Have a seat…

One summer in the late 90s, I signed up for a one-week printmaking workshop at Oxbow, the summer art colony outside Saugatuck, Michigan, with Holly Greenberg. A dynamo of a teacher, Holly does collagraphs and linocuts with a retro feel and a spot-on sense of humor about gender issues.

During the week, I made lots of prints using collagraph and chine collé techniques and carborundum printing. Essentially, you take a cardboard “plate” and paint on it in glue. Then you sprinkle the plate with carborundum, which sticks to the glue. You cover the plate with ink and use a piece of tarlatan cloth to wipe off all the ink except what hasn’t sunk into the texture of the carborundum, and pull a print. Then you can layer on areas of color to the print by collaging on colored paper, as in the work above. Again, I stuck to a single subject, in this case chairs, to focus on learning the techniques.