How Not to Move a Litho Stone.

I'm attempting to teach Lithography to my advanced/grad students this semester at CSUN. All is going well so far, except for this unplanned demonstration. "See, class? It really hurts!"

Not a tear, though.

King's Gold.

Most of the things I make tend to be intricate and detailed.

Obsessive.

I am skilled. I am good at lots of things. I'm good with my hands.

On the good days I feel pretty graceful in my movements.

I react and adapt pretty quickly to things.

But I want to make sure that everyone out there knows that this kind of thing happens:



I had been sitting on my studio floor talking to my brother on the phone, and to make the most of my time I had been drawing with this ink..."king's gold" by shaffer, in a glass jar with one of the little built in inkwells. Later in the evening I tripped, (or something) and watched as the jar rolled away across the hardwood floors with a loose lid, leaving little puddles along the way.

I didn't really freak out. I thought, "oh no. I liked that ink!" and "I'm never living in a place with carpets ever again."

Since I really liked the color of the ink, I didn't go straight for the paper towels. Instead, I quickly shuffled through "the archives" and found these old print pieces from grad school. Subtle-on-subtle, these were white silkscreen on mulberry paper, with monotype and some stitching. Parts from some of the ol' super-complicated installations...



I mopped up the floor with them. It felt right. And (as I expected) the ink rejected the silkscreen beautifully, so they are on their way to becoming something else.

Sometime.

So yeah. This happens. Hell, its just paper. The floor is fine.

My students would agree that I have clumsy moments. One day I dropped a zinc plate during a demo. I joked, "and then you throw your plate on the floor..." A student asked what that does to the plate. I responded that it reorganizes the molecular structure of the metal in preparation for going in the acid.



Today it has cooled off in California. I have a feeling I'll want to put on a sweater when I leave work this evening.

Now I'm going to go have a frank discussion with the silkscreen exposure unit, and ask it nicely...again....to behave properly with me in front of my students.