Nothing better than time in nature to draw to my hearts content. Take me back to the desert!
Nothing better than time in nature to draw to my hearts content. Take me back to the desert!
I used carve #116 to create some holiday cards for Midwest Ready Mix. Printed on 100# French Paper Steel Blue Construction with gold, silver and red ink. They are pretty swank! Also, fun fact: cement is an ingredient in concrete and not the final mix.
This week, I visited the Growing Food Growing Hope garden at First Step at Lake View—a residential addiction treatment center for women and their children—to talk with Nancy O’Connor about what the gardens are doing this year. Nancy is the passion behind the project. She and her husband, Jim, manage a small crew of student gardeners. They tend the garden at First Step and at West Middle School. Nancy teaches the students how to plant, tend and harvest produce. They host a free market at Edgewood every week for Edgewood residents. Imagine a farmer’s market where you can get the best organic produce for free. This is food justice in action.
Nancy showing me around the garden and garden shed.
In previous years, produce from the gardens was sold to raise fund to keep the gardens going. 2020 has been a different year as we all are aware of and the need for good food is high in Lawrence. This year, all the food is being donated either to the First Step kitchen or to the market at Edgewood. There is no extra money to build up funds for the gardens’ next season.
I’ve been supporting this project with graphic design work, sometimes letterpress projects in the form of seed packets and photography since 2007.
In non-COVID times, they teach cooking classes at First Step and also teach the women recovering there how to garden. There is good still going on in this world and it’s happening right here in our town and they need a little bit of help.
Visit GrowingFoodGrowingHealth.org to donate and to learn in more detail about the gardens.
Read a recent news article about the gardens on LJWorld.
The journal they use to keep track of the pounds of produce grown and donated each year.
Onions in the cleaning and drying process.
The carving is still going on over on Instagram. Here’s a #timelapse of that last carve journal I filled a few weeks ago. Thanks for following along!
We lived in this home for 8 years and although it had a few downsides, it was in general a sweet experience. We still miss our neighbors from there and I loved the architecture and the garden. It recently switched ownership again and we were able to visit in between and take a tour.
Carve 100 and a message to remind us of something important—breathe.
Wind River Range Reduction linoleum print
Limited edition five layered linoleum reduction cut.
Carved by hand. Printed by hand, one layer at a time, on a Vandercook 0 Proof Press.
A bit about the print process:
I started printing the sky and finished with grass. This is a linoleum reduction cut, there will never be more of these because as each layer was carved away what was previously printed was destroyed. There are 40 prints in this edition.
Visit my shop to get one for yourself.
A selection of the #linocutdaily2020 prints are available as postcards now in my shop. Send some cheer to someone you love!
Here’s my little Kelsey in action, printing the backs to postcards for my linocut daily carve challenge.
UPDATE: This print has been chosen to be a part of the 2020 New Impressions show in Wisconsin this summer at the Hamilton Wood Type Museum opening in June.
Monument Valley Utah print
Dimensions of the print: 6.75" tall by 19.5" wide
Dimensions of the paper: 7.25" tall by 20" wide
Limited edition five layered linoleum reduction cut.
Carved by hand.
Printed by hand, one layer at a time, on a Vandercook 0 Proof Press.
A bit about the print process:
I started off by printing a 6.75" tall by 19.5" wide piece of linoleum with bright orange ink to make the first layer. After printing a stack of those, I cleaned the lino and then started carving down the sky to the start of the land formations—leaving wispy clouds to create the sky and the slightly darker orange layer far off into the sunset. The third layer is the one that shows the most distinctive showing the actual monuments of Monument Valley. The print really began to have some dimension when this layer was printed. For the fourth and fifth layer, I cut the top half of the lino completely off so I wouldn’t get any more overprinting in the sky. Because this is a linoleum reduction cut, there will never be anymore of these. All that is left on the linoleum is the fifth and darkest layer. Each print is numbered.
Shout-outs!
The inspiration for this photo came from a photograph my good friend Scott Johnson shot. You can find his work online at scottjohnson.smugmug.com/ or on Instagram @sdjohnsonphoto
More process footage on Instagram @littledorispress.