Carving, printing, and an encore...

Good Morning! Here in Delaware its a cool, perfectly lovely day, and I am headed out to the PA Renaissance Faire for a day of rest and relaxation. ( ie NOT glazing) My teammate Karen Totten asked me to help her out this morning as her post on glazing and firing was delayed. Sometimes the kiln IS the boss. So I thought I would share with you a post from my blog - that was part of a conversation I was having with teammate Diana Ptaszynski about carving. Enjoy!

My friend, fellow clay artist and AJE member Diana P. wrote a post (last week) regarding her foray into carving stamps. She is working with EZ carve - similar in consistency to white erasers. Its great to carve, but a little springy. Too soft for what she wanted to do in clay, but great fun nontheless. 

So I decided to share some linoleum I had carved, and stamped into clay. This is the economy "battleship" linoleum that I used to use when I taught art/printmaking as a public school teacher. Its shallow but very firm and worked well for my new dseries of icons. 

Yin Yang and Om signs in clay - awaiting finishing.  

Here's my carving area, complete with bench pin, and a few other "icons" in progress. This series I designed to keep simple and have the symbol itself be very clear and legible. I like the texture the carving leaves - as contrasted to the smooth background surface. These are going to be glazed in an array of colors... 

And one more example of linoleum and clay in tandem: this is a clay tile/print from a linoleum block I carved in San Diego. When I lived there I had an amazing artist/mentor in Sibyl Rubottom. This was from a printmaking and letterpress workshop I took at her studio, Bay Park Press. It was carved to print  and accompany text set in letterpress. And so I tested it in clay - was thrilled the depth was sufficient to give me a print to glaze. This was the test piece; I plan to do more for my fall shows. 

I am excited to be able to draw on the creative energy of that fruitful time - although I work in such different materials. I am glad the block carved 10 years ago and across the US can be reborn here, now. In many ways my series of "Mythic Nature" tiles and pendants are similar to a run of prints... but that philosophical musing will wait for another day. I have more to glaze...

Jenny www.jdaviesreazor.com