IPE Print Exchange & the lil sketchbook exchange and some lino-printing action

Today I received two very exciting letters in the mail. One of the two was posted from Derby, United Kingdom by Green Door open access Printmaking studio's IPE (international print exchange) 2009. Who by the way have a very cool website, definitely worth checking out, and very soon will have artist-profiles and an online gallery of all the prints which were submitted.
This wasn't just a fun print exchange to participate in, it is by far the most informative and well presented exchange I've ever been part of. Here is what was in the package:

An envelope with the small prints by other artists that I received in return for my edition submission. A list with detailed information on the prints that I received and Names and origins of the artists that my edition went to (this one I didn't find until later on, it was hidden in the backpocket of the very cool fold-out "poster" info booklet that they included as well.

The first print in the stack by Elizabeth Burton (Queensland Australia).
And here are the other 7 prints I received, i'll list the artists from left to right, top to bottom: Mirka Hokkanen (Washington, USA), Anna Ornella Dell'Acqua (Italy), Melissa Lee ( Florida USA), Anjali Goel (India), Benjamin Love (Idaho, USA), Sarah Harvey (New South Wales, Australia) and David Bigelow (Michigan, USA)
Turns out my prints are now all over the world: (Several went to different states) USA, Italy, Singapore, India.
That super cool fold out booklet had all the names of the printexchange participants.
And this is by far the coolest, it had stats about the exchange, location, print medium and paper type. Turns out half of the exchange came from the US (even though it was organized in the UK), the most used print medium was Etching, and in 2nd place linocut. And the most used paper was Rives (really no surprise there! :) )

So after this super cool package, I opened the second letter which came from Iowa! I mentioned before that I started this sketchbook exchange with Allison Honeycutt from Iowa. We both began sketching in these little moleskin journals, and are now exchanging them after filling 2 pages each (+ inside cover). This is super exciting. I really love her light and weightless drawing/painting also because i've been doing rather dark pen and ink drawings lately and i think this will be a very cool collaboration!





So I am also still working in the printshop. Initially I wanted to wait with printing my new linocut until I return to the Atelier de l'Ile in Val David. But since I found out that this might take a while (end of october), I decided to proof it at school and here is what I did:

The inked up block.



printed proof.
set up and proof on the small offset press.

The offset press blanket with the image tranfered to it.