josh's japanese carving tools

I am currently doing a stay at home residency at school. We are calling it "Staystack". There are several artists working in the studios at school and we meet up for breakfast and lunch and then just work all day. We'll do this for the next few weeks and hopefully end up with some new work at the end of the time.

Well yesterday I stopped by to see what Josh Winkler was working on. He showed me his woodblock and prints. Josh is a super talented individual and super cool to chat with. He showed me these sweet Japanese carving tools that he got when he was in Japan. I love the swivel action and little bamboo rivet that holds his carving tool. The simplicity of the little brass tube ferrule closer is so sweet. He said these are super cheap to buy in Japan, but super expensive if you try to buy them in the States. Such a cool tool design though. Inspiring!

It has me thinking about tools and tool design. I need to get back to making tools as a part of my creative work. I think I may dig up my file handle project again and see if I can get a few of those cast this week. That would be fun to respond to Josh's tools. Now I'm starting to understand the benefit of not just working in my own studio alone. A good reason to continue doing our Staystack residency.

 

arion press

jay fox

Jay Fox gettin' it done!

cigar tax print

I made this print for Jay the other day. He had pulled this image from a super old litho stone a while ago (I need to get the full story on this, as he mentioned someone had the stone and was using it for a cool doorstop). I tried to get this image ready for our demo, but I just didn't have the time to get the code written for it. I finally got to it over the weekend.

collaborative thinking and making...post-digital

I went to Paul Cantanese's panel talk at MIAD on Friday morning. I had met him the night before at the DCRL and we had a great time talking about the residency that he had done in Peoria and his book. He mentioned another panelist that I just had to meet when he and I talked. I showed up and discovered that the other panelist was Denise Bookwalter. Denise took my Intro to Jewelry and Metalsmithing course when I was a graduate student teaching at the U of I. It seems she now has tenure and is teaching at Florida State University and has recently been involved in starting a similar lab like the DCRL called FAR (Facility For Arts Research). It was great to hear about the projects that she is working on and cool to see her coming at things from the Printmaking side of things while we are doing the same from the Metals side. I hope to keep in contact with her. The other panelists were great as well. It was inspiring.

print:MKE 2013 part six

We had a lot of things set up in the DCRL for the conference. Michael E. and Bryan had the new drawbot set up, Jay had cut some linoleum blocks with the laser cutter, Raoul has a few of his woodcuts there, I made some free stickers and had some etching stencils set out, and artist Richard Forbes had his copper plate for top spinning set up in the fabrication lab. I think we had over 1,500 people in Kenilworth that night and I know at times I could barely move while standing in the output lab. It was crazy busy! We had the small router running, one of the 3D printers printing, vinyl cutter plotting, and Jay had his printing presses set up in the room as well. We had a great time and we met so many cool people.

print:MKE 2013 part four

I made some prints of the exploded view Easy Rider during our demo.

print:MKE 2013 part three

The Kenilworth studio Building was filled with several small print collections. It was great to see some much work up on the walls.

print:MKE 2013 part two

I made a 3D printed printing plate for the conference demo that Jay and I did.