The NHIA Minumental Exhibition

Every year my college-The New Hampshire Institute of Art- does an exhibition of 2"x2" artwork- this year I did a cute little relief print- I hand painted and printed each little one so they are each unique and different. I think they look cool together in a triptiych, there are several that I like. The print is a little Echeveria plant that has gently rouged leaf tips. The colors and rose-like design remind me of vintage type tattoos a little bit. Sadly, due to snow and a not-so-public rain date to drop off submissions these little guys didn't make it into the show. Maybe next year!



These little prints coincide with my current body of work focused on my beloved house plants, of which I have at least twenty. I am going through a phase of life where, bereft of pets, I have taken on plants as a kind of overt obsession. I own many succulents and know how to take care of anything from a tropical pitcher plant to grass. I know when to plant and fertilize black eyes susans, and I know when it is time to begin watering your lithops in the spring. I think the first little relief print is my favorite for its subtle pink and changes in green.
Check out some plant related paintings and in progress work at the Painting tab above, or if you too are a plant hoarder check out my blog- occasionally updated with new plant facts I have found scouring the internet, updates on how mine are doing and new additions/the occasional death.

Electronic dependency series.

The year I did these my teacher was an "your art has to be socially relevent or else why make it" kind of guy. Sadly, mailboxes wouldn't be cutting it anymore. These pieces had to be introspective and deep and most importantly linked.

I chose to do our relationship with electricity 1) after reading the book American Gods by Neil Gaimen the second time and loving the portrayal of the 'New Gods' of technology and 2) an incident where I left my phone at home and all hell broke loose because people couldn't get a hold of me for three hours. THREE HOURS is apparently enough time for all my extracurricular activities to explode, a frequent texter to stalwartly believe I no longer love her and my mom to get "worried" when I didn't immediately return her call. It was at that moment I realized how insanely dependent we are on electricity and being "hooked up" and "plugged in".

This first image is an Intaglio/ Silkscreen, an etching combined with a screen print over it. It's actually a waterbased ink silkscreen over an oil based etching print and everyone is freaking out that this will cause cracking on their own work, but mine hasn't seemed to crackle of at all yet. It has a 'St. Anthony tormented by Demons' kind of demon in it. It's an awesome engraving by Martin Schongauer- here you see the little guys and a super bored looking St. Anthony-


I loved drawing him, and at the same time I was in figure drawing doing bones and things, so I incorporated everything I was learning at the time into it.



For this one, a silkscreen, I struggled so much getting the colors to go that I kind of flunked it. The ones that lined up were cool,I liked the design idea and I loved using the cord to make an object. My friend had to help me with the dot matrix work in Adobe Photoshop as I am technologically defunct.



This last is a summer removed from the others, keeping with the theme of electrical cords being used to create form or tie and bind us to an abstract thing like electricity. I used a '70s palette with school bus orange and avocado green type colors- it reminded me of ugly hippie wallpaper. I was in an Escher fan faze, and I did Escher-esque plugs that can stack infinitely. I love it, and I still use pretty much these colors in many of my prints today, often layered differently for different effects.


this one's 18"x24", with only five layers. It still needs some retouching with a brush and some Easy Wipe and Cad Red ink, the reds aren't what I wanted them to be.

More Old Prints

There was once a mailbox theme.

This is a lithograph.



Lithography dates back to the mid 1800's and was extremely popular for advertising uses through the early 20th century. Your Newspaper of Choice is still printed this way.

The basic principle behind lithography is that oil repels water. The technique involves a great many steps, especially if you use a Litho stone (which I did not- litho plates are a lot more portable however, do not erase like a stone) so I will not go over them here. Just know that in essence, you put oil-based marks down, then magical steps later put ink on the oil marks you made, the ink sticks only to the oil marks, then print those onto a surface (paper, fabric etc).

This process really drives home what museum docents and cave enthusiasts everywhere have always told you- your hands and fingers have oils. And when you touch things those oils transfer from your hands to whatever you touched. In that same way those guys on CSI pick up finger prints off of wood floors and wine glasses, you too will be amazed when you roll on the ink to find that your print has perfect fingerprints or the classic (!) hand-and-wrist-resting-to-draw combo right in the middle of your glorious portrait or landscape.So don't forget! No touchy.