Fourth Fridays printmaking demos at GSA

Last Friday evening I went up to the Guelph School of Art to visit with Pam and Lydia while they did their letter press and pronto plate demonstrations for Fourth Fridays. There was a good group of interested people, printing personal messages on festive coasters with the baby letter press and creating their own pronto plate cards on the baby etching press. Here are a few shots of the action and some of the things we made.
The demonstrations were an introduction to two workshops coming up soon. Pam Lobb will be teaching letter press on Sunday, December 8th and Lydia Nieuwenkamp will be teaching pronto plate on Sunday, December 15th. These are going to be popular workshops, so make sure you register soon. You can find all the information here.

                           a few of the fun coasters we made on the letterpress

Lydia's pronto plate and print

Free Printmaking (letter press & pronto plate) Demo!

This Friday November 22nd there will be a free letterpress and pronto plate printing demos at the Guelph School of Art. Pam Lobb and Lydia Nieuwenkamp will be showing you what they do and helping you to try it out yourself. If you are interested, make sure you contact the store and sign up as space is limited.

You can check out some of the other events going on this Friday, click here for the Fourth Fridays Guelph website.

Big Arts weekend in Guelph

 Culture Days time again! We will be missing all the fun in Guelph but will be enjoying some good times with family out of town. Because there is so much going on, I thought I would share some of
the fine events planned with you. Lydia and Gillian will be hosting a hands on print event in the studio (3rd floor of 123 Woolwich St.)on Sunday, check the culturedays.ca website for more information.

 

 This Friday is also a fourth Friday and in Guelph that means lots of wonderful free events are going on. Click here for all the details.

 I am very sad to miss the wonderful and talented Janet Morton's opening at the Macdonald Stewart Art Centre Friday night at 7pm. Front page of the Guelph Mercury today has all the information. But will be happy to take in the show after the weekend, it runs until November 11th. Click here and here to read a couple interesting articles about Janet. Here are a couple examples of her work that I love but you should look her up yourself as she has done so many amazing things with wool that really need to be seen to be believed.
This is one of Janet's installations at the Paul Petro gallery in 2010

This image is from her exhibit at Museum London, last September.

 


Graffiti Fest is happening in downtown Guelph this Saturday, September 29th!
Here are a few good street art examples I noticed outside the RedBrick cafe the other day.  The fox is by an Australian artist, Andrew Frazer and Elizabeth Taylor is by a highschool student who did most of their projects this way and then submitted the
photos to their art teacher.

Paper and Lace

Tammy Ratcliff and Pam Lobb
'Paper and Lace'
-print based mixed media works-
at Renann Isaacs Contemporary Art
31 Quebec St.
Guelph, ON
519-821-9068

opening reception in conjunction with FourthFridaysGuelph.ca
on Friday June 22nd, 7- 10pm
hours: Tues.- Sat. 11- 6pm or by appointment

"Both artists are extremely disciplined in their craft and have perfected a
uniquely detailed approach to the application of layer upon layer of
tissue, printed Japanese papers, and fabrics. The work is sculptural,
delicately floating in box frames."

image: Tammy Ratcliff, 'sweet nerines in blue' etching monoprint
        with chine colle, 22" x 30"   2012

Fourth Fridays is tonight in downtown Guelph.  Our studio will be open from 7 -10pm at 123 Woolwich St. 3rd floor.  Check out the website to get current information about what is going on, when and where. Here are some photos of our November Fourth Fridays where we had a drop in card making workshop. Lots of wonderful things were made.

this is the Trafalgar Building at 123 Woolwich St. where there are lots of studios. we are on the third floor.

collage table with lots of different washi pieces  and printed Japanese papers... and some wine

Gillian made a cool screen with lots of holiday motifs for people to print

block printing station where people could hand print rubber blocks

Mike putting the finishing touches on his cards

Jess and Gillian checking out the finished print

This month Lydia and I will be doing some block printing on the small book press. We were hoping to do some demonstrations on the etching press but a sad thing happened to me this week when I was pulling my first proof for a new edition. My press broke.  Really, really broke.  After almost 20 years of hard working, with lots of editions, workshops, renters, visitors and friends it just snapped. Right now I am looking for ways to fix it but it is looking like a big job.  The part that broke is probably the most important part and it is not a small one.  Any ideas, please let me know.