If You'd Only Clapped Your Hands Hard Enough

I think it was a character in a Jules Feiffer play that had this monologue about how when she was a girl watching Peter Pan there was an incident when Peter was trying to work with the kids in the audience to clap really, really hard to revive Tinkerbell after some great drain on the magic in children's hearts or something. Peter was running around frantically, yelling to get the kids to clap, and they clapped their hearts out, but Peter checked and it wasn't enough. . . Tinkerbell was dead. That's how I'm starting to feel about green printmaking. Oh, I don't want to. I'm clapping my heart out. It is not part of the great plot that the good thing to do won't work, but my, is Tink looking green-and not in a good way. Which is to say, I am invested in this working-so any help anyone can give me-I promise will be turned out to the greater good-like fairy dust. (Did I see her eyes flutter?)

I've put up a couple of test plates comparing Future floor wax and Lascaux hard ground as grounding on copper plates. I've been using the Future (as in Keith Howard's method) for a couple of years now and it has worked-flaked off badly (thick, brittle lines) at the edges (yes, despite copious degreasing), but worked. The edges issue has just been a bear, though, as I've been spending hours scraping and burnishing, so I've been very excited about trying the Lascaux hard ground-so much so that I invested in the full line of their products.

I really want these products to work, so if anybody out there has an idea of what I am doing wrong, please enlighten me! What I've found so far with Lascaux leaves me a bit disheartened. First off, I find that I cannot draw through the hard ground with the blackener on it-the needle sticks and jerks. Now, it may be the brush I use to apply the ground, but as it is a good quality flat brush, that is hard to imagine. And the stop out, which you are supposed to be able to draw through, well-if you want a slug of a line through it, you can. Also, the soft ground is not sensitive enough to work in the traditional way (drawing on paper laid on the plate). I followed the directions on the web, but found large chunks of the soft ground peeling up as I removed the drawing. So I waited (you can treat it like a hard ground after the open working time) and it drew through beautifully (though really hard to see the lines-clear film over copper), as I stopped out and lined in the missing part of the drawing. Well, the lines drawn in later, like hard ground, came out beautifully-the soft ground disappeared utterly. Help! In exasperation this afternoon after this final disappointment, I stalked out to the little red house out back to ground a plate with (gasp!) an asphaltum hard ground. It felt really good. People, I want to be green. But its not easy. Not without lots of help, not without community. Hell, even with the deadly toxic stuff you need lots of help. Oh, for an apprenticeship that would work with a toddler in tow.

As for help! There is a great forum I've found at Graphic Chemical where Dean Clark, Carol Robertson and other printers out there share their experience and advise on printing matters. Dean Clarks answers on the forum verge on poetry, and he has a blog I've linked to on this page. Robertson has put out a book : "Intaglio: Acrylic-Resist Etching, Collagraphy, Engraving, Drypoint, Mezzotint" that I've ordered off of Amazon and am very excited about.

Non Toxic Etching-Waivering Faith

It has been several years since I graduated from the San Francisco Art Institute with a degree in printmaking. It was a second degree-a chance to get it right and do what I had always wanted to do. . . which makes me think of this poem, which I know is seen a lot, but nevertheless I quote in its entirely here:

Dream Deferred

"What happens to a dream deferred?
Does it dry up
Like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore--
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over--
like a syrupy sweet?
Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.
Or does it explode?"

by Langston Hughes

Anyway, there I learned all the gorgeous, traditional etching techniques and found my medium in etching. I also became increasingly frightened of its toxic side. The first time through college etching (when I was 18 and immortal) there was no anxiety about the poisons in the etching studio but later in my thirties when I breathed in Nitric Acid or Dutch Mordant fumes, sucked down rosin and talc powders, absorbed laquer thinner and mineral spirits, cadmiums-God knows what else-I couldn't avoid thinking about when or if I was going to get around to having a baby and once I did would I mind if all the chemicals had given the baby two heads. Oh, yeah, I love the chemicals they gave me - grounds you could glide through, blackest aquatints, spit bites as easy as water color, effortless clean up and that great, moving studio smell (plus, we know there is a real machismo out there about self protection and art materials). I could have continued working that way forever- But like I said. it was later in life for me, and I knew I needed to find a way to etch that I (and any other critters in the world around me) could live with. I needed to learn how to etch safely.

So upon graduating and trying to get pregnant I started down the short (historically) but uphill road through the world of non-toxic (or less toxic) printing. So, one baby, one dog, three houses, three cities and three years later, I am still trying to find what works for me. To be honest, I often wonder if the years more life I get by working with these non-toxic materials will compensate for the ten years it takes me to get a satisfying print out of them! An exaggeration, as I have been pleased with some results I've gotten. They were hard won-hence the name of the blog "Hard Ground". But that is what I hope to do here -I want to share what is working for me among the techniques and products I've tried, and it is my greatest hope that you other printers out there will contribute so we can get this thing down-and talk about what really matters-the work! Maybe a little of both.

This is a Trillium. We saw trillions.

Jumping in

We were out hiking today. Thought that new leaves resembled exclamation points - whole flocks, flocks of Biblical proportion, of green exclamation points.

There was a sound installation there, at the Trillium trail. Art is best in nature, which is why gardens work-makes nature feel less indifferent-people putting music into the trees-Yes, it feels right. Of course there should be music coming from the trees, the ground, poetry coming out from under it all.