Oregon Art Beat; #302; Christy Wycoff

other unnamed color. Yeah this is just I mean this looks very clean. You did get a white balance right right off the top. Oh good. It's like it just accrued to me because you didn't ask me for one. I'm sorry go ahead. It's a little white. Yeah that's true. Let me just tell me one. Okay I'll go follow you Katie. Alright so explain the difference with doing it with the screen and without. Okay the lithograph is black ink and the screen print is this kind of a light olive color and so on the newsprint up here this is what it looks like with just black ink on paper and then this print on the Japanese paper has a screen printed color on it first and so the it just gives you some kind of transition so it's not quite as contrasty to go from the black to the paper. It's softer. Yeah it kind of stretches out the grayscale a little bit so it's not quite as contrasty as it would be if it went abruptly from this to paper. You know just show me on the one that's on the wall just talk about I'm just going to get a close -up show your hand is what I'm going to get. I'm pointing to that so that

it's the contrast. So on this print on the newsprint it's just black lithographic ink on paper and it's higher contrast because there isn't the transition that the screen print run gives you a transit to make the transition from the black ink to the paper. Could you do this on all on the lithograph get the same effect by using different colors inks? Yeah you can and and I was when I tried to print this I exposed it onto another plate I was having trouble getting consistent printing and without marking for my roller just has to do with my skill as a lithoprinter. I mean the people there is a high degree of craft to this and you can get really really good and and there are people who like Mark Mahaffey who in here in town who who make their living printing for artists they come in there and do lithographs or atchings or different kinds of prints and he

so he he has a lot of skill and he might be he could print print this totally as a litho but but I know a lot about screen printing so for me a screen printing and they seem to be pretty compatible in a lot of ways of way the color works together and the inks work together and so I like to sometimes combine screen printing and lithography together. Is that common or that for artists to do that? You know there's I don't know hey is it common? Some people do it and some people don't a lot of people are are just like a purest and if it's either netching or block print or whatever but I I'm one of the people that like to combine things sometimes when it when it seems appropriate to me. Okay all right what's next. I think

we're still going down, Sarah. No, I haven't worried about her at all. But I don't print lithographs every day either. You're actually not supposed to flex your wrist when you do this. It's supposed to be constant like that. Some people, they go like this, you know, to get them. Right. But you're supposed to go back and forth, pick it up before you get to the end and just go like that. And that's a way of distributing the ink, ultimately.

More likely you get that on the computer. You're going to come back with your original. No. No. No. No. One time I did this print

and I had so much sponging for me. It was a Ford print that was a bleed print on 22 by 30 -inch paper. And we printed on addition. It was an addition of 45 prints. Plus there is, I think we had like 52 sheets of paper all together. And we did it in five days. A color a day and one color took two days. So when you have help, you can really move. That's a lot of sponging. Yeah, a lot of rolling and everything.

And see from the angle I'm sitting, the way the light is on the plate there, I can literally see each layer of ink as it's going down. It's really amazing. That last print, there was a little bit of creasing at the very bottom of the... It's a water -based screen printing that has made the paper not quite flat any longer. And that might be the biggest problem. But then I... Right, because I can see the ripples in the paper. But then that proof that I pulled beforehand that was a little bit light wasn't creased. So if I can back off on the pressure a little bit and still get enough ink to transfer by... Well, maybe I have enough ink anyway or maybe I just need to roll it up one or two more times. That might do it. So I'll do one more roll and see if that

will pull another proof. It seems like a lot of what you do is you have obviously so much experience at this and yet you never really know it can always come out different. Yeah, which in a way that's kind of a nice thing about it. Because I mean, I don't usually print really big additions. Lately, there seems like 15 might be the most as I print of anything and so. You know, there's different ways that looking at an addition and printmaking with whether it has to be absolutely the same or whether you can allow some variation in it. And it's not just a matter of skill that you can't achieve the variation but that you may want to allow certain things to happen because you just want to see what the possibilities are from a certain image that it can go this way or that way a little bit. So.

So I guess I'll put a new piece of paper on it. We're going to get that cranking. And actually, if you could just pull your hand out and not go ahead. Are you going to do just

that little wheel first? I'm going to do this and then do that. Am I going to be in your right here? No, great. Are you ready? Yeah. Okay, now here it is. No creeps. The question is. I guess that'll work.

So you can, if you're printing an addition, you can leave one that's okay as kind of a standard to look at the other ones as they go up to see if something's happening on the plate, which sometimes things happen. And then you'll number these like one out of 15, two out of 15 and so on and so on. Yeah, eventually. Now, are you doing these for the symposium? I have a show in October. I'm doing in four. Oh, okay. As far as I'm working on. Well, that's at Alicia's. Yeah. All right. Okay. Tell when you need to put more ink down on that block and rub it. Well, it does, it looks about the same really, but it's kind of experienced about how much ink it takes to print a print. Oh,

yeah. Okay. Weather also influences how this prints, too. If this was like a really hot day, well, it's getting, it's going to be 80 something today. It's, I think it's nice that it's cloudy, but actually the best weather for printing lithography is about 55 degrees and humid. Winter is great. Summer can be a

problem. Sounds like Oregon is tailor made for printers. Yeah. It's perfect. But if it was too hot, it could kind of take off on me and want to, maybe the ink gets a little warmer and a little looser and it wants to fill in, which means it wants to print darker. Then it started out. And also, black ink is the easiest ink to print with, but some of the colorings are, you have to add like magnesium carbonate to maybe make a little, so the colorings are trying, when they're trying to make a good printing ink, but that can make it kind of tricky sometimes to deal with that. I'm going to roll it up this time and one more time and then I'll, dead end, you can give

all kinds of titles to that. Okay. Point two. Let's see, am I going to be out of the way over here? You're fine. Yeah. It's also easier to lay paper with two people. I noticed you have those tabs. Yeah, it's a pen registration. So all my paper has those tabs on it and then the plate is punched out for a couple of pins. So that makes it a little less problematic about where you're laying the paper.

This kind of eliminates one variable. A big variable. Okay. So yeah, this is a little brighter than

this other paper. I like it. When you're peeling it back with the anticipation of seeing something, you hope wonderful. How often do you pull it back and go, oh crap. Oh, not very often once you get it going because you're just kind of, you've got your rhythm and you've got the whole process. Yes, it's kind of like a little dance that you've choreographed and you know all the steps. Well, usually things just keep going well. If they start off bad, it's hard to write the ship after you've already messed up and you're trying to fix something. But if you take the time to prepare at the beginning and then just maintain that, it's pretty easy to keep it going. Excellent. Thank you. So you're putting more ink on this before you put it to bed, is it where? Yes.

I don't have to roll it up as many times as I did if I was actually pulling a print. But this kind of provides a little protection to the image area when I rub the gum on it. The only, remember I was talking about how when you print, there's actually some gum that combines with the plate that stays on the plate. So when I washed off that gum, I'm not washing off that little layer that combines with them. That's what actually keeps the process working so that the ink only attaches to the image and not to the non -image areas. And the only way you can remove that is by the abrasion and friction of pulling prints. So if I pull like 15 prints of these, I would probably want to re -gum it just to re -establish that and replenish that acidified gum layer. That's what they call it. I see. So that's how you protect it by putting the gum down there. Right.

Okay, tell us what you're going to do before you do it. Okay, what I'm going to do is fan this plate dry. And then I'm going to take, I've got talcum in here, French talcly. And I'm going to shake that on the plate and move it around and it's going to stick, attach itself to that sticky ink. And then I'm going to brush off the excess. And that allows my gum to come right up, which is water -based, come right up to the edge of my greasy ink and not be repelled by it. You know, like water and oil don't mix is kind of the operative thing here. All right. So this is a real traditional tool to fan. I need a little more

towel. I'll try to keep the dust down. Okay. Talc was one of the printmaking materials that used to be particularly dangerous because talc, the way it was manufactured, used to contain asbestos. But they don't sell that kind of talc anymore.

Yeah, I mean dust is still a problem, but at least it's not dust. Okay. And this is cheese cloth. Let's make a couple of nice balls of cheese cloth here. Can you get me a piece of newspaper? Please, a couple pieces.

There's one. Okay. I'll go to work. There's three. Just give me one at a time. I'm going to blow it up to this excess gum. Oops. That'll be enough, I think. As long as you protect your plate like this. I can bring it up 20 years from now. And the number of prints you could make off that unlimited? Yeah, pretty much if you keep, I mean sometimes you have accidents and things happen. You can't rescue yourself from it, but other than that, you could print probably thousands of prints

I imagine. But no one ever does print that many prints. I mean if you're going to print that many prints, hire somebody else to do it or go off, print offset or something. Actually this is a commercial plate, you could print this on an offset like a Heidelberg or something. Which a like that kind of thing. Huh. There it is. Yep, that's it. It looks so luscious, you just want to play in it. Yeah. Probably not a good idea, but. I'll just stick it in here. I can't. Well, no wait, I could have put this, if I could put this back into the can if it wasn't for the fact that I mixed it. Just kind of fold it up.

Yeah, well I'll tape it actually too. And it'll be fine. Yeah, for a little while. After a while, even to the plastic it starts to. Yeah. I'm not sure what to sink, but I think this one costs like about 20 bucks or so for a can. But it goes in the last for a long time. Oh yeah, you did it. Do that right now, but. No, it's. We're just taking some extra pictures. Cool. You're going to see the world. Well, you're not supposed to. The roller, you don't clean that off. If it is a rubber ball or of course I'd have it, but he was looking for a cheap way to publish his music. And the commercial printing at that time was engraving like copper plate engravings. Very expensive. Sure. Right. And so he had this idea, well, I can take a little stone. And actually we need to get a picture of it. Okay. So explain to me about the. So Alois Sinfelver had this idea that he couldn't engrave

his what he wanted to publish his his music onto a stone. And then use nitric acid to well, no, he wasn't going to engrave into Sony. He's actually going to to to paint it on. Okay. That very much. There may not be too much we can do about that. We've got to shutting the windows when it helps though. We've got to take it away. And action. Let those stones are heavy. So anyway, Alois Sinfelver in the late 1800s or early 1700s or early 1800s wanted to publish his music. And he couldn't afford to do copper plate engraving. And he just happened to live near an insolent hole in Australia, which was a side of this huge limestone query that since Roman times we've been used for. Exhibition of limestone for building materials. So he had some some blocks around paving blocks. And he thought he could paint on the on the

limestone with with a ground like an etching ground and then etch it just like. Like copper, but but limestone was so much cheaper than copper. He would, you know, be able to afford the plates. And so he's using nitric acid to to etch this. So his drawing, his writing would be in relief. But somehow or other through some serendipitous accident, he found out that he didn't have to actually put it relief that the nitric did something to them. And the nitric mixed it with the gum to, so it wouldn't be quite, he could control it a little bit. That's why he used the gum. So it wouldn't be so quite so, you know, effervescent and strong and straight nitric would be. And that made this chemical change so that where the nitric was, even without etching it relief, it would made it so that the non -image areas would not accept ink while the image areas were. It's just this thing he just discovered by accident. And that was the basis of

lithography and he invented a press and the modern press is basically just like his press. And he invented a lot of things which are still used just as he did them. Now, do you like printing off of a stone like this as opposed to the sheet that you did? Yeah, I do. Especially for drawing on a stone. It's just, you can't really tell because this is a very smooth stone that's been made to make it for engraving, but like a stone that's been grained with the texture for drawing on it. It's a wonderful surface to draw on. It's just flat, I mean, with a texture on it, but there's no, it's a very consistent surface, but really wonderful the way the crayon kind of attaches itself to the top surface. So the little bumps on the stone. And they're reusable. Yeah, you just, after you print whatever you want to print, you just take water and carbon in them and shake it on there. And there's a tool called Levigator and you just grind off your drawing and start a new drawing afterwards. Wow. You reach a new surface. That's great. Yeah, it's really beautiful.

Do you have any stones that have your stuff on them that are here? I think there's one actually underneath there. Yeah. We could get to it if we... Oh, yeah.