I wanted this little guy to be camouflaging in with the background. The red "N" in the circle is from an initial stamp I bought years and years ago. J. took the reference photo: www.flickr.com/photos/pejnolan/3475730197/
Well, the KVAL Artist Demonstration that I've been preparing for months is now over. I was so worried about not having enough to fill the time that I wrote a 6 page outline and had enough material for two or three presentations. That was a good thing. I just hope I didn't sound too confusing by trying to cover too much in one sitting. I tried to talk about the history of the Eastern and Western woodblocks and how they led up to linocuts, the tools, and the technique that I use.
As usual, I worry myself into a fit days, weeks and months ahead of time. Worrying about what to talk about, how to convey the material and what to show. Then, on the actual day, I relax. I can't prepare any more, I can't learn any more and I can't do anything more. I can only do the best I can with what I've prepared.
My voice is naturally soft and doesn't carry well so that was my greatest challenge. I guess it got softer as the night wore on. I had encouraged everyone at the very beginning of the program to shout out if it was too quiet.
People genuinely seemed excited about trying linocuts when I spoke with them afterwards and that is the real goal of the art league: to get people excited about art. In that respect, I guess I did my job. A few even wanted me to do a workshop with them.
In the photo here, I had just slipped and almost cut my finger - just a nick, no blood, so it doesn't count! This after I had just told everyone that safety is primary and never get your fingers in the way of your cutting tools. I also told them never to wear white when printmaking... do as I say and not as I do, I guess. I've never gashed my hands - yet and I've not ruined a shirt either.
Thank you to Robyn Wellsfor taking photos.
Linoleum block printing will be the focus of the next Kishwaukee Valley Art League meeting, to be held at 7:30 p.m. May 7 at the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship, on the corner of North Fourth and Locust streets in DeKalb. The guest demonstrator for the evening will be KVAL vice president Erin Nolan.
Nolan is a versatile artist who has worked with a variety of media, including glass fusing, acrylic painting, metal work and wood burning, but most of her current work and the subject of her KVAL program is linocut, or linoleum block printing.
Nolan says she has always enjoyed drawing and doing creative things, but that her formal art training began at Kishwaukee College and then for a year and a half at NIU. However, took a break from art for 18 years between then and 2007, when she took up painting for her own enjoyment.
Nolan became interested in relief printing while watching her brother create wood-block prints. She tried wood, but found that her hands weren’t strong enough, so she switched to linoleum block. In her KVAL demonstration, she plans to show the process by which she creates a linocut, from developing the idea to printing the block. She will also provide a brief history of the art form.
Nolan says she has the best job in the world, as described in a recent news release. She works full time as a graphic designer/illustrator/creative consultant at OC Imageworks, a large-format printer in DeKalb. She has put those skills to work for KVAL, redesigning the KVAL logo and recently designing a new brochure for the group.
Local residents might have seen Nolan’s work at her solo show, “Organic Narrative,” at the DeKalb Area Women’s Center last year. Although she has only been doing relief painting for about a year, she won an honorable mention at the “Vicinity 2008 Art Exhibit” at the Norris Cultural Art Center in St. Charles.
She was also selected as a featured artist at the Venus Envy show at the Bucktown Center for the Arts in Davenport, Iowa, and her work has been published in two consecutive issues of KNOCK, Door County’s literary arts magazine.
