Upcoming Shows

Two shows coming up!

Saturday, June 18, 2011, 7pm at SOPA Studios we’ll be having our annual summer exhibit.  I’ll be showing a new pochoir print!

Next month, I’ll be participating in the “Year of the Labbit Custom Show” at the Japanese American National Museum in downtown LA.  The show features customized Frank Kozik “Happy Labbit” toys, which will also be for sale in the museum store.  All proceeds from my piece will be donated to the Japanese American National Museum.  The exhibit runs July 14 -September 11, 2011 and is in conjunction with the Stan Sakai retrospective, “Year of the Rabbit.”

Discovering pochoir

At the South Pasadena Art Walk a few weeks ago, many people were asking about my process/technique, so I thought it would be a good idea to write a post about how I came about making “pochoir” prints.

I first used a pochoir technique back in the first print class I ever took.  We were making letterpressed postcards from photopolymer plates – my image was a black outline of a human heart.  The heart on its own looked good, but I kept feeling like something was missing – it needed another element to really make it stand out.  The night before my critique I was brainstorming and got the idea of stenciling a ribcage over the heart.  I cut a stencil out of bristol paper and printed the ribcage over the heart with red tempera (I needed something that would dry quickly and look like blood spatter).  Little did I know that this piece would not only ignite my love of printmaking, but would also be an ember for the pieces I’m making almost 10 years later.

ribcage stencil, 2003
(I can’t find the print at the moment, but when I do I’ll post a picture!)

Even though I didn’t use the pochoir technique again until recently, it had always been stuck in the back of my mind.  I always had a fondness for that heart/ribcage print, and I was particularly attracted to the ability to change the density of ink/color  while using pochoir.

Long story short, I took a silkscreening class last March while I was living in Melbourne, where I made some hand-cut stencils for my projects.  I found that I really loved the process of cutting stencils, which I found to be much more satisfying than my previous dabblings in other cut-based printing, like linocuts.  After my class was finished, I thought back to my little heart/ribcage print, and decided to try out some hand-colored prints.  I used the water-based printmaking inks that I usually used for monotypes and linocuts (Akua Kolor monotype inks), and they turned out to work perfectly.

carp
silk screen, 2010

two-headed self-portrait
silk screen, 2010

The credit of actually finding out about pochoir as an established technique goes to my friend David Graves, who is a wonderful printmaker at SOPA Studios.  When he saw my first prints he said, “Oh, pochoir,” and I thought, “Oh, it has a name!”

Pochoir is a technique of hand-coloring prints using stencils, which was most popular during the 1920s, and can be seen in many art deco fashion prints.  Pochoir prints during this time were composed of tens to hundreds of stencil plates.  The stencils were usually thin plates of zinc or copper, colored with gouache or tempera using various types of  ”pompon” brushes.  Prints were done in an assembly-line fashion since so many layers were involved.  Pochoir prints were both composed solely of stencils, and also used to color black and white prints such as collotypes or lithographs.  Due to the time and labor intensity involved in making pochoir prints, this technique quickly fell out of favor.

If you’re interested in more information about pochoir, the following websites have some good general information as well as some great images:

University of Cincinnati, Archives and Rare Books Library

Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum Library

I’ve also been reading a few books about Art Deco that includes pochoirs:

The Brilliance of Art Deco by Julian Robinson

Art Deco Prints by Giuliano Ercoli

In my current work, I’ve used as many as 7 stencils (which is nothing compared to 200!) in one print, and I use a combination of hard lines and medium/soft fill to create an image.  As I said before, I’m interested in the abilities that pochoir lends to vary and control color density.  I also love the line quality that is created by cutting stencils with an exacto knife, and am interested in the imperfections and inconsistency that hand-printing produces.

recuerdos muertos (cropped)
pochoir print, 2010

parasite (cropped)
pochoir print, 2010

*Better photos to come!!*

South Pasadena Art Walk, October 23

As previously mentioned, I’ll be participating in the SOPA Studios group exhibition as part of the South Pasadena Art Walk (which was called Arts Fest, but is now Art Walk…I can’t keep up!) on Saturday October 23, 5-10pm. In addition to having a few pieces in the group show, I will have a small “art fair” style table at SOPA.  Please come by to enjoy art and support local artists!

 

 

South Pasadena Arts Fest Sneak Preview

My newest pieces will be showing at SOPA Studios October 23, as part of the South Pasadena Arts Fest (aka Art Walk).  Here’s a test print sneak preview from what I hope will be a series of self portraits for the Autumn/Halloween/Día de los Muertos season!

 

bugs and fish

Here are a few of the pochoir prints that I made for the July 17th art show at SOPA Studios.  ”Pochoir” is the French word for “stencil” – thus, these are hand-cut, hand-colored stencils.  Thanks to the lanes of Melbourne, a silkscreening class, and Animal Crossing for making it all possible.  Check out more of this series via my flickr account!

Brown Cicada, 11.5″ x 16″

 

Oranda, 5″ x 7″

Collective Works show at SOPA Studios

Come check out my latest work at SOPA Studios Collective Works exhibition, July 17, 7pm