Ottawa School of Art Residency - Week 2

As the Ottawa School of Art is closed on Sundays during the summer I spent last Sunday working on embroidering into my fabric prints all day. It was a nice break to relax on the balcony and the couch. 

Week two of my residency at the Ottawa School of Art has felt significantly more productive. I finished editioning all 6 of the 6 inch blocks that I proofed last week. And I printed the first two colours on the twenty four inch block.

OSA - Studio selfie. 

One heck of a roller storage unit at OSA.

READY... SET... PRINT! 

First block spot rolled with three colours. 

First edition finished. Haven't decided on any titles yet. 

Tiny spot rolling requires tiny rollers, sometimes. I found this little handmade roller in the roller collection at OSA.

The tiny roller worked great on this complicated block. 

Cleaning up the edges of the block before printing. 

Love the energy in this print! 

Spot inking this intricate block was fun. 

Details. 

Third block editioned! 

Onward to the fourth block. 

This one was by far the most complicated to ink and took most of a day to edition. 

Messy spot inking... 

Rags and Q-tips help when cleaning up the messy spot roll, then some careful inking with the blue. 

Sometimes it takes a little while to figure out my colour choices. This block was the most difficult to make colour decision with!

Quick photos of all 6 prints together. 

As soon as I finished these prints I started on the large 24x24 inch block that I've been excited to turn into a reductive print for a while.

Carving more from the same block for the next layer. 

Two layers down, plenty more to go next week.
I ran into some registration issue, as the rice paper is quite flimsy and it's to handle at that size without help of an assistant. First time I ran into this problem, as I usually don't print oversize reduction prints on the direct press.

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Riding my bike into OSA each morning and back has become significantly easier. Last week was a bit rough on that front. But the ride is quite lovely for long stretches it goes through the Rideau River Pathway system, I see a ton of wildlife, rabbits, black squirrels, many different birds, muskrats, racoons and sometimes I see people sitting in camping chairs in the river, which is a bit of an odd sight, but I guess it must be pleasantly cool. My favourite part is crossing the Adawe bike/pedestrian bridge which has two large metal balls attached to it which create a fishbowl like mirror when you bike over it. It is an art installation by Kenneth Emig you can view a wintery version of it here. I will try to capture some good photos of it on my commute next week.

Stay tuned for the following post about the workshops I taught during the last few days at OSA.