tulip petals and raindrops

Today in the studio I wrote pages and pages of thoughts and haiku poems. Imagery seems to be pouring forth in the form of words rather than drawings for me right now. Maybe it's all this rain! And it all caused me to remember a poet, named Gary Short, whom I met in 2003 during an artist's residency at VCCA. Today I found a hand-written poem of his that he gave me at the time and then I came across this poem online called The Collector. The last stanza is just amazing to me.

} Incredible Print Show opens tomorrow with a reception Saturday! Susan has been uploading shots of the installation. Works will become available online tomorrow as well. I'm really thrilled to be part of this show!
} Jan wrote a piece about IPS here too, thanks Jan!
} Tomorrow marks my last day at habit. I'm sad about leaving but excited to see what's in store there for the rest of the year. I posted daily and feel like I've accomplished something in doing so and that feels good. Thank you Emily & Molly for the opportunity, it really has meant alot to me.

Have a great weekend,
H

listening rock

"listening rock", graphite, watercolor, colored pencil, letterpress blind embossing on paper. framed 12 in. x 13 in.

Hi,

I just got home from a teaching day and plunked myself down. Whew. I started looking at some images of the work I will have in the Incredible Print Show at artstream and thought I'd offer a little bit of what I was thinking when I made this piece.

"Listening rock" is about the friend, or the one that is always there for you, ready to listen; they are a listening rock. For the watercolor portion in the bottom, I looked at the shapes and tones of some small stones that belonged to my grandmother, and glaze drippings that i would collect as a girl from my dad's kiln shelves. The hovering ovoid shape is made of layers of colored pencil {inspired by the paper I keep on my work table for sharpening my pencils} surrounded by letterpress embossed brackets. I use the brackets to allude to sound, quietness or listening as I did in my {whisper} series. The last element I added to the piece was the tiny letterpress ornament in the top left.

For the Incredible Print Show I decided I would incorporate various media together including letterpress printing to make original, one-of-a-kind pieces. There is so much variety in the show it seems, I think it will be awesome.

Thank you for listening, :)
H

Incredible Print Show

Hi,

Thank you so so so so so much for all your shouts of "hooray!" and "awesome!" to Matt's building project. It's so amazing to know that you appreciate this labor of love and it encourages him more than you know, so thank you for that. :) I'll hopefully have another "home tour" in a couple days to show you.

Today I want to share a little of the framing process for the four pieces I made for the Incredible Print Show. It opens at artstream this Friday with a reception on Saturday! Yay!! It has an amazing group of artists involved and whom I would love to meet in person.

{Photos taken when the framing was in progress.}
I took the pieces to a local frame shop to mat, with archival mats and materials. The woman who did the matting, her boyfriend works for/with my husband. And my husband made the frames using reclaimed maple from tongue and groove flooring.

Me adding the dust cover to the back of the work.

Here's what the back looks like. I always use a glass with a uv coating to protect the art and add that sticker so the future buyer will know.

And here are the four framed pieces I'll have in the show. Oh, I added a IPS button in the sidebar of my blog too for direct access to a whole host of prints!

I'll be back soon,
H