printmaking – Jen Fries Arts

A Walk in the Woods

January 5, 2020January 13, 2020 Jen2 Comments

I thought I’d share a glimpse into my creative process today.

I did some monotype practice, making black and white dendritic prints. Those are the ones where you squish paint or ink between two panes of glass or sheets of metal – two impermeable flat surfaces – then pry them apart, leaving a pattern of branching forms on each surface made by the physics of fluids. You then pick up the patterns on your paper, producing two mirrored images.

There are a lot of tutorials on Youtube, so I’m not going to teach you how to do it. Just go squish some paint and see what you get.

No, I want to talk about the process of designing a collage. The thing with dendritic prints, similar to inkblots, is you will see in them whatever your mind creates. I typically see landscapes, so go psychoanalyze that. The point is images emerge, and the artist will build upon them.

So I focused on this print and thought, “It’s a forest. A deep, dark forest. Who will I meet there? What action will I witness?”

Scenes began to coalesce in my imagination, and I hit my clippings files to find figures and objects to play the parts.

Unfortunately, all the images that would work are also black and white and tend to disappear on this background. Adding color masks didn’t work.

I need an image in color or which can be colored. Something in the right mood. I have this one image from a Victorian Christmas decoration. It’s about two inches high, a little girl holding a miniature Christmas tree that would be perfect for what’s in my head.

This kid has been haunting my studio for nearly ten years. Clipped ages ago but never quite fitting into a scene, she’s constantly fluttering about, in the way, falling out of every stack of papers I pick up.

Wouldn’t you know, today I can’t find her.

Obviously, I went first to where I thought I’d last seen her.

Then I checked a succession of places she could likely be.

Then I went back into the files on the off chance I had inadvertently put her away where she belongs.

By that point, I was pretty well cursing her, her damned tree, and the entire Victorian era straight to the Devil, and considering stopping everything to completely reorganize all my collage clippings. Maybe my whole studio into the bargain.

Then I got called for tea, and I realized it will soon be dinner time, and I have other things to do.

Still haven’t found the papery little pest. The cat better have eaten her, that’s all I can say.

This is the life of a creative. The prints came out well, though.

Spring is here!

March 18, 2019January 14, 2020 Jen

Spring starts this Wednesday, March 20! The trees are budding. The first green shoots are showing through winter’s litter. The birds and animals are setting up house. The sun is higher and warmer, and everything seems full of energy and movement.

I celebrated by making my annual mistake of cleaning my rooms. I learned that I don’t need any more clothes or hair ties, my cats don’t need any more toys, and the only things that are ever truly lost are the ones that are a big pain to replace. I didn’t even do the Kondo method, and I’m overwhelmed – but motivated afresh.

Experiments with monoprint continue, and I’ve started a small set of collages on paper using natural botanical bits. This first one is a tribute to the season and our city rabbits down by the Mystic estuary. It belongs to my ongoing series about walks around town.

JFries Charlestown Spring in progress 3.15.19

Books and Blue Blots

February 27, 2019January 14, 2020 Jen

I have been crazy busy these past two weeks with the dollhouse project, writing, and getting the studio sorted – and a new undertaking. I am developing a future bookbinding workshop for sometime next year, though it’s only in the planning stages now.

I have always loved books both for the amazing worlds they contain and for themselves, as delightful, satisfying objects. Of course, I had to learn to make them as well as read them. I’ve taught bookbinding in years past, and as books become an even greater part of my work, I’ve got the itch again to help other people discover the joys of sewing paper.

My bookbinding tastes are pretty utilitarian. I don’t like elaborate stitch-work, exotic materials, or bulky inclusions. I do like books that work like books, feel like books in the hand, open flat, are resilient, and, preferably, use recycled/repurposed materials. I don’t like glue in books, I do like exposed spines. My favorite style is the ancient Japanese tetsuyoso multi-section binding. It is easy to sew and gives a clean, streamlined structure to the finished book. I’ve developed a hybrid stitch for attaching covers that allows for some decoration. I’m nerdishly pleased with it.

After a week of practicing with needle, thread and papers, looking up lesson plans, etc., I needed a brain reset, so I spent all of today having a fit of surrealist decalcomania, aka inkblot printing. Whee, monotypes! For a good dose of unstructured mark-making, I broke out a tube of ultramarine acrylic paint, modified it with water and wheat flour, and went to town with Rorschach-style blots and dendritic prints, so called for the branching patterns created by squeezing color between two plates, which are then pulled apart.

Behold the results of my labors.

Books

Monotypes

JFries Birches, dendritic monotype, acrylic on paper, 2/26/19.

JFries Birches 2, dendritic monotype, acrylic on paper, 2/26/19.

JFries Blot and Ghost 1, decalcomania, acrylic on paper, 2/26/19.

JFries Blot and Ghost 2, decalcomania, acrylic on paper, 2/26/19.

Monoprint, Micro-fiction, and the Mystic life

January 14, 2019January 14, 2020 Jen

JFries Bufflehead ducks, lower Mystic, 1/2019

2019 promises a lot of challenges, and I feel pretty good about that. This month’s Full Super Wolf Blood Moon, with total eclipse, falls on my birthday, which also happens to fall on Martin Luther King Jr. Day this year. It’s hard not to feel a certain emotional boost.

So I am embracing the theme with a series of art, writing, and lifestyle challenges.

First comes “50/Week,” in which I must produce one 50-word story each week. In this update of a micro-fiction game from a previous blog, I’m upping the ante by making an illustration for each story. These past two weeks, I have written a version of Rapunzel, focusing on star-crossed lovers, and a suspenseful heist thriller. Watch for these to become available soon.

I’ve also decided to learn a new skill – monoprint. My first attempts are oil pastel transfers – a fun and satisfying creative exercise.

Finally, I’ve started a new year of wildlife spotting on the Mystic River estuary. Last year, I fell in love with the birds, fish and other creatures of the Mystic and began primitive efforts to record their comings and goings. This year, I am laying the groundwork for an ambitious online project. Keep track here.

JFries Red-Breasted Merganser male, zoom, lower Mystic, 1/2019