2008 Nature Printing Society Workshop

A most delightful excursion into the magical world of Nature Printing funded by a Jackpot Grant from the
Nevada Arts Council

The Nature Printing Society's 2008 Workshop intrigued me as a relief printmaker. The invitations to the workshop contained mysterious words and concepts like "foilography" and "octopus printing". I'm not usually a workshop type of person, but this one in Santa Barbara, California (one of my favorite vacation places) was one I couldn't resist.

Click any image to show an enlargement

We start here, in the rabid blue ocean and sky-scapes of Santa Barbara's pier:

Wait, once more, I can't get enough of the ocean once I get there. Check out the weathered WOOD on the pier! The last picture helped me get my bearing, heh.

Here we are at the La Casa De Maria (appropriate!) in the hills just above S.B., awesome setting for an artistic adventure:

My kind of internet cafe!

We get to the learning part. First was the foilography class with the illustrious Charles Morgan from Canada. Foilography basically entails taking nature "stuff" and arranging it on a plexiglass plate. The plate is covered in aluminum foil, run through a press and the resulting foil plate can then be printed as an intaglio or relief plate using traditional methods. With the aluminum foil, quite a large edition is possible from nature offerings, as opposed to the single prints that the "raw" natural materials usually yield.

My humble things, a feather and algae from the beach and two dried plants from somewhere. I printed some relief and some intaglio even though Charles said not to engage in such tomfoolery on our first try. The last photo below shows the plates all wrapped up in foil.

This links will open up two details of the plates, they are huge so be patient:
DETAIL FOIL PLATE 1  |  DETAIL FOIL PLATE 2