New Mexico Art Adventure - 2011 - Printmaking

Blue skies, snow-topped mountains, pronghorns, and chili peppers greeted and delighted the WV and Ohio artists attending the 2011 New Mexico Art Adventure sponsored by Shrew'd Arts and led by artist Amy Flowers.  This year's theme was exploring the printer's art, with inspiration from the work of New Mexico's master printer, Gustave Baumann.

Our first day was spent in Santa Fe, where we visited the Governor's Palace Print Shop that features a reproduction of Baumann's studio with his actual furnishings, equipment and supplies.  The wall with his arranged pigments is an artwork in itself.

The curator explained the process Baumann used for his woodcut prints and showed us other printing presses and examples of books and other material printed there.  We went on to the NM Museum of History which currently has an exhibit of pages from the St. John's Bible.  The gorgeous artwork and calligraphy of Donald Jackson and his colleagues almost took my breath away.

For the rest of the week, we went on North to Cimarron, where we were inspired by the beauty of the mountains and worked on our art at the Casa del Gavilan. With guidance from Amy, we began carving rubber blocks and making monotype prints.  We also spent one day in Taos where we visited a print maker and watched a chine colle' in progress.

We used Golden Open Acrylic paints as our "ink" because it is slow-drying and mixes well with other media.




Here are some of the prints I made using different techniques and papers.