I had to go see what I had already posted. My topo/puzzle idea came to life when I received Lynn's puzzle pieces. We had talked about keeping the individual images simple and I was pleased with her choice of imagery. Lynn will be pleased to know that the rat transplant went without a hitch (perhaps she can further explain that one!).

Just to refresh, we had gone with the theme urban/rural and how somehow we work things out with natural things when we live on the edge of a city (as Lynn does) or smack in the middle but with an acre of desert "elbow-room" as I do. On a bigger scale, of course, every city in Nevada deals with the issue of sprawling into the habitat of the few and hardy creatures with whom we share our beloved desert.

In any case, with Lynn's images in place, I started sketching in PhotoShop again. I wanted to keep the topo colors and somehow bring out the positive concept of sharing among urban/rural, rather than some of the more negative connotations that come to mind. I decided to add some urban elements since Lynn's critters pretty much took care of the rural part, and after some mulling and browsing, settled on semaphores (traffic lights for US folk :-). The "traffic lights" I picked had a hint of primitive symbols and, rendered in the topo colors, blend in quite nicely without losing meaning. Caution and courtesy, please, when urban and rural meet...

The computer is really a luxury when it comes to "sketching" and I don't use it often enough to develop my imagery. When I do, I find it most exciting to change imagery, save stages, tweak elements of design here and there, change color schemes...luxury!

I even changed the "paper" several times to see what the image would look like printed on various choices. Here is the almost-to-be-final image. I need to let it gel for a couple of days and then it should only be about another week or two for carving and printing. My Valley of Fire show concludes next week and I should be able to dedicate myself to this project fully and finish printing by the second week of July.

The sketch, reversed as it will be in print, a little messy in PhotoShop but will clean up and simplify nicely when printed because the woodcut process tends to do that. I think the colors will work well to represent both the topo features and the red/yellow/green of the traffic symbols. The "city grids" will probably also be finer and cleaner in line when cut on wood.

 

This is what it looks like, more or less. The top part was already carved and I (I think as usual) finished the bottom to complete the "narrative". It's a PhotoShop rendition of what I was going to carve but close enough to life.

Lynn is going to print using some color but I will let her tell you all about that. The picture of the block as carved below.

Just some updates for everyone. Hope all is going well in print land and that eveyone is doing well in getting their 20 print edition done for August 1st. We had a change in plans for the writer of our project... Jim McCormick was unable to do the writing component of the Geo. project, so we asked Fred Sigman to step in for the job. For those of you who don't know Fred, he is an accomplished photographer, art historian and art critic. I had the pleasure of working with him at CSN while he was our Art Historian, specializing in Tribal and Asian art studies. He is a long-time Nevadan, with ties to artists throughout the state.

He has requested contact information for all participants and will probably be giving many of you a call to talk with you and discuss your work.

We are glad to welcome Fred and his voice in this exciting project.!