Brandi Rhodes - Week 5 post

This week was kind of a transitional week for me...upon having my epiphany of a new concept for my body of work for the show, to having a 1-on-1 conversation with Greta establishing such, to rewriting, preparing, and planning a new body of work to remedy my epiphany, to our presentations of artist's talks which led me to my final destination of senior show: commercial design and artistry. I'm more than ecstatic that Greta and the class came to this conclusion and were willing to accept my unconventional views and wishes within the usually conventional environment which is fine arts, that we are in. As much as I have struggled, to say the least, to find myself and the meaning of my existence within this field throughout the course of this semester thus far, so I'm sure you can imagine the extent of my relief when I could define such feelings of "unconceptual art" with the appropriate title that is "commercial art". With that being said, I have not succeeded in putting in my full 6 to 8 hours of work this week. I have however, succeeded in coming up with a few concrete ideas to pursue in order to branch off of my new found purpose. Some of which will hopefully be at a point to present by next class review. On another note, I'm not certain what conclusion Greta and I came to about using lithography toward my 6-8 hour requirement but since we did conclude that I could now use these pieces as part of my senior show, I'm hoping such restrictions have been revoked and with the extensive time I've put in to these pieces, they can, in fact, be used toward my requirements. Without further a due here's what I have accomplished this week...

 

6-9 hours easily, of drawing, shading, etching, and scraping with a variety of grease pencils and an exacto knife.

To begin the natural etching process of the limestone, we then were required to rub a series of different powdered chemicals over the images on our stone with a cheesecloth for a series of minutes depending on your extent of light and dark areas.

Immediately following the powdered chemicals, we added a series of liquid chemicals, spreading them by hand into a thick, pasty layer over the image, removing excess greases and oils from the surface. The reaction between the powdered chemicals and the liquid chemicals naturally begins the etching process on the surface of the stone.

 

 

Once the paste had sat for a few minutes, we removed it completely with a clean cheesecloth. This process will continue to work away at the image on the stone for the duration of the weekend, where it will be ready for proof printing first thing Monday morning! Exciting :)