tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-735628169173524132024-03-18T19:50:39.507-07:00EmilyHayesEmily Hayeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12115113301460620466noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-73562816917352413.post-67757496572052240682007-02-06T15:05:00.000-08:002007-04-16T12:41:45.281-07:00Lino cutting and other printing<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiDtrRDVL0aPWNP3IrgfaImGFUEz2TxTENLMY0LIFZbKJyNh49AsH1TBVCoxdvqa-iX5MNtqs0iUTL-r2868LaB2SJtwjql8TdCzsl_v_tnX8NXbXL4LhTGk73ozxmG02nS1ew_5a0EEJ6F/s1600-h/Photo+4.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiDtrRDVL0aPWNP3IrgfaImGFUEz2TxTENLMY0LIFZbKJyNh49AsH1TBVCoxdvqa-iX5MNtqs0iUTL-r2868LaB2SJtwjql8TdCzsl_v_tnX8NXbXL4LhTGk73ozxmG02nS1ew_5a0EEJ6F/s320/Photo+4.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5054113483009088626" /></a><br />Since being in Berlin, I can't stop cutting lino (and my hands with it). I cut 2 months of a calendar (January and September) on 40cmx40cm pieces of lino with 7 other illustrators here. We printed it this fantastic print house called Bethanian. Artisits can go and print for the day or do 6 months apprenticing, there are lots of options. Anyway we printed 120 of these calendars, to have a look go to www.hammeraue.de. There was lot of exciting work going on here. All sorts of printing from off set to etching. So it is great to see that traditional printing processes are still around, as thet are slowly dying out. <br />There are not just print workshops at Bethanian but sculpture and video etc etc. A big art house really in Kreuzberg. It used to be a hospital many years ago.<br /><br />Lino cutting seems to be having a bit of a come back. I have come across quite a few people here who use this in their work, ie Henning Wagenbreth they uses this very traditional medium but the yet it still looks contemporary. Look on his website to see more. www.wagenbreth.de.<br />Linocutter to admire is most definitely Edward Bawden. Amazing skill, I never really realised untill I had cut my own. www.woodleapress.co.uk/ images/ebd4.gif one of his most spectacular cuts.<br />More on this later!Emily Hayeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12115113301460620466noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-73562816917352413.post-2146553597936537412007-02-06T15:02:00.000-08:002007-02-06T15:05:18.207-08:00more about die tollen hefte by Mark NevinsHere is some more information about Die Tollen Helte, the books created by illustrators, written before in emilyhayes64 account. <br />See this site<br /><br />http://www.tolle-hefte.de/download/NY2003/IJOCA_Fall_2003.pdf<br /><br />“Neue Illustration: The Book and Poster Art of Eleven German Illustrators.” New York, NY: <br />Deutsches Haus, New York University, 42 Washington Mews, March 1-April 30, 2003. <br /> <br />It’s arguable that the Fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 has been an even bigger blessing for the <br />art world than for the political world; while Germany herself continues to struggle with the <br />economic and cultural challenges of Unification, the bringing together of artists from the <br />West and the East immediately energized the German arts scene, especially in the areas of <br />poster art, book design, and comics. In March and April, Deutsches Haus of New York <br />University hosted a traveling show highlighting some of the best examples of post-Wall <br />German illustration. Deutsches Haus is NYU’s German-American Cultural Center, <br />beautifully housed in the Washington Mews -- a row of former coach houses originally <br />intended for the wealthy mansions of Washington Square which have been restored to their <br />pristine early 19th Century form in a cobblestone alley in the heart of Greenwich Village. The <br />group of friends who mounted this show, including curator Armin Abmeier, met head-on the <br />challenges of putting together an exhibit in a small and almost labyrinthine space. Deutsches <br />Haus includes an entrance hall, a lecture space, classrooms, and a reading lounge, and all <br />were used to show off a generous sample of the work of the eleven artists featured in the <br />show: <br />Atak, Rotraut Susanne Berner, Wolf Erlbruch, Anke Feuchtenberger, Moritz Götze, Yvonne <br />Kuschel, Thomas M. Müller, Christoph Niemann, Volker Pfüller, Axel Scheffler, and Hennig <br />Wagenbreth. Rather than feeling cramped or disjointed, the layout of the show allowed <br />visitors to experience the artworks as a series of “discoveries.” Many of the pieces are large <br />posters, almost all of the pieces are vibrantly colorful, and seeing the exhibit in segments, <br />finding new sections of the show behind this door or in that classroom, increased the level of <br />delight and also ensured that the viewer would not be overcome with sensory overload. <br />Furthermore, since several of the artists in the show are actually teachers in university art <br />programs, and since the show itself aims to teach its audience about a wonderful <br />contemporary movement in German illustration, this campus setting was quite fitting. <br />sophisticated materials and printing technology. Some of the most striking and inventive <br />illustration of the last generation has, in fact, come “from behind the Iron Curtain” -- from the <br />astonishingly expressive poster and book-cover art of Poland and Czechoslovakia, to the <br />tremendously inventive comics produced in Eastern Europe by artists who grew up in the <br />1960s and 1970s with only a fragmentary sense of the popular culture of the West. The <br />comics produced by some of these illustrators offer useful grounds for understanding their <br />originality: unlike the American “alternative comics” to which they are sometimes compared, <br />East Germany’s comics of the 1980s and early 1990s were created in a vacuum far from <br />superheroes as well as the Underground movement, and whether political or humorous, naive <br />or sophisticated, these comics have a desperate expressionistic energy rarely found in comics <br />of the West. Armin Abmeier, the curator of “Neue Illustration,” is a publisher’s sales <br />representative by day, but his real career is as a voracious book collector and a steadfast <br />advocate of contemporary German illustration. Abmeier grew up reading comics, but was <br />later deeply affected by Surrealism and Dadaism -and that influence shows in his taste as both <br />a collector and a publisher. For more than a dozen years now Abmeier has been publishing a <br />line of books under the imprint “Die Tollen Hefte” (“Crazy Booklets”), and this line is a <br />showcase for some of the best of today’s avant-garde illustration, from Germany as well as <br />elsewhere. (For example, Abmeier has been a tireless supporter of the extremely idiosyncratic <br />work of the American cartoonist Mark Beyer, who seems to have lost any platform for his <br />work in his native country but can still be found in print in Abmeier’s books.) Asked about his <br />concepts and ideas behind this exhibit, Abmeier responded, “It’s quite simple -- I wanted to <br />show some of my favorite pictures in New York City, because NYC is one of my favorite <br />places.” While united by a single theme and to some extent by a single publishing house, the <br />work in this show covers a dazzling range. My favorites are Rotraut Susanne Berner, best <br />known as a children’s book illustrator, who draws delicate and charming figures engaged in <br />whimsical activities; Anke Feuchtenberger, whose striking and mesmerizing drawings <br />(showing influences from modernists like Picasso and Matisse as well as African art) explore <br />“feminist” themes by means of challenging and compelling comics and posters; and Hennig <br />Wagenbreth, who creates huge tableaux in what might be called a crazed digital-woodcut <br />style. I was also delighted to discover the work of a few artists I didn’t know well before this <br />show, including Thomas Müller, a gifted illustrator who works in super-saturated flat colors <br />with a slightly “punk” sensibility (think Gary Baseman meets Toulouse-Lautrec) and Axel <br />Scheffler, who marries a cartoony sensibility to a more traditional children’s book illustration <br />style (think R.O. Blechman meets Arthur Rackham) <br />“Neue Illustration” was a clever and delightful exhibit -- one I visited several times during the <br />two months of the exhibit, as I’m lucky enough to live just a few blocks away. The exhibit <br />succeeded in showing off the work of its artists, but it also succeeded as an engaging event in <br />its own right: one that could capture the interest and imagination of any viewer, whatever his <br />or her knowledge of illustration. (Since the show was up during the end of the school year, I <br />wonder if it seized the attention of any of the oftendisaffected undergraduates who would <br />have had to come into Deutsches Haus for end-of-term administrivia.) Several of the largest <br />pieces were shown on a very tall and bright wall next to an open stairway leading to the <br />second-floor offices, which allowed the viewer to get close to the pieces but also to stand <br />back and see them from a distance; another airy part of the space was used to hang mobiles <br />made out of many of the Tollen Hefte books. In sum, “Neue Illustration” was an exhibit of <br />wonderful graphic works that also wonderfully occupied its space, and I only wish it had been <br />able to stay at Deutsches Haus permanently. <br /><br /><br />by Mark David Nevins <br /> <br />IJOCA (International Journal Of Comic Art), Fall 2003Emily Hayeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12115113301460620466noreply@blogger.com0