Show and Tell: 10 Years of Woodblock prints--Caffe` Petrarca Exhibit and Demo.

I'm exhibiting a good selection of my moku hanga wood block prints for the next three weeks in Florence.

The local bar and caffe`,  Caffe` Petrarca has two large rooms and hosts regular exhibits by local artists.  There is a brisk morning crowd. (Coffee and Pastries) and a very busy lunch crowd...it's popular with the businessmen and women from the local banks and offices as well as students from the Art School across the street.

Visitors are welcome.
Caffe` Petrarca is closed Saturdays, but open other days from 6am-8pm.

I opted in the end to hang prints by theme and subject rather than chronologically. The nudes and figures are in the far end, the botanical prints at the entrance and I put all the bugs, reptiles and odd creatures in a mosaic on the longest wall......and here and there are the prints that defied categorization.....hardware? (Toggle Bolt and Spring), Road signs and movement (Zig Zag and Right of Way) and poor little Scooter Kiss.....which is untranslatable without a fair amount of explanation:
"It's sort of like a Bacio Perugina, only without the hazelnut, and made with inferior chocolate, but it has a similar foil wrapper and the little paper poem or phrase.  They're very popular and often found in offices and school candy jars all over the US. The scooter? Well, no there is no real reason it's riding a scooter other than silly foolishness....." 
Try saying all that in a foreign language.......

Try explaining this to an Italian...

Rabbits

Year of the Rabbit, 2011; Preliminary Sketch

It's been AGES since I did any carving and despite having Taxes and loads of other more important things to attend to I decided to get to work on my already late "Year of the Rabbit" cards.

My image was drawn from a nice photo of a jackrabbit on the web stylized a bit to allow for some easier carving and loosely drawn in a format that will suit a small postcard-sized image.

Sami, looking at this and the half-dozen earlier sketches had asked,
"Why don't you add an earring?" and the idea was planted and it was a good one.
This is the year of the METAL rabbit and multiple piercings are all the rage here in Santa Cruz, (Northern California) and elsewhere so this will be just perfect.

This image became the hanshita and I've just finished carving and proofing the keyblock. Next the proofs will get glued down to new boards to allow for the color blocks; I'm thinking probably four color blocks in addition to the keyblock.

Toadprints at Coffeetopia!

Well, it's official:

Shapes and Postures, recent prints 2008-2011
by Andrew Stone
went up today and will be on display until April 15th.

We hung 19 prints this afternoon at Coffeetopia, 1723 Mission St; Santa Cruz: a local, popular coffeehouse. No photos yet, I left my camera at home and was whizzing about trying to get them all up after the shop closed. Dave the owner graciously helped hang the prints and adjusted the lighting.
All that's left to do is sneak in in the morning and put up all the identification tags of the framed prints.

There will be a mid-show opening March 25th 6-8p and I hope anyone in the Santa Cruz, South Bay or San Francisco area can come!

Frames: old friends in new clothes

I will be having a small show of my work opening March 1st in a local, popular coffee shop; this will be the first time I show my work in a public space and I'm pretty excited about it. It is a popular spot and I go there frequently; there is a good mix of construction workers, students and university faculty and locals and it will be a chance to see how a rather normal "public" reacts to my prints. There is a long wall, well-lit along one side and there should be room for 12-15 prints. I've spent the last few weeks searching local, second-hand shops for vintage or used frames; and the local stores for small frames that look suitable.

Most of my work has never been framed but instead, frantically printed, put away soon after as I moved quickly on to another idea.
It's been a novel experience to haul out the big Logan mat cutter I got at a yard sale and all the mat board I've been accumulating over the years. Since all the frames are different it's been a bit of a puzzle to figure out what goes well where.
Some is just size.
I'm surprised at how many of my works are really long vertical formats (that don't want to fit in a pre-made, standard frame.
And some of the work is trying to judge wood color: cherry? maple/natural? Brown, black or gilt.

But it is slowly coming together. I have about half of them framed and a few days off next week to finish the rest.
I'll try and take some pictures too when they're up on the walls.