The Last Days At Il Bisonte

All great things have as start, and all great things have an end... so was the case this week as my year long stage at Il Bisonte came to it's finale. After 1400 hours of hard work, learning, and intense progress in my personal development as an artist / printmaker I said my final goodbyes to my table, the presses, the tools, and the wonderful studio mates and mentors that I've had such pleasure being with this year.  

It was a bitter sweet occasion as all of our work is currently featured at the Archivio Storico here in Firenze until January 5th, 2011... a real triumph to the hard work we have all put in to produce the fruits of our labour.  

The celebration of course came with great accounts of how we all progressed together and the plans to continue to develop this thriving group of artists into the future... to keep the connections we made this year alive and well for years to come.

I wanted to share a few shots from the studio and the environment that I have become so used to getting to work and play in everyday!  While I don't get to continue working here, these pictures as well as the great memories serve as wonderful reminders of what a special place Il Bisonte is to print at...

The Lookout

I put the finishing touches on an older Mezzotint plate that I've been floating around for some time now.  It was a bit of a different approach to the medium for me as I decided to simply prepare the plate as usual but sketch as if it were paper. Generally I create my imagery before and then use that as the basis for creating the plate, however this time I wanted to experiment to see if i could bring myself to dive in directly onto the prepared copper.  To say the least it was a little nerve wracking at first, but I then became really comfortable working the plate directly from my imagination.  Enjoy!

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Monoprinting

Needing a bit of a break from the tight control I have to keep while working in mezzotint, I decided that I would take the last couple weeks of class and focus my attention towards slightly more liberating approaches to print.  I've done very little work with monoprint before, and for me this was really almost like a start at something totally fresh.  I really enjoyed working in monoprint and I think that for the final week at the studio I'll continue to make a couple more as I'm not prepared to be starting any more large projects before my return to Canada.  Here's what I came up with...