Monday 31 March 2008

Johnny McMillan, Joan Stuart Ross, Michelle Boehm and Zebadiah








Quite a mixed bag this time – there’s Johnny (Johnny McMillan) who I first came across on Flickr. He’s from Ireland, in fact graduated from the NCAD in Dublin, a few years back. The print here is from his graduation exhibition. He said it was an absolute awful hassle to make. I get the impression J. is not doing anything in terms of printmaking nowadays as he has moved to Australia and seems to present himself primarily as a photographer.

While I was on Flickr, I also found the mysterious “Zebadiah” (don’t even know his family name). This was the only tradigital print he had on there, although I could see that he does do lithographic prints as well.

Michelle Boehm, a graphic designer from Philadelphia was another “one off-er”, where making tradigital work is concerned.

My guess is that maybe MB and Z. were driven by a desire to participate in a print exchange, which of course usually requires that an edition of e.g. 15 prints be sent to the coordinator.

Consequently the idea of combining a traditional technique with inkjet seems like a good idea. Whatever the context – it can sometimes help to give other people ideas for their creative work and of course that’s one of the excellent things that the Internet has going for it.

My final entry for this post is artist Joan Stuart Ross who has a very full resume and is obviously a very committed and serious artist. As well as jurying exhibitions, and teaching she is involved in running a print workshop. She seems to mainly like to work with monoprint as well as having extensively explored encaustic as a medium.

Sunday 30 March 2008

Colangelo, Zdzislaw, Niederhausen and Piasentin







All four of the artists are working in higher educational faculties on different parts of the American continent. Their roots, going by their family names point towards Italy, Eastern Europe, Germany and France ??.

Colangelo is a Canadian Born, American, who lives and works in St. Louis, Missouri. Where inkjet is concerned , he uses a variety of printmaking processes to accompany it. Usually he employs one technique, at a time, i.e., these include collagraph, "chine colle" or silkscreen. More of his work can be seen at the Bruno David Gallery

As well as being a printmaker, Niederhausen also makes bookart which includes altered books as well as collaborations with poets. You can see more of her work on her personal website

Sikora Zdzislaw hails from Illinois, where he teaches fine art.

Piasentin is from California and is yet another professor (Pepperdine University) . He has had many international exhibitions and likes to experiment tradigitally by incorporating collage and embossing elements.

Saturday 22 March 2008

Tradigital Printmaking by Linden Langdon







Digital Elements in Printmaking


an article by Linden Langdon


This print was developed for a print exchange which has members from a number of countries throughout the world. The exchanges happen twice a year, around the summer and winter solstice. The print size is usually very small to fit into standard envelopes – 15 x 10cm for this one.
The exchanges are themed, and the current process is for each participant to send to a central coordinator who then collates the prints and returns the collection to each person. This is a great way to look at a wide range of print techniques and be in touch with artist internationally.
The digital layer for my print is originally a solar or sun print. This is a an item, in this case a twig of Myrtle which is an endemic Tasmanian tree, which is laid on a piece of photo sensitive paper and exposed in the sun.

I then scanned the solar print and altered it in Photoshop to produce the background for the print.
The top layer is a lino cut.

Linden Langdon

Pace Prints - anybody "mixing it" over there ??












Pace Prints, New York have been on the go since 1968 and with the facility of it's own print workshop, this well-known outfit has long been publishing editions too. Many well-known American artists are featured here I'd say there were only about 40% that I had not heard of.

Included on their books are luminaries such as Francesco Clemente, Kiki Smith (one of my own favorites) and Chuck Close. So that gives you an idea of its profile in the fine art world.

I guess if you’ve got your artwork represented there - then you can’t be doing too badly.

I found several artists of relevance in their gallery - these being Vik Muniz and Jane Hammond who I’d heard of previously, whereas
“Macdermot and McGough”, Mary Hellman, and Stephen Sollins were unknown to me.


Pace Prints

Wednesday 19 March 2008

Tradigital artist-printmakers from OlsonLarsen




Today’s post (and I am noticing that these are not frequent enough!!) is based on artworks found on a website of a gallery Olsonlarsen dot com, based in Iowa. The gallery was originally established about twenty years ago or so and shows a range of professional fine artists with about 8 -10 printmakers out of a total of about 30 artists.

I am glad I gave it the 'once over' again as I came across a second artist on there of relevance.

To the first artist, a local, who is called Jeanine Coupe Ryding. There is no doubt from looking at her work that she is a stunning woodcut artist, creating abstract yet lyrical narratives - if that makes any sense. The two pieces that I have included here feature wood cut combined with inkjet.

Some of her other media of preference include photo etching with chine colle as well as collage and straightforward inkjet Prints.

The other artist I found at the Olson Larsen Gallery is
Timothy Frerichs, who like Jeanine the aforementioned tradigital artist, completed an MFA in Germany.
Just from browsing through Timothy’s work on the gallery website, it would appear that he is quite experimental with materials and not just in terms of printmaking which is mainly intaglio.
Drawing media include charcoal, pigment, encaustic, oil, and ink. Substrates include ‘collage on handmade paper’
‘ink on panel’, ‘collaged panel’
and ‘sandblasted glass’

Tradigital printmakers from Flickr







Today’s post shows prints found on Flickr which if you are unaware is a huge photo database. It’s used by a lot of artists of many calibers. For example the first two prints on view are by people who don’t seem to have printmaking as their main practice.
Moominsean aka Sean J Rohde is from Phoenix, Arizona and his main preoccupation, really seems to be more focused on toy cameras and old cameras as is evident if you visit his personal website/blog.
However he has a collection of images on his Flickr album
though no further tradigital works that I could see. The work featured here, the first on this post, is untitled and described as inkjet on woodblock.

The next work is again found on Flickr, and is by Ida Kumoji (USA).
Its "Untitled" and described as linoleum & Digital inkjet print, Ida, seems to be mainly working in the design field so I couldn’t see any further examples of printmaking. Having said that, here is Ida's website for your curiosity/reference.
The work was entered to a print exchange with Print Zero Studios which was set up by Brian Lane and Jeremy Cody in 2003.
I did actually participate in one of these myself, a few years back.
Their own website seems to be currently offline however they use a Flickr photo album
as the window on all the exchanges and show the individual prints made and contributed towards each exchange.

The only thing that I could find out about Charles Mulligan III was that he is into playing golf. He’s the creator of this next print which is described as drypoint, inkjet and green tea (?) Again no title. This was another print exchange entry in one of the Print Zero Studios exchanges.

Afurther printmaker from Flickr making work using inkjet is Susan Gans, who works mainly using photography and etching in her work.

Thursday 13 March 2008

Print Editions and Circular Work








TRADIGITAL - experimentation in digital print which incorporates silkscreen, relief + intaglio techniques. Through this project I hope to research, learn, question, share and thereby provide an educational vehicle for practicing printmakers.

Relatively recent internet research to discover printmakers, who are tradigital, has not proved terribly fruitful; which is why for some time, I have had this idea.

In February 2008 I became aware of the A.N. artists talking
project, this gave me the impetus to get started.

In March, due to the technical difficulties, I moved the project here to Blogspot.

Initially I shall show some of my own work, to demonstrate what I have been doing within my own printmaking.

At the same time I plan to conduct research on the internet and publish my findings. As time goes on, hopefully I will get this database " and built up" shall be distributing “calls to artists” as well as inviting artists to contribute.

I am particularly hopeful that I can get artists to discuss their practice in relation to tradigital printmaking.




Details of the Images shown with this post

Aine Scannell, 'Easpa Dubra (Nature Unknown)', pigmented ink digital print, etching. 2004. Size: 26 x 32 cm approx
Made for an international print exchange project (Print Australia)
co-coordinated by Yvonne Dorricott and Josephine Severn The given theme was "Nature". Edition 23.



“I spent a long time creating backgrounds that I thought might integrate well with the etching element of this print. Ironically after much time spent exploring materials such as chalk pastel and watercolor - it was when I came across a section from one of my earlier painting on paper that I KNEW I had a 'match', also it worked in terms of theme and context, which was great.

My idea for the print being about human clones, invitro fertilization births and the like. I was thinking of how these individuals would be created and might not know what their biological roots were- their heritage in a sense. Anonymous sperm donations and so forth although the law in the UK has changed now. These were the ideas I was exploring, as I was creating my print, in response to “Nature”.


The etching was made on copper using "Photrak" (photographic acrylic resist etch), this I made using the facilities at London Print Studio.

I actually made three plates before I got it right!!
The inkjet transparency was generated out of Photoshop, using a scan of mohair wool (a favorite of mine - I very much like it's organic 'hirsute' quality). The edition for this portfolio was 23.


Aine Scannell, 'Ice Babies II', pigmented ink digital print and collagraph., 2001. Photo: A.Scannell. Size: diameter 38 cm, 1.5 cm depth. Printed on Hahnemuhle 200 gsm (approx) paper.

This is the second tradigital version of Ice Babies. It was made for exhibition initially at an artist run Galerie called Listakot in Reykjavik. I got a lot of help from an artist printmaker, Johanna Sveinsdottir prior to arriving there with my artwork. My friend Birna Matthiasdottir introduced us to one another. That gallery is closed down now.
Anyway thereafter, I reworked the piece and exhibited it as part of the Printmakers Council presentation within Fresh Art , at the Business Design Centre, London
27 – 29 July 2001



Aine Scannell, 'Vita Contempletiva', digital print with relief print, 1999. Size: 29 x 20 cm. Made for ' Partners in Print (based in Australia) – this was my very first international print portfolio exchange! Relief and inkjet print, Fabriano5 paper, Edition: 23

Sunday 9 March 2008

Tradigital Printmaking -what this blog is about




I actually started a blog over on A.N. but it has limitations and therefore I have decided to bring all the material from there over to Blogger. One of the main reasons is because I will be able to tag entries and thereby be able to e.g. see all the entries for "lino and inkjet" at a glance and so forth.
Thereby making it possible to view all works made using intaglio and inkjet, which as well as hopefully being useful to visitors to this blog will also be useful for me.

Before I go any further I ought to explain what is meant by the term tradigital. Essentially it is an original print that has been made by incorporating inkjet on the paper (or other substrate) along with one or more of the traditional printmaking techniques such as intaglio, silkscreen or relief.