Over the summer through an internship I had at the art museum I met Raoul Deal. We talked about art and the massive issue with immigration under the Trump administration. He ended up giving me a print of this very work. It truly inspired me and I knew I had to make a piece inspired by him. Raoul makes pieces inspired by stories people tell him. I wanted to make something inspired by a story, something powerful and moving. I also wanted to have similar organic aspects that his work has. He incorporates people with nature. I wanted organic lines with geometric shapes. It creates an interesting dynamic and contrast.
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John Fleissner is also a Milwaukee based artist that makes political prints for rallies and political movements in Milwaukee. I've been following him for a while due to me and him sharing similar political ideas. His crisp lines and beautiful craftsmanship is what lead him to be my inspiration. Again, he adds geometric shapes along with organic such as the homes contrasting the leaves.
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The first sketch was a preliminary one I did at my internship when we were learning to print our blocks. It wasn't something that was the best product and I decided that it would be better if I made it more elaborate. I continued to tweak it through the summer before I went back to school. I wanted to make an art piece that reflected the hard work immigrants put into when they get their first jobs in America. Often times, they are subjected to cruel jobs with low paying wages. This is exploiting them to the highest degree. In my sketch, there would be a poppy flower in the foreground and
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For my sketch two I laid out some things that I didn't like from my first sketch. I didn't really like the huge empty space in the first sketch. Therefore I put the sun on the opposite side and added an additional poppy flower to the one I originally had. The man didn't really change apart from me making the hat lager so it covers more. However I still wasn't pleased with the picture. I thought it lacked something. While It's interesting to have the poppy flowers in the foreground and everything happen in the background, I find it almost childish to have the sun in the corner. So again, I changed the whole layout of the picture.
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The third sketch I made was completely different from the first two, but I was finally happy. The sun in the middle deviates from the childish way of putting the sun in the corner of the paper. It also implicates the worker is working hard during the hottest period of the day: noon. Not many would work during those scorching conditions, but hard working immigrants are unfortunately subjected to unsafe conditions as such. I changed the poppy flowers to the sunflowers. First of all, the paper I made had yellow and purple, which the purple could be represented by the lavender, but the poppies had no red to represent them. I decided to put the sunflowers on the right side because continuation is often depicted as left to right, like when we read. The man followed the path therefore he faces the right. The sunflowers also represent happiness.
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The first picture is from when me and my internship, ArtXpress, went to MIAD for a paper making session. The teacher in the picture was showing us the process on how to make it. We used two simple tools. The bottom layer is a silk screen. This allowed the water to be drained out by the bottom and leave the wet paper. On top of the silk screen is a wooden deckle. This shapes the paper and provides support so there can be a thick enough layer to work with. The process of making the paper was mixing up the tub full of water and recycled paper scraps. Then we proceeded to dip the silk screen with deckle and let it drain.
In this picture, this is the appearance of the paper after the water has been drained fully and is ready to be pressed. Right after the water is drained the deckle is removed. Then, it is turned upside down and pressed on a sheet of felt fabric. After we made a few sheets of paper we put them all in a pile of felt and pressed the water out of the paper to create fine, thin sheets of paper. This is the machine that we put our pieces of paper in and it squeezed all the water out of it. It applied almost 2 tones of weight to the paper and pressed out a bunch of water. After that process was done, we moved the paper to a dry place to remove it from the felt and to the drying wrack. It took about 2 days for the paper to dry and be ready to make a print on it. These are the tools I used for carving into my print. I mostly used the sharp, triangle took since it gives the most precise and accurate lines. This is me carving into my plate. I ended up doing two plates due to me messing up and carving too deep. It resulted in a bad plate and printing with that can't be done because it can get messy. I started all over. This is my completed print. Another tip I learned in my internship is if sharpie is used to color the whole template, it makes it easier to visualize what the finished print will look like and how and what is being cut into the print. It makes it so much easier to be able to manipulate and envision. I added additional texture into the man's outfit to make it more dynamic and interesting. Then I laid out my tools. I was going to use this metal sheet to roll out the ink for the print and the spoon to apply a small amount of ink to the sheet. This makes it easy to spread the ink into an even layer without disruption, unlike some methods such as the seran-wrap method. Then I applied the ink and rolled it around with a brayer. I chose a rubber one that was kind of soft and not curved so I could apply a perfect even layer of paint. I rolled it out for a few times until the ink formed soft peaks such in the picture. Raoul told me that this is how I would know that this is the perfect amount of ink on the brayer. Then I put my print down onto the block I had and used a printing baren to press and smooth out my print. I had to do this a few times on newsprint to perfect the amount of ink on the brayer. I played around with how many times I passed over ink over the print and such to see the perfect ratio. I really tried to apply the process I learned in my internship to maximize the print I would get with the block I made. Eventually after trying to get the perfect print (it took four prints) I decided it was time to print on the paper I made. It took two cotes of ink to create the perfect, solid print. |
Between John and my work there are a lot of differences. John likes to make his lines traditional, thick black lines. When doing block prints, I like to have the inverted lines with fine details. I thought it was especially fitting for this project due to the lines showing the colored paper and creating dimension. Again, with the contrast with organic and not organic is simple to see. I incorporated high standing sunflowers, such as his high standing vines. I did not use words, unlike many political prints where words are used.
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