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!

Does the Work of 5 Men

I'm in the middle of reading Sometimes a Great Notion. I sink into bed late at night with a glass of wine and snap on my little pin lamp so as not to wake the Monkey, and I read as many paragraphs or pages as I can get through before my eyelids drop permanently. It's typically a fast process. I'm exhausted lately. It's been months of 12 hour days, but it's been incredibly fulfilling.

But back to that book. Sometimes a Great Notion is epic. It's monstrous. I'm absolutely swept away by it, and I'm only a third of the way through. The Monkey has his own notion of Kesey, a notion formed of the Further days and of a rambling, roving hippie. There's also his impression of Kesey gleaned through Hunter S. Thompson's Hells Angels. But before Kesey became captain of the trippiest bus that criss-crossed the country, he was an Oregon boy. A champion wrestler, too.

Sometimes a Great Notion revolves around the Stamper family and the logging strike that is eating away at a little Oregon town. Since the arrival of the chainsaw, work gets done a helluva lot faster. It does the work of five men. But logging is still back-breaking, ball-busting work. Somebody's got to do it.

I spent some time camping at a logging site with a logging family when I was young. It was stark and desolate among the stumps. When it rained there was no shelter. It wasn't pretty, it wasn't recreation. But it has, in a long lineage of hindsight, given me perspective. A glimpse into a world endangered, nearly extinct (my rage at our decades of clear-cutting our forests into extinction notwithstanding.)

Anyway. Lately I've been working really hard, too. Luckily, I love what I do, and I intend to do this until the skin wears away from my fingertips and I can no longer stand at my press to crank the handle one last time.

Aside from my solo show which recently opened, I'm working toward a summer full of work to send off to various places around the country.

Here's a little glimpse:

Typical Rimrock and Desert Scenery, collagraph and photopolymer, 2012

Does the Work of 5 Men, collagraph and photopolymer, 2012

Tuf : New Prints

Tuf: New prints by Clare Carpenter

June 7 - July 1, 2012
Centrum Gallery
Oregon College of Art and Craft
8245 SW Barnes Rd.
Portland, OR 97225

Opening reception June 7, 4 to 7pm

The End of the Road

figure 1: The end of the road.

Almost every year I participate in an annual print portfolio exchange with the fall printmaking class at OCAC. Almost every year my print has a car on it.

Go figure, yeah?

48 hours in Bend, Oregon

12:30 pm, Saturday afternoon. Arrive in Bend and head straight to Jackson's Corner because you are starving and hyped up on thermos coffee and excitement to finally be working on a project you first began developing five years ago, and you know you'll want some solid hours in the studio uninterrupted by hunger. Contemplate ordering a whole pizza to devour on site but opt for a turkey sandwich on a roll with everything on it, and a pickle. Sit outside even though it's overcast and threatening rain, because you know that even if it does, it will be drier than where you come from.

1:00 pm. Go directly to A6 and meet with Pat, the owner, who quickly shows you the ropes, sets up a press for you, and lets you set to work.

Don't hesitate.

Even though you haven't got the specific pieces for your project to work with, you still have a lot to learn about the materials, and you're ready to let go of the tedious parts of your process, if only for a little while, in order to let things evolve through hours of work on the press.

4:30 pm. Look up at the clock and realize that you've been literally playing for three hours, and that you haven't felt this relaxed and carefree about your process in years. Clean up, which is quick and easy because you are working with water-based inks, and start thinking about dinner.

5:30 pm. Meet your mother at her apartment with fresh greens from your garden and a mixed six-pack of Deschutes Brewery beer. Cook dinner together and talk until 11:00, when you fall into bed and are immediately knocked out until morning.

********

7:00 am, Sunday morning. Wake up surprisingly easily, having slept the sleep of someone who has started something good the day before, and who looks forward to tomorrow. Shower, fill up a water bottle and slip out the door in under a half an hour. Pick up a scone and a bag of fruit at the nearby market, and head to Thump Coffee to catch the tail end of stage 15 of The Tour and to check email. Be a tiny bit alarmed by the ease in which total strangers strike up conversation with you, and remember that Bend is still a small town. Drink a perfect latte and bang out an estimate for a client and knock off a handful of emails. You've been up for just a little over an hour and you've already handled the most mundane tasks of your day. The rest is yours.

9:30 am. Head back to the studio, where you will get so absorbed in learning the properties of the new ink you are using, in anticipating and being surprised by the results, and by just wanting to try *one more thing*, that you work two hours longer than you had planned.

2:30 pm. Find a pizza place with adorable young Central Oregon types who serve you with genuine smiles and inquiries about your day. Pass at least three drum circles on your walk downtown. Discover that the library is an excellent place to get the remainder of your internet business tidied up for the day.

5:00 pm. Go for a walk through the neighborhoods that were once your haunts. Take photos, take notes. Discover that things really haven't changed that much, and that Bend has really always been a hobbit town. Walk past a market with a friendly looking crowd composed of adults drinking pitchers of beer at picnic tables and children carousing around a play area with their families looking on. Decide on a whim to order a beer and sit among the crowd. Doodle an ill-formed contour drawing that tries to capture the wonkiness of the neighboring houses. Be invited into a conversation by a group of friendly locals.

********

9:00 am, Monday morning. This morning you'll take your coffee to go to the studio, maximizing your time before the COCC printmaking class will arrive, and you will have to pack up to go back to Portland. You're starting to find your rhythm in the studio by now, and you're starting to see a theme develop. You begin to feel excited about the idea that through three days of working, just working with your hands and your materials, not over-thinking, not belaboring concept, you've reached am entry point. You've begun to see a path. You're re-discovering your art through your hands, not just through the lens of your conceptual notions.

12:30 pm. Skip out of the studio having cleaned up just under the radar of the incoming class. You're packed and looking forward to going home, back to your own studio, and to seeing the Monkey. But you accidentally on purpose take a wrong turn, and you're heading toward Shevlin Park. You keep going, and when you get there, you take your bike off your car's roof rack, you throw on your helmet and shoes, and you pedal across the river and up the bank on the other side. You become temporarily confused by the blacktop you encounter there, but then you're just as enraptured by the giant Salsify plants waiting for just the right gust of wind to blow them away. You carry on until the path returns to dust, and you ride the ridge, remembering every turn and dip from long ago rides, until you find the entrance to that other trail you used to love riding when you lived here. You climb the loose rock and are happy to find that your legs are up to the task on your single speed, even though you haven't ridden all year. Bend's dirt has given you wings. You fly back down the trail and across the ridge, back to your car, where coconut juice and a drive over the mountains awaits.

another thing? this blog post goes to 11!

I nearly forgot! One more item to add to the list:

11. Sign up for summer classes now at Oregon College of Art and Craft. Or click the new link in the side bar for "news and upcoming" and see the description for my summer printmaking and letterpress class, and then sign up!

Normally, summer classes in the book arts department at OCAC are five day, all-day intensives for a solid week. This creates a wonderful, camp-like atmosphere, but often it leaves out those who can't, or would rather not, blow their summer vacation time in a classroom. This summer we're trying a schedule similar to the evening classes offered during the academic year - but slightly compressed. 10 classes in five weeks, two classes a week in the evenings. We're still offering week-long classes held by our artists in residence and other visiting artists, but now there's also an alternative.