, created the qualities  that Rivera was after.

Two minutes. More interactions on paper that Rivera is fond of. Detail, above.

His wide triptych monoprint was pinned on the classroom wall with student help at the Kansas City Artist Institute. With many drawings and efforts leading up to this image, Rivera regards this image as mature.

I would call it a mono print. Because I'm using the matrix. The virus, in this case, conserves the matrix. I am using the matrix to do things it wasn't meant to do.   Rivera

Well, but you are, that's one way of framing it. You can say these are traditional materials, and I'm not using them the way you should. But on the other hand, you are using it for the purposes you as an artist come up with.   Marxhausen

It is like another drawing device. When you think of painting, it would be another layer of paint.  Rivera

Five minutes. Mono print.

Miguel Rivera was interviewed by Karl Marxhausen, Thursday March 3, 2016.
2 pm to 3:26 pm in Café Nerman  and on campus of the Kansas City Art Institute.

[Oyster shell surface treatment, courtesy of Karl Marxhausen,
http://www.karl.marxhausen.net/core.l.html and http://karl-marxhausen.blogspot.com/2008/11/karl-marxhausen-being-led-elsewhere.html accessed July 1, 2016]

 

Saskia Lehnert - kc printmaker

 

The inner resolve of a print maker is like no other. To gain a better understanding I met with Saskia Lehnert for an interview. What blew me away was her commitment. She willingly spent hours on hours over months, using a hand pushed tool to drill each hole on her wood plate to create a massive dot pattern. 

See the varied size holes BELOW. Ink impressions of pattern NEXT.



She used words like meditation, doing it, and

being in the moment to describe the process. 

above photo by eric lehnert

Saskia Lehnert talks about a metal and wood multi-plate
collaboration with Telephonebooth Editions in KC
and working with water-based inks for her woodblocks.
Metal plates used for RGB Landscape 
 http://saskialehnert.com/work7.html
Video is seven minutes long.
Click on http://youtu.be/BKkG7SeExR0

Closeup of etched metal plate used in collaboration.

ABOVE AND BELOW

above photo by eric lehnert

Ms. Lehnert covers rice paste with

water-based inks, the cutting tools used
for her "Storm" woodblock impression 

 http://saskialehnert.com/work8.html

Video is three and a half minutes long.
Click on http://youtu.be/uC1JSCv3cks

Careful cuts to create line gradations ABOVE.

Wood block for "Ghost In The Forest" 

http://saskialehnert.com/work1.html
Closeup of layered colors on impression BELOW
Double click on images.

above photo by eric lehnert

Lehnert completes her studio interview.

She explains what it means to charge the plate,

the importance of contrast with a dot pattern,

holes drilled with a hand pushed dremel,

 beginning with a mechanical design and

 transforming into something more with physical effort.

The process is satisfying beyond words.

You really spend time with every square inch

of the work. Video runs four minutes.
Click on http://youtu.be/I0GW5MXAGjM

Lehnert is a member of the Nelson Atkins Print Society.
Her print studio is in Overland Park, Kansas.

Her website is http://saskialehnert.com/