Riverhouse van Straaten is pleased to announce five new projects completed in 2008.

Katherine Bowling
June 2008

In June of 2008 Katherine Bowling visited Riverhouse Editions for her eighth project with us, completing five color etchings in a short ten day time period, with the help of the master printer, three full time printers and two interns.

As she usually does, Katherine worked from a group of landscape snapshots that she took over the course of the past few months, all of which capture the specific light happening at the moment she pushed the shutter button. Some of the snapshots are intentionally blurry, such as the image that became Bird, 2008, which has the viewer basking in the late afternoon light on a summer’s day, in the company of a small blackbird standing blissfully unaware on the ground. The key copper plate of the four that make up Bird, was begun as a deep, solid black aquatint, which Katherine painstakingly burnished and sanded to bring back the areas of intense light. In the two prints titled Reflection (Morning and Evening), the image of a mirrored tree-line in a pond is distinct and evocative of the time of day.

Each edition is printed on Somerset Radiant White paper
(size: 27 x 21 inches) in an edition of 45.

Julia Fernandez-Pol
July 2008           

During the last two weeks of July, Julia Fernandez-Pol completed the Reef Series, a group of colorful, abstract watercolor monotypes with bas-relief hand painting and three series of intaglios, two of which will be presented in portfolios.

The first set of eight hard-ground etchings, collectively titled Metamorfosis, 2008  features extremely delicate, detailed drawings drawn onto the copper and etched in multiple stages. The companion set of eight prints, titled Revolution, 2008 has a broader range of tone and medium, utilizing solar plates, spit bite, drypoint, and sugar lift aquatint.  Many of these drawings were done with washes of India Ink and very thin Micron ink pens. Both of these sets will be offered in charcoal grey cloth portfolio folders, with accompanying descriptive text and title pages.

Ms Fernandez-Pol also created four solar plate images that were ultimately printed in delicate pastel colors on Somerset Velvet Black paper, titled The X-Ray Series, 2008. These prints have an otherworldly quality to them, enhanced by the glowing soft forms and shapes.

Melissa Meyer
August 2008

For her fourth project at Riverhouse Editions, Melissa Meyer worked with one size format and some of her favorite colors to create 55 very unique water color monotypes on Arches 88 unsized paper. During the brief five day workshop, she listened to her I-Pod and decided to title the entire suite of monotypes after a somewhat obscure jazz singer from the fifties named Johnny Hartman, a member of the rat-pack. 

The Hartman Series, 2008 is both very much in the style of some of Ms. Meyer’s best works, as well as a departure for her with some unusual marks and strokes. All the prints are begun with two or three layers of painted vellums stacked on top of each other; some of the prints have additional layers printed over them as she deems necessary. Often there would be a “ground” layer of various rich yellows, oranges, and ochres that would allow bits of some of the brighter colors to peek through any blank areas, making the overall image sparkle. Occasionally we would use an already printed sheet of vellum to print a “ghost” image as a base for her to build from.

Most of the images are vertically formatted, however, on the last day of printing, she wanted to go horizontal (sizes: 27 ½ x 25 inches or 25 ½ x 27 inches). 

Susan Hambleton
August 2008

One of Riverhouse Editions’ most prolific artists, Susan Hambleton completed her tenth project with us in August of 2008, creating a beautiful group of oil based floral monotypes on Stonehenge Cream paper and ten new solar plate editions, some of which will be boxed as a set.

After learning about the wide range of drawing mediums that can be used with the solar plate technique, Susan decided to try her hand at it. She made eight small ink, pencil and crayon drawings on frosted vellum, which were then exposed onto the plates and printed in black on Rives BFK paper. The group of prints that resulted from these drawings all relate to each other and became a suite that she titled As I Was Saying, 2008, a reference to the little “interruptions” of the lines that happen in the images.

Once she had started the vellum drawings, it was an easy step to create full color variations of two lovely small paintings that she had done in her studio in New York. Each of the velvety black prints, titled In the Grass (1 and 2), is comprised of five solar plates, some of which have as many as six colors inked onto the surface, a la poupee.  The technique is well suited to capture her wonderfully sensitive painterly touch.

Diana Cooper
September 2008

We were very excited to have Diana Cooper come to Riverhouse in September. We had been privileged to see her first museum show at the Cleveland Museum of Contemporary Art a year earlier, and master printer Sue Oehme was intrigued with the possibilities of doing small editions of three dimensional pieces with her, and more traditional two dimensional etchings. Diana had only worked at one other print studio before here residency here.

Diana’s project evolved in a similar manner to her pieces; we would work a bit on one print, and then switch to another, completely different print, and, slowly, all the images emerged. Because of her fondness to draw with Sharpie markers, we opted to create many of the plates by having her draw on Mylar and then we exposed the drawings on Solar plates or on copper with Image-on. Many were finished and signed at the end of her stay, but many more were left unfinished and are still being etched, or proofed in different colors.

To date, we have seven separate editions and about eight more to finish. All are printed on Rives BFK, and vary in size from 12 x 12 inches to 25 x 30 inches. We have begun the initial planning for a small 3-D multiple, which will be completed before Diana has a one-person show at Carson van Straaten Gallery in Denver in the fall of 2009.