Martha Kelly Art

I’ve been wanting to do some smaller prints that my treadle press can handle. The big ones I have to ink by hand, line up by hand, carry to the Line-o-scribe press, and print individually. The treadle press is harder to set up (getting the print where ink is hitting it all evenly), but once it’s going, I can do many more just by dropping paper in and letting the press do everything else. It’s harder to line them up just so, but if I plan prints where there’s a little wiggle room, they’re greatly fun to print. So I’ve got two new Memphis prints drawn out and underway. I got the holiday flu for a few days and am still feeling slow, but nicely, carving is a good sit down activity. So no proofs yet, but it’s fun to be working on something fresh after all the holiday shows. Each print will be two blocks and two different colors. The colors you see are watercolor and marker sketches just to make sure I’m doing what I want before I start carving.

I had a big printing day yesterday. I hit a personal best with about 1000 cards printed on a heavy, turn-of-the-last-century, treadle operated press. It’s good exercise for me, and I ended up with 600 postcard invitations for my upcoming Open Studio Sale (December 1st and 2nd), plus a bunch of new note cards for the sales. I based this owl on a baby rescued barred owl I got to meet a few years ago on his way to a wildlife rescue group. He was adorable.

Here’s a video of the press running. I love the majestic way it orbits and works so quietly. It’s such a pleasure to use.

I've done a new print this week. I was hiking with family out here and took this snapshot. It kept calling to me, so I dropped my other projects for the moment and just saw this one on through. I've been wanting to do more storytelling and narrative in my work (as opposed to the pure landscapes I'm also always drawn to), and this just presented itself. I so see myself at that age in the total absorption in a magic place. Bridges still feel magical to me, and I would have also (and still do sometimes) just plop down to drink it all in. This one feels special enough that I went ahead and put it up in my online store, though I won't be shipping prints until I get home in late July and print this on my press. (If there's a birthday or other celebration earlier, I can do one or two out here with my wooden spoon, but I'm definitely missing my press and my regular paper doing all this print work away from home.)

I've included a couple of process shots below, since it's always fun to see the backstage view of making art. 

I came west fully intending to use the time here for illustration and for watercolor immersion. Then I kept stepping outside and looking at the trees, and suddenly I have a flood of prints in my head. Since I'm more or less on vacation and don't have any particular deadlines, I'm free to do the work that is calling to me most insistently at the moment, so I've been doing prints the last week. I've done two tiny ones, since I don't have big supplies out here, but I'm also laying out several larger ones and waiting for big linoleum to arrive in the mail for me. Above is one of the little 5x7" two block prints. I've been testing it in different colors, but the deep blue/purple of the sky is what I saw when I stepped outside with Mr. Darcy at bedtime and is what inspired the print. 

The other small print is from our near daily walk on the Cascade Trail. It's an old railway bed that is now a gravel trail for walkers, cyclists, and horses. I love how quiet it is, with no traffic to contend with (once we cross the highway to get on it, anyway). The trees often form an archway over it (another forthcoming print) but at the open end near home, you get a stunning view of Sauk Mountain. I'm color testing this one as well, but in a more subtle way. I think I like the gradated sky instead of the solid one. 

I originally planned the mountain to be solid blue, which is how it seemed the day this view really spoke to me. Since you can't put anything back once you carve it away, I've been leaving some green in it, just to see if I want the depth, but it's too messy looking, and I think I'm just going to clear it out of there and let the mountain recede into blue distance. 

These blocks are new for me since I'm not keeping the full frame around them but simply carving more organic shapes. That makes them harder to print, since the edges want to catch some ink even when they're cut down, and I don't have a press out here, so I'm back to my wooden spoon, and things can move a little more that way. It's fun to play, but I mostly prefer keeping my prints with a frame for both visual reasons and for practicality. The bigger ones I'm starting will be a little more traditional, but I must say I'm pleased with how these two are turning out if I can get clean prints from them. 

Darel Snodgrass at WKNO fm was nice enough to have me on the air again this morning for his daily interview show Checking on the Arts. I was mostly there to talk about next week's Night Vision show at Playhouse on the Square (opening Friday, May 4th from 5:30 to 7:00), but I went in with a whole list of current projects, and we covered all of them. It's fun to go in and get to talk about what I do, when I spend most of my work time by myself in my house (except for my studio helper Mr. Darcy, of course).

And for a little bit of eye candy, here's a recent sketch of my new favorite drink that I haven't posted yet.

It’s National Poetry Month, and Independent Bookstore Day is coming up this Saturday. I’m celebrating both my creating my first poetry broadside. I saw some in Parnassus Books last month, and I’ve been thinking about them ever since. It’s neat to get to create an image or two to go with a poem and print it along with the poem itself. I love having type to be able to do this. As it happened, I was at a poetry reading at Burke’s Books here in Memphis soon after my Parnassus visit, and one of th owners is also a writer and a poet. He asked if I would be interested in trying my hand at broadsides, so it seemed like the stars lined up. I carved and printed the blocks a week or so ago, but then an out of town trip and a show got me busy, so I didn’t manage the type until today. That was a fast and easy printing, compared to two blocks of different colors that were difficult to get proper coverage on. My press was built for type, which is a very small amount of black and a lot of open white space. My blocks are darker and take a lot more pressure. It was pure pleasure printing the type today. They’ll dry a couple of days, and I’ll have them to Burke’s before the weekend celebration.