Good morning! "Dual Roots" was completed and released this week, as you might have seen already. I'm very pleased with it! By the time this post goes live it will be active on all of Society6, Redbubble, and Art of Where, as well as properly cataloged on the first two platforms. You can visit S6 and RB on the sidebar! With that one done, I can move back to chipping away a Uke Fresco... which brings me to related bad news: my ukulele broke!! It was very unfortunate. The peg that lodged the neck and the body together had splintered and broken down over time due to the tension of the strings. So I decided to detach it and replace the core with a very large screw and a lot more woodglue. To further reinforce I decided to drive nails down, but in the process I managed to splice the Dark Crystal from the back of the neck, adding more work... some gluing and woodfilling later, it's a hot mess. I left it alone for a week having been caught up with my main work but I hope to return to it later today. I'll need to clean it up, sand it, paint over repairs, and seal it again. I've been a little sad all week that I haven't been able to practice my tunes, so fingers crossed the finishing goes swiftly. Tomorrow, I'll be starting the new batch of "Vessel" prints for the end of the month, which I look forward to. I have considered livestreaming, but I still have to sit on the idea a little longer. I'm self-conscious of my workspace since it is just the basement where most junk and food essentials are stored. If I just pose the angle at the table where I'm working it might be worth a shot, but it would have to incorporate both inking and the press. Maybe when I'm done registering paper I'll fiddle around with a tripod someplace, and arrange for no interruptions. After "Vessel" is done, I actually recovered some other plates that I wish to print off of. It'll be fun to revisit "Gruff", "Saturnine", and "Glassmaker's Hearth" to build up some stock, but I also have this larger one I crafted to test out integrated glass printing a few years back. It's just a scene of marshland, but it'll be fun to see how it would look like as a vitreograph. It's worn in deep so I'm unsure it would work as an intaglio surface but it's still worth trying! That's pretty much it for now. I'll be joining a phone meeting with GAAC about the Social Media Team proposal I mentioned last week, and I'll let you know how that goes. If you haven't visited the Virtual Exhibition, please do!
https://gaacanada.ca/Exhibitions/exhibiteh Happy Father's Day, Gosia P.S. Oh!! Society6 has joined the facemask game, which means I have to revisit all of my designs on there up to date... Nice, but also ugh, more upkeep. Should only take me a sitting though, so I'll get it done asap!
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Hello again! I took the week off posting to social media, partly to reduce noise but to also just let myself recuperate. I have kept myself busy with things though! I managed to get some really interesting prints of “Vessel”. I've finally accepted that I don't have to have a set amount of editions so I've been a lot more happy trying different things on the fly. It has a very different look depending on the inkjob and what paper colour is used. I have some that are just two layers, some that have three, and others that have four. I'm very happy with myself, especially with my registration. I'll be printing more iterations now that I have a better idea of what I'd like “Vessel” to look officially. Unfortunately I've run out of transparent base, which has proved to be a very effective modifier to my inks. Due to quarantine times it seems a lot of art stores are in short supply, and I won't be able to get some before my next deadline at the end of the month. I'll have to call around tomorrow to get an estimated stockup date. I'm sure I can find my ways around it though! In other news, since it's been a while since a new print-on-demand design was dropped, I've been working on a new illustration. It's based on the negative that was used to produce my glass pieces “Flourish”, “Churn”, and “Thrive”. The two motifs were always meant to be displayed together, but the project I had used the them for involved a lot more experimentation than finalization (what's new?). I still have the originals and their rubber duplicates, as well as some backup photo-resists. Maybe I can make another glass original with both images on it... then I don't have to worry about how they fit together on different planes. But back to the image, I will have three iterations of its design available in the shops, and maybe even some with just one or the other. Stay tuned for that, I hope to release it as soon as possible! If you're reading this and happen to be someone who's bought from my shops, thank you!! I really appreciate your support, and I would love to see you donning it or tell me what you think. In other news, “Gethsemane” is on display in “Exhibition Eh!”, a virtual glass exhibition through the Glass Art Association of Canada. You'll see my entry under my official name, which is a mouthful... I'm hoping to have that resolved soon. In addition to that, “Plague Gaffer” is also technically on display as the exhibition's official representative, which humbles me. I hope to make a companion glass maker of his likes very soon, after this design and after I finish “Uke Fresco” when I stop. Putting. It. OFF! Anyway, just click the image below and it'll open up the virtual exhibition in a separate tab! I have also been asked to be apart of the GAAC Social Media team! I'm very excited and look forward to seeing how that goes.
I thiiiiiiink that's it for now. Stay tuned for some content and updates this week, I feel a lot better after my break. I suggest anyone to do so, even if social media seems especially pressing. Connecting with you soon, Gosia Hello! The print call-of-submission deadline that I was grinding towards delayed this entry, but it ended up being pushed for another month, which is a blessing. That being said, I am going to continue cultivating my rate of productivity. Vessel has reached the point where I can play around with proofs, to see what needs revisiting and how I want the finals to look. After the Lonely Hydra, I experience a bit of a thrill before running the plate through the press, just WAITING for the dings of stress fissures. But so far so good. I've been posting stories of its progress on my social platforms if you missed them, but I can plant a few photos here. So far so good... the gluechip ripped a little deeper than I meant to, so there is a bit of a dip where the paper won't pick up the ink, but I can work around it. I also have a separate plate I can play around with, maybe to add a different dimension. Before I started printing, as a precaution, I made a rubber silicone impression of the carving. It's not meant to help recreate a printing plate or anything, but it does give me the chance to make an integrated glass print of it in the future. Since I was working with rubber silicone anyway, I went and made molds of the two skulls I sculpted in wax. A little bit on the thin side, they mark the end of my Rebound 25 supply, so I won't be able to make any more replica molds until I get the funds for a new kit. I guess it's finally time to start making finals and look for kilns to fire in. Finally. I kept telling myself I was just getting ready for production, getting ready for the time I can start firing in an accessible kiln and be unstoppable. But being stuck in the prep process has admittedly locked me in that stage, extinguishing and confusing my inspirations and priorities. My search for kilns has also been neglected, whether to own and place in my own home or at any collectives. A lot of things have gotten in the way, so I won't beat myself up too badly, but there are certain things I wish I had a better grasp of. Better late than never though, right? I'm excited.
I'm also excited by the fact that my Art of Where shop is F.I.N.A.L.L.Y up to date!! I won't be bogged down by it whenever I sit down to make a new design. I'm gonna get back to Uke Fresco and finish it and post it EVERYWHERE. AT THE SAME TIME. YES. Then I can make some new things! And keep up to date! At all times! Wow, it's silly to me how I let that happen in the first place, but here we are. That platform was new to me and I wasn't sure if I wanted to use it. But considering how little I can markup things from Society6 and Redbubble and make much of a profit, maybe I'll have more control with tangible objects I can carry in stock from AoW. After posting this entry I have a few non-art-related things to take care of, like catching up on homelife errands but I'll go right back down into the basement studio. I hope all of you are doing well out there. Stay strong, Gosia |
ObjectiveHere you'll get to know me a little more personally. Either self-organized or prompted by questions, I will write blogs about Archives
January 2021
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