These are little baskets made out of gelli prints. Someone posted a question about making these in a FaceBook group page of gelli printers. I was curious too so I spent a day (a full day!) sorting the math and once I figured out I wasn’t dealing with circles but rather, dodecahedrons, I worked it out! (Thank you Mr. Ferrier for the algebra and Mrs. Fedora for the geometry).
Pic one is three of them, or rather two baskets and one in the process. Pic two is the best little one I made on stiff canvas paper. Pic three is a larger one (another, shorter, round of math) printed on light canvas. I gave that to my wife for Valentine’s Day. Fun project but they take a large amount of time to print, dry, cut out, assemble. If I were to sell these they would have to go for about $200 to pay for the time. And then, what do you DO with them?
Finished the third of the primitives. Each is carved on an 8″ x 10″ plywood panel and painted. If I hinged them together, I guess it would be a triptych. As it is they are three of a kind. The hands, of course, are modeled after ancient cave drawings in Argentina. So between the three we have Africa, Europe and South America represented. Do you want to know the hardest part of these pieces? Hanging them straight and equi-distance apart.
I don’t know if I’ll do more of these or not. They are fussy and slow to make. But I have more plywood panels if I change my mind.
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The earlier piece, “The Hunters,” is on the right. The companion piece, “The Hunted,” is on the left. I know now there is at least one more piece (maybe called “the Village” or “The Tribe”) to be done. The new one is still drying and awaiting an opaque wash, then I’ll start carving and painting #3. These are initially taken from photographs of real cave drawings. I doubt these will last as long.
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The original idea was to carve a relief block to make a print. I had this image of cave art in my head but couldn’t find a way to realize it. I adapted some images into a design for a block for printing. The original plan was to overlay two blocks as though an early cave painter had made one image and the space was subsequently commandeered by another artist. Such things happened in the “way back” times. But no matter what I did the images generated by this block were horrible as prints. The images were too stark. There was little context. I set the project aside until I could figure a different way to do what I was trying to do.
The block sat on my workbench for days…then weeks. But it didn’t go away. And then suddenly, I realized, this was already the project. It is now a painting-slash-sculpture-slash-bas relief. I like it even better than the original idea. I will mount it on a piece of cherry plywood and frame it. Lemons and lemonade. (Carved and painted plywood, 8″x10″)
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