I Took Myself Up to the Mountain

I took myself up to the mountain twice this week.

I've been gloriously swamped with private commission work during the past few weeks. My inbox is filling up with requests and I've been thrilled with the upswing in interest in my work.

I believe that when we are busy, the most important thing is to take a break every so often, and in my case, seek out the wilderness to restore and reinvigorate.

Now, with sore muscles and a little sunburn on my nose, I'm hitting the studio floor humming.

Kelly Was a Chevy Man

Every year at OCAC the printmaking class does a printmaking exchange. I'm invited to participate every year as one of the handful of staff and faculty who get to join the fun. Last year I made this post in which I observed that I most often render a car for these prints, like that motif was just my default. So this year I decided to deliberately exploit that theme, and carry it forward another step by making it the second in a series.

This print continues my exploration of Oregon’s landscape through narrative. I found the forest image, which is a letterpress cut, at the Letterpress Printers Fair this year, and both myself and the person I bought the cut from observed how "Oregon" the image felt. Part of this Oregon landscape is dense, rich forest, where nature is a force that has the power to reclaim what we try to take from it. Another part of Oregon’s rural landscape is the footprint we leave on it, like the phenomenon of the overturned car at the bottom of the ravine. How the hell did it get there? How did someone, at some point in history, drive to the cliff in the first place, then manage to tip their car over the edge?


Figure 2. Kelly Was a Chevy Man is printed from a vintage letterpress cut, hand-processed photopolymer from one of my many car drawings, and handset type of my very own text. Available in my Etsy store now!

Sunday Hike

7/365

The Texture of Opal Creek

2/365

Found while going through the summer archives...

This morning I received an email from a friend. It began, "I know you are keeping inventory of the animal kingdom..."
This phrase is now looping through my head, I find it completely delightful.

Dear Olallie

the long view

I've been doing a lot of posting of imagery, few words...

I promise to return with some posts of substance, some heft, some weighty thoughts and ideas (really?) But my boots are still just barely touching the ground after a dearly needed trip to the desert.

The Alvord Desert and the surrounding sage covered range is a place that defies words.

Crackling heat, dust, white playa.

Magpies, jack rabbits, coyotes, crickets, lizards, snakes...

HOT SPRINGS...

Micro and macro, light and shadow.

I stepped out of the desert into the swampy night of Portland's most humid day, returning in the middle of the night. After a sunburnt day at Oregon College of Art and Craft, I slipped back into my own studio today to print a project I can't wait to show you, in silver ink; that distinctive metallic smell still stuck in my nose, mingling with the lingering volcanic dust from the camping gear still stowed by the back door, unpacked.

But that can wait until tomorrow. Goodnight for now...