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The term “punk rock” might be one that’s a bit diluted, and I’m sure that today’s feature would agree with me on that, but Dave Glass is one of the last true punk artists I’ve seen. Glass creates colorful, bold, and wild work that pumps out an, “I don’t give a fuck,” attitude. His bad-ass punk ladies and gnarly looking monsters are pushed into your face atop a collection of other medias, images, and text. The characters stand out with their interesting perspectives, deep details, and sometimes really poppy colors. They’re pushed by an atmosphere of information, so much so that it often takes a couple laps around the surface for our minds to really collect all that’s going on. That’s one of the things that’s so cool about Glass’s work, at a glance it’s a rad looking punk lady or other-worldly character, but when you take a deep look at the image there’s so much more to offer and even if what you get is pure anarchy, you’ve still fallen to the allure of the image. Clean and loose in all the right places, Dave Glass’s illustrations will lock you in and leave you wanting more. I was fortunate enough to get to chat with Glass about his work and he gave some really interesting answers. He gives us a really deep dive into how his work is made and what it stands to represent. On top of that we also talk a little bit about the DAWN 1111 collective, a group that he’s started with another artist (who we’ll definitely be hearing more about/from in the future) to get their work out there and collaborate in the truest way we know, by just doing it. I really appreciate the perspectives that Glass gave in this interview, and agree or disagree I think it’ll get you thinking. Enjoy! 1. So to begin, I always ask about background. So what got you started in art? Big inspirations? What helped shape you into the artist that you are today? I’ve been scribbling on things since I was a wee tot. My inner child never went into hibernation like many adults. As a young boy I was intrigued by puffy monster stickers, bazooka joe, burning wax candles dripping wax all over, Star Wars, Hot Wheels, Twilight Zone, The Addams Family, cats eye marbles, Saturday morning cartoons (when it was a thing), building model war planes and hot rods while huffing testor’s glue, setting things on fire, building forts, spray painting, all sorts of things. In model building I would manipulate cotton balls into painted streams of smoke and fire with little planes glued to wire to look as if they were exploding in the air. I had a few art classes early on. I can remember drawing UFO’s and space pirate warships and such. Later on, middle/high school years, skateboarding and punk rock, underground films, VHS and tape trading, B-movies, horror comics, record covers, flyer art, pushed me into the art direction I continue today. Skateboard graphics were especially inspiring Santa Cruz, Zorlac, Skull Skates, along with Thrasher Magazine and Sessions mail-order etc. Getting into playing drums, new friends and I started our first punk/skate rock/hardcore/ whatever you wanna label it, band in high school. This led me into creating art for bands for many years after. D.I.Y. consumed me. The world around me, my home life, crumbled at a young age and art and music became my escape. Bands and friends became family. 2. You've got incredibly bold linework highlighted by a nice combination of sketchy lines and controlled detail lines, what developed this bold lined illustration style for you? Also, I noticed this on Instagram, but are you using primarily dip pens in your work? What benefit or feel developed this preference? Thanx! I used to create a great deal of rock posters, T-shirt designs, album covers etc, and inked everything by hand, strictly with a brush, resulting in the thick bold lines. It resolved many issues in burning line work on silk-screens and also prepress printing, when art size was reduced for CD covers etc. I worked to attack most lines in one stroke with the brush. At times I would go over lines a few times with cheaper less opaque inks. I now primarily use nib(dip) pens and more recently quills in my black and white work. I’ve tried rapidograph, prisma pens, you name it but prefer the old school tradition of dipping a pen in the ink. You are able to utilize the ink flowing from the tip like blood dripping off a fingernail. You can pull it sideways or back changing the thickness and shape of the line with little or no pressure. If you take care of your nibs, and don’t stab them in the walls like angry darts they can last you a very long while. Plus you can store the ink in all kindsa kooky containers. 3. On top of solid linework, you've got striking color that can work as a nice accent or a wild, dominant factor to your work. So how do you decide what pieces you can go a little more wild with colors? When do you know you need to restrain it? Are colors laid out right away or do you figure it out as you go? At one point the colors may have introduced themselves with a crack of my spinal cord releasing a former trip or something? It may only depend on what mood I’m in. I may tend to use subtle tones, black and white under a more cathartic energy. Bold bright colors come into play in more frantic, exuberant, frustrated, naughty, or I really wanna break something moods. I may create a color palate before I begin painting, but that may get tossed out the window or the original piece completely painted over. I have happy accidents at times spilling or flicking a color on the substrate, like jabbing a vein and spraying blood on the wall, or a coffee or wine spill stain. I try not to restrain anything but it happens and generally I’ll walk away from the piece for a bit. I hate most of my work, art is frustrating ha ha. 4. A large portion of your body of work features the bold elements I mentioned in the previous questions depicting bad-ass punk ladies, what got you started on this path in your work? Is there a narrative significance? How has it developed visually? Women of subculture has been one of my favorite subjects to immortalize for a long while. It is the imagery I can create that people may actually recognize as mine. Women can fill you with love, or rip your heart to shreds and I feel that is very powerful. I’ve been a part of the ‘punk’ scene, (that word doesn’t hold much weight these days) for over 3 decades, great now I’m dating myself, needless to say I have been inspired. These women were not represented, much to my knowledge, earlier on in illustrations, aside from biker tattoo magazines at the time, fetish mags, later Love and Rockets, Tank Girl, Underground, those type of comic books. Completely different world today where bright colored hair, tattoos and everything that was once taboo is part of the norm and acceptable. I can’t stand that. Nothing’s sacred. You had to be very brave to look different outside the norm back in the day, you’d get a lot of shit from people. I found goths, punks, death rockers, what have you, to be way more interesting to draw than posh Barbie’s and lame superheroes. The female form will always be difficult for me to draw so it’s always a challenge. My proportions are never quite right. The subject matter may also have some significance growing up as the youngest of the litter living with a single mom. She had her struggles as I witnessed day to day. I guess I can relate to women a bit differently? Visually my style may have developed as subliminal nods to favorite album covers, rock posters, early pop art, lowbrow art, melted candy goo on the city sidewalks, many things. I like the idea of creating something visually stimulating from a block away. 5. I noticed a couple really cool monster paintings pop up in your recent work, is this something new that you're looking to push a little further? Thanks for noticing. A do have plans to create more monster paintings. Currently the ones so far are small 6 x 6 acrylic and gouache works on wood panel. Actually just sold the last one I made of a C.H.U.D. (Cannibalistic Humanoid Underground Dweller) at our DAWN 1111 Collective show at 63 Bluxome St Gallery in SF. The monster paintings were something I attempted years ago, with psycho clown characters and venus flytraps, but only created one or two pieces. The idea resurfaced when I sold off the last of my toys from my youth. I acquired them after a visit with my family, whom I had reconnected with after 10 years. One of the toys I sold that stood out was an Inhumanoid Tendril figure, so I painted it. I’m working on one now of the deformed creature, son of the barker, from the 1981 movie The Funhouse. I saw it first on late night cable many years ago and recently caught it on the big screen at the Alamo Theatre’s Terror Tuesdays in SF CA. 6. Finally, PLUGS! Where can people find your work? Any shows/events coming up? I know you're a part of the DAWN1111 collective, could you tell us a little bit about that? Anywhere people can find your work and anything you'd like to share, fire away! This year, 2020, I do not have any exhibits or events booked thus far, but work is available thru DAWN1111.com. DAWN 1111 is fairly new, a little over a year since inception. It’s an art collective comprised of myself and my lovely girlfriend Kristen Grundy, Photographer / Set Designer / Image and Film Maker. DAWN 1111 is a collective effort to get our work out there as well as collaborating on projects together. Kristen and I are connected in strange ways, unknowingly living seemingly parallel lives from coast to coast. We feel crossing paths again over the years was no accident. Completely unrelated as far as something to add is we both abhor social media and unfortunately this is the standard way artists have been forced to get their work to the masses. It’s completely oversaturated, not for people like us, and does not seem to be a real viaduct to promote our work. I hope that people don’t continue to rely completely on social media to discover new art. We are totally lost in the shuffle and have been doing what we do for many years under the radar. Galleries are hyper focused on artists' social media presence, likes and followers etc. It hurts people like us who don’t give a shit about that and aren’t willing to pay to play for followers and ads. Thanx for the interview Forrest! I do appreciate the interest!

Somewhere, right now, there's a lizard. Somewhere there's a lizard or a armadillo or a badger or a grasshopper & tomorrow it will die. Crushed under some beefy Jeep tires or eaten by a bird that's missing a toe. But right now there's a lizard. It was born 2 miles away from where it will die tomorrow. But right now, it's a lizard, sleeping, happy.

I have never been one to truly get lost in a landscape painting. No matter how well done, or impressive. Nature just doesn't usually do it for me. I understand that others may have vastly different experiences when scanning through the many great representations of natural landscape in history. However, my numbness to nature caused me to go years without appreciating Oppy Wood, 1917. It is truly a travesty that the above work by John Nash has slipped my radar. Boy, am I glad I found it! No promises, but I may be a landscape guy now. Maybe. John Nash was an untrained painter working in the time following World War I in which he fought. The painting depicts the war trenches dug on the Western Front. Present in many of Nash's works is the mundane moments wedged in between brutal battles. It is possibly the human ties to the location and the historical context of this painting that captivates me more the common landscape void of humanity. In the painting we see two soldiers presumably of differing ranks performing the common duties of war. Looking out over the edge of one of many trenches built by the English forces. Surrounded by bare tree trunks and otherwise baron landscape. Above is a striking blue sky with majestic cloud forms mimicking the posture of the trees surrounding the trench. While the painting captures a surprisingly pretty moment, we know looking back that these moments were few and far between in throughout the course of battle in World War I. With the added weight of historical context we are aware of both the human cost and natural cost of the first World War. All of the sudden the trenches start to feel more like a mass grave that the soldiers had spent weeks digging for themselves. The dark voids through the doorway of the dugouts become just that. A blackhole sucking in the beauty of this fleeting peaceful moment until it is just a memory. We as a viewer more than 100 years later want to warn the soldiers pictures of what is to come. We are aware of the fight that would ensue while he gazes out looking for the threat. Only to all be distracted from the horrors of war even if just for an instant, by the big blue sky.

Francis Bacon was by no means your traditional artist. He didn't begin painting until his twenties after bouncing around interior decorating jobs, gambling, and living largely off of a family trust fund. However, once he did find painting he found success pretty early on with his triptych, Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion. The heavy, bleak tone of these paintings would be something seen throughout almost all of Bacon's art career. He'd later build notoriety for his figurative paintings, most notably his depictions of Popes and crucifixions. Wild brush strokes with only some refined details peering through to reveal that this mass did in fact have some human qualities were staples in Bacon's work and the ill-defined atmosphere in which these characters sat only served to push them further. Bacon was quite a character, and his life alone is quite interesting. There's a fascinating documentary about him done by BBC titled Francis Bacon: A Brush With Violence. I'll link this down below so that if you're interested you can discover the fascinating life and work of Francis Bacon. This documentary was actually the first time I'd really heard of Bacon's work and one of the reasons that it stood out to me initially and stuck with me after was the cover image, the painting Head VI. Head VI was painted in 1949 and was inspired by a Diego Velazquez painting, Portrait of Pope Innocent X. Bacon referenced works like this a lot and while this is the first to survive, it's not believed to be the first reference to Velazquez. Interesting influences aside, this painting is a striking example of Bacon's painting style and what was to come of his work. The composition interestingly works from the middle out, as the only definitively recognizable element is the mouth. Once the eye can gather that there is a mouth and head, the collar, cloak, and sleeve start to become recognizable. True to a lot of Bacon's imagery, the viewer really has to piece the image together. You're drawn in by the loose, aggressive brush strokes and once you're there, you're forced to put the image together to at least try and gather what this image means. It doesn't seem as though there's much meaning behind this, there's just an overwhelming sense of despair. Again, looking at the focal point of this piece, the pale white skin and purple-ish lips of the face feel like death and the emotion behind the elements that are there feels like a painful scream. So much pain shown through just half of the face, the strong upward brushstrokes that seemingly rip the top of the head off only add to this emotion. While the terrifying nature of the figure is certainly one of the main draws, there's a subtle element in this painting that is, in some ways, just as haunting. Once you've gathered the elements of this painting, the traditional Pope seated position from the Velazquez reference becomes more clear. However, a series of thin white lines surround the character creating what appears to be a glass box. So taking the scream and haunting emotions garnered by the figures face and adding the appearance of being trapped in a box, the tone of this painting becomes even darker. The character's scream is pushed by the idea of confinement, and the slightly tilted head makes it feel as though the character is not only screaming, but screaming at the viewer. Perhaps pleading for help. Francis Bacon was a brilliant painter and paintings like this were just a glance at what would become of his body of work. The emotion and aggression that Bacon was able to express in his painting while still subtly and deliberately delivering a message was truly masterful. Once again, I'm going to link the full documentary on him done by BBC below. It's worth a watch to learn more about a fascinating, and sometimes overlooked artist.

You may have read Joe’s recent blog about the art of Shawn Huckins and how he owed him an apology for his initial judgement of Huckins’ work. I must admit, I also owe Huckins an apology because, like Joe, when I first saw Huckins’ work I thought, “wow, some guy getting famous by photoshopping famous paintings. Horrible.” But that’s not what Huckins does at all, in fact Huckins recreates these classic, typically American paintings and adds a modern element to comment on the current social state of the country. It’s incredible the shift in perspective that comes when you realize that his work is actually painting, you go from thinking that it takes zero talent to just digitally add text to or erase part of an image to not being able to fathom the skill that goes into painting imagery, text, and a faux-photoshop grid so cleanly. Huckins is a master recreator and his painting skill would be impressive without the addition of any other elements. But he pushes his work by slapping short form text or juxtaposing some modern element like a low battery signal or loading wheel over top of it. Now I must say that I believe juxtapose is the most overused word in all of art but I use it here because Huckins’ work is a true example of juxtaposition. He merges something that is inherently historical with something inherently modern, both elements are extremely recognizable but exist in opposite parts of our memory. This synergy and contrast creates an interesting commentary presents itself differently for each viewer and the skill that goes into creating it is just mesmerizing. Within a matter of minutes I became obsessed with Huckins’ work and the skill behind it. One of the most impressive things to me aside from the illusionistic quality was that his paintings are acrylic. Most of the paintings he recreates are done in oils so to add to the challenge of recreating them by doing it in a different, arguably harder to use paint just blows my mind. This work has truly blown me away and it looks like his next series is going to be a new but equally exciting body of work. So when Huckins responded to our Instagram story about Joe’s blog, I knew that I just had to get an interview with him. I was fortunate enough to do so and the interview did not disappoint! Take a deep dive into Huckins’ origins, process, the historical and modern significance of his work, and so much more. Enjoy! 1. To start out, I always like to ask about background. So, what got you into art? How did your schooling experience in the U.S. and Australia help form your art career? What drew you towards Colorado as a place to set up shop? Overall, what helped shape you into the artist that you are? I didn’t have many friends growing up, so I occupied my time by drawing in sketchbooks. I would draw my favorite baseball players, my toys, and characters from my favorite Disney movies. Typical stuff a young boy would be into at that age. My grandmother passed away in 1993 and to much surprise, she had an oil painting kit hidden away in the closet. My family gave it to me since they knew I was into ‘art’ and drawing in my sketchbooks. I remember how good the paint smelled, but that was the only joy in my short stint of oil painting. I had an incredibly difficult time using this new medium. It frustrated me too much, so I made this awful barn painting and put the oil set away and returned to my sketchbooks. I didn’t paint again until college. I had some great professors in college who reintroduced me to painting. Funny how paint is easier to work with when you learn how to manipulate the medium. That’s when my love for painting grew. I went into college as a film major and I eventually changed it to architecture. Next, I changed it to graphic design. I travelled to Australia as an exchange student and that experience made me realize to do what you love in pursuing a career. When I returned, I finally declared myself a studio art major. My partner, Matt, and I have traveled to Colorado numerous times before because we had friends there. We both were born, raised, and went to school in the Northeast, so we wanted to experience a different part of the country. Matt received a great job offer in Denver, so we packed up and moved in 2011. 2. A large majority of your work features recreations or references to public domain references, most notably historical painting. So what drew you towards historical painting as a reference? And, more specifically, what drew you towards American painting? I use American painting because I like to comment on American social norms, since I am an American. It feels more genuine and authentic if I comment on a society that I grew up in and observe on a daily basis. (The only exception is the series ‘Happy Go Lucky’ which is a historical French painting for my first international solo in France in October 2019). As a child, my favorite subject in school was history and I loved learning about the colonists, the redcoats, and the main characters that formed this country. It was so fascinating to me and I constantly imagined what it would be like to live in that time period. Sometimes, I feel like I was born in the wrong century, or maybe in my previous life, I was a colonist. 3. On top of historical references, you mix in a lot of modern imagery. What inspired the mixing of historical and modern imagery visually? Is there a specific narrative that you're after? What are your thoughts on some of the interpretations of your work? The texting series initially began as a challenge from my cousin. Long story short, my cousin and I went camping one weekend and we began talking about my art career. He told me he was a skilled painter, but that I don’t (or can’t) paint people and if I did, I would cover their face. He was right. The portrait was intimidating to me. To prove him wrong, I went home and began practicing portraits by copying old American portraits, specifically the paintings of John Singleton Copley. I did study after study and it was challenging. One of the study paintings slipped beneath a tracing of the acronym ‘LOL.’ I saw the old portrait beneath with the contemporary text on top and thought that’s an interesting contrast and I wanted to explore it further. The visuals came first, and the questions came later. My work addresses the evolution (or de-evolution) of language seen today is our mass consumerism, tech and social media driven society. Technology influences how much we know and what we believe, as well as how quickly and intelligently we convey our ideas. But does how we communicate govern the value of what we communicate? The physical act of typing very fast on small devices has undeniably impacted spelling, grammar and punctuation, encouraging a degree of illiteracy that has become the new social norm. As goes our grammatical literacy, do our social and cultural literacies follow? Are we in a continuing state of the debasement of language? 4. Moving onto your process, realism in acrylics is no easy task, especially considering a lot of your reference paintings are done in oil. So what made you lean towards acrylics? Is realism made through a lot of layering or expert color mixing? Are there any major challenges to recreating oil paintings in acrylic? Oils were the paint of choice in college and we were required to use them. In my senior year, I took the final painting course, Advanced Painting, and the professor introduced us to acrylics. I’ve known about them, but never employed them. He showed us how to manipulate them and create glazes, etc. That’s when I was introduced to Golden’s Open Acrylics. These acrylics stay wet longer, so they mimic the playability of oils. I was able to create smoother gradients with this brand just like I could with oils. And the best part was they clean up much easier. After graduating from school, I moved into an apartment and my studio was in the second bedroom. I didn’t want to have solvents and dirty, flammable, stinky rags in the apartment, so I used acrylics exclusively. I was able to create the same thing with acrylics and they dried a little faster than oils, so I put my oils away. My process is exactly the same as if I were to use oils. I create a warm under-painting and then follow it with finalized layers of paint, ending with glazing on various parts of the painting. Lastly, copying old master paintings has really taught me how to paint and how to mix colors. I give credit to college for introducing me to the basic elements of art and to how to find your voice, but I credit the old master’s with teaching me how to paint. The best way to learn anything is to copy what you see, feel, hear, etc. I always love hearing people compliment me on my ‘oil’ paintings and seeing their reactions when I tell them they are acrylics. 5. Your process is obviously heavily planned out, so how do you know about what's going to come from your work when going into it? It appears that masking out what will later become the phrases or modern elements is an early step of your painting, does this give you the freedom to just work on the main image and address the other stuff later? Everything is planned before any paint touches the canvas. My initial process begins on the computer. I play around with text and compositions to be used in the final painting. Once I’m satisfied with the overall layout, I will draw the concept (including lettering) onto white canvas. From there, I will mask off the text with tape and complete the underpainting with warm, earth tone colors (ie, burnt umber, yellow ochre, and burnt sienna). I will then add the subsequent layers of finalized paint until the portrait, or landscape is complete. Finally, I will peel off the tape to reveal the white lettering. 6. How do you mask out or address the elements of your paintings that are overtop of the main image, but not fully opaque? Is it done just over the base painting or with some other technique? The white lettering is masked off until the painting is complete. I like to retain the bright white canvas for the lettering as it really pops against a usually dark background. Sometimes the text will be ‘frosted,’ so the entire painting is painted with no tape mask. Then, overtop the painting, I will mask out the negative space text and apply a thin wash of white paint. The creates the effect of being able to see the portrait behind the text (see “Follow The Money: Young Robert E. Lee (Based On Money Face Emoji)” as an example). 7. Keeping on the theme of your process, I want to ask about your faux-photoshop work. How do you lay out these paintings? Are you figuring out layout elements digitally or are you all paint? How rigorous is laying out that grid? Is that portion masked and painted separately? How do you go about that? The computer is the main element in getting the composition just right. It will not be drawn to canvas until I’m satisfied with the digital mock-up. This is the only part of my process that’s digital. After that, the concept is drawn to canvas and the computer is there to only play NPR or podcasts while I work. The most challenging parts of a painting are the small details, such as lace as an example. For those parts, I will draw, in reverse, the details on trace paper with a soft leaded pencil. Once the base layer of paint is complete, I will rub the trace drawing onto the canvas to place down the details. 8. We've talked a lot about process and while I still had a few questions, you're very open about your process! How important is being open and transparent about your process to your work? Do you find that this helps combat people thinking that your work is just text slapped on old paintings in photoshop? Does hearing stuff like that ever discourage you? I’m totally open to sharing my process, as I love learning about other artists’ experiences as well. I think it’s especially important with my work because people do confuse it with photoshopped images and that’s a bit discouraging. They override and judge my work before really learning the process and they don’t seem to realize I paint the entire thing. That’s why I include many details on my website, so viewers can see the brush strokes and canvas texture to get a more tangible experience. 9. Your coming series Stone Faced, to be released in June 2020, appears to be a little bit different than work you've done in the past. What can you tell us about what this work entails? How does the process of making this more, we'll call it surreal, work differ from your previous work? I’ve been doing paintings about ‘digi-speak’ text for the last decade and I think it’s time to move on. I’ve said what I needed to say and I’m heading in a new direction. I’m also looking for a more raw experience with my painting, so I’m using the computer less for my compositions. I’m still asking questions myself about the new work, but in short, this new body of work entails our fragile American society by comparing a once prosperous society, but is now in ruins. Are we immune to destruction and extinction? 10. Finally PLUGS! You've certainly got a whole lot coming up so please tell us where people can find your work and any shows/events coming up. Anything and everything, fire away! Solo exhibition at K Contemporary in Denver, June 2020. Two-person exhibition at Susquehanna Art Museum in Harrisburg, August 2020. Solo exhibition at Stephanie Chefas Projects in Portland, October 2020. Solo exhibition at Modernism in San Francisco, November 2020. Feel free to shoot me an email at hello@shawnhuckins.com to join my occasional newsletter to learn more about the above events and to receive the advanced previews.

Whenever I see a gallery with a wall or table of artist business cards and coming events, I always make sure to grab whatever looks interesting to me. Recently I was doing my usual, grabbing all of the cards I liked, and I noticed a card with a gnarly sculpture of some sort of female/slug hybrid and I immediately looked this artist up. That’s when I found the work of Eric Sonntag. Sonntag’s sculpture work is a fascinating distortion of the human form; whether it’s distorting the body, morphing human and animal, or making something totally alien, Sonntag’s work is a fascinating abstraction of human features. But while I was drawn into the very sci-fi style of abstraction in Sonntag’s sculpture, he has a vast body of work that’s very diverse in its styles. Still heavily driven by the human form, Sonntag’s painting abstracts the form in a way that is much more painterly. Usually lending towards portraits, he’ll allow the form to reveal itself but fade or melt away at certain points whether it’s through soft tones or playing up the stroke of the brush. His painting is a different type of abstract that’s much more heavily rooted in representationalism than his sculpture. Further revealing his representational roots and ability, Sonntag has a collection of marvelous figure drawings. Straight forward and beautifully detailed, his drawing work really shows his refined ability in 2D mediums. Sonntag’s body of work is extremely diverse and all of it has its own unique style and beauty. I was thrilled to get to talk with him about all of his different types of work and how they can exist separately or as a whole portfolio. He gave some really interesting answers and insight, so enjoy the interview and collection of his work! 1. So to begin, I always start off with background. What got you started in art? Any schooling? Big inspirations? What helped shape you into the artist that you are today? My early motivators were recurrent nightmares, film, and nature in general. As a young person, I had the go-to bibles of renaissance artists, and also some very explicit medical anatomy books with grotesque images of physical trauma, anomalies and deformities of the human body. I think this is partly why I turned out to be such a well- rounded person, haha! My schooling consisted of running around NYC from The Art Student’s League to the Academy of Figurative Art where I studied with some of my favorite representational painters. Regular visits to major art museums with exposure to the different art genres and objects from antiquity to the modern were crucially important to my development as an artist. Most importantly though, I’m an autodidact. 2. I'd like to begin with your drawing work, your drawings are much more straightforward representations of an artist/model interaction. What is your model drawing process like? Are there a series of practice drawings or do you dive right into it? I will do a few sketches from the model first before I decide on a pose. Then, I commit to one and start to chip away. I don’t consider myself a representational artist. I use these interactions to learn and build my mental catalog of anatomical imagery. With my more spontaneous and experimental work, I foreground anatomy in an imperfect or altered fashion. I’m fascinated with the human form and have a compulsion to experiment with it in my work. This can be interpreted as jarring or disturbing by the observer simply by manipulating the human form. I think this challenges the observer and the feeling is falsely understood as disturbing, which is unfortunate. The idea of the human form should be challenged in art. 3. Moving forward, in your paintings you take similar representational qualities but begin to abstract the forms? Do your paintings start off similarly to your drawings and then you alter later on? Or is the whole process different? My process to begin a painting is similar to drawing in that I start with a few preliminary sketches. I’m never quite satisfied with painting in a realistic fashion. I’m attracted to a sort of abstraction or reconstruction of form in both painting and sculpture and I see it as experimentation. I tend to develop the idea as far as I can and allow my imagination to run wild. Unfortunately, my sketch books are rarely seen and they contain some of my strongest ideas and concepts. If I can finish my larger works with the same intensity and boldness as I do in my sketchbooks, I think this will be a great accomplishment. 4. Now onto your sculpture, this is where you really take your strong representational abilities and distort the forms into wild, otherworldly characters. How do your sculptures begin? Are they rigidly planned with character elements already developed or is it more of an organic process? Does it vary? I rarely have a strict plan laid out for my sculptures unless it’s a commission. I realize the piece will go through many stages and some will fail. I begin a sculpture with a few concept drawings, I decide on scale, then build the armature which is the internal support structure. After that, I go to the clay and begin to sculpt. I’ll use live models, or photographic reference intermittently during the process. I don’t rely heavily on these. They just help guide me through certain aspects of the piece depending on how accurate to life I want to be. So, it’s really a kind of evolution towards the final look. When I worked in the film industry, I would follow predetermined concept drawings and I’d have to stay pretty close to those blueprints. With my personal work I’m not bound to that protocol. I’ll occasionally just start in a direction and see where it takes me. For instance, a sculpture I did called The Lucid Dreamer was mostly designed as I created it. The piece went through many stages and it wasn’t until the end where I started to do some sketches on paper to solidify the design. This is a good example of allowing a piece to evolve as I go. 5. You use the human form a lot in your work but you alter and abstract it in a variety of ways, so what is your relationship to each individual work and process like? How do you decide between straightforward representation and abstracted representation? Great question. I think the human form is sublime, although this may sound peculiar after you see how I employ anatomy in my work. If I don’t allow the forms to be abstracted or altered to a certain degree, I feel I’m not being as honest as I can be. I’ve completed realistic representations before but I seem to become impatient with the inevitable end result. I begin to feel rebellious and steer away from tradition. It also depends on how I feel an idea should be executed and whether it needs to be “other- worldly” or representational. That said, some pieces need to be unaltered and true to the subject and some need to be broken down and reconstructed. 6. Finally, PLUGS! Where can people find your work? Any shows/events coming up? Anywhere people can find your work and anything you'd like to share, fire away! I really enjoyed and appreciated your questions. Thanks for the opportunity. My work can always be found online at www.ericsonntag.com, Instagram: @ericsonntag, Facebook: ericsonntagartist, and my Youtube channel: Eric Sonntag - Artist: Sculptor & Painter. I’m currently working on some new commissions in my studio in New Jersey. Shortly, I’ll post information about upcoming shows in 2020.

I’ll be honest, I never knew what those ouija board pieces that you put your hands on were called, but I started coming across these really beautiful decorative ones recently. Well it turns out that those things are called planchettes and the creator of the brilliant pieces I was seeing is Jessi Hardesty. Upon digging a little deeper, I found her magnificent body of wood carving work. Hardesty’s wood carving developed from beginnings in relief printing, finding a passion for the blocks that she was carving, and then turning those print blocks into works of art themselves. These things are so beautiful and the printmaking inspiration is far from lost in the work. Her carvings have a lot of noise(printmaking term) but it's always deliberate and it plays up the imagery, it plays up Hardesty’s very unique style. Speaking of style, another reason why I just love Hardesty’s work is that in this portfolio it is perpetually Halloween. All of your brightly colored, spooky needs are met year round with her work and it’s so fun. Hardesty lays in colors with a lot of pop and the contrast created between the color and her heavy blackwork really makes her work stand out. There’s so much depth in Hardesty’s work that even her simplest carving can suck you in and have you totally enthralled with her work and the process behind it. Overall, Hardesty’s work is so exciting and interesting because it’s a different take on printing and carving. I think a lot of the time the printmaking world is stuck in the tradition that the plate is the plate and the print is the art, but the plate can be a beautiful work in itself. Hardesty’s carvings are so unique, colorful, bold, full of contrast, and they really just jump out at you. As I said earlier, she hasn’t forgotten her printing roots either and she still puts out quite a few awesome prints alongside her carving work. I got to chat with Hardesty and hear it all in this marvelous interview. She really gave a great look into her body of work, development of style, and how she ended up where she is. Enjoy! 1.I always start with background! So, what got you started in art? Any schooling? Big inspirations? What helped shape you into the artist that you are today? My father has a background in ceramics, and he always encouraged my artistic side when I was small. I was the sort of kid that was always drawing and making objects. Early inspirations were animated films, comic books, music videos, book illustrations- the usual. By the time I was in high school, I had discovered heavy metal and goth music so my world expanded there. I have a BA in studio art with a concentration in printmaking from Salem State University and an MFA in print media from Cranbook Academy of Art. Classic woodcut masters and book illustrators like Kathe Kollwitz and Fritz Eichenberg are hugely inspiring as are the science fiction/horror/fantasy genres in film and art. I always tell my students that anything you encounter in life can be fuel for your art- things you collect, music you listen to, fashion, a conversation with a stranger at a bus stop… anything at all. There was no singular event that shaped me into who I am as an artist today; many events and interactions are to blame for that. I collect vintage Halloween blow molds, which probably isn’t surprising to anyone reading this, and I come from a family of collectors, so antique or vintage objects have always held weight for me. I had a wonderful mentor in college, Haig Demarjian, who really pushed me to put my best foot forward. I sat down with woodcut artist Tom Huck at a burger joint in Portland a few years back and we did the math on how many days were left in my life if I lived to 75 and had a pretty poignant conversation about how to best use them- I think about that conversation often. 2. Woodcarving isn't an overly common medium so what drew you towards working in this medium? How did you progress to the things you're doing now? I discovered woodcut, and printmaking in general, in college. I suppose I had some kind of nebulous idea of what printmaking was before that but I never really dug in to it until I got to Salem. Once I wrapped my brain around working backwards and inverted, I got completely hooked and I have never looked back. I appreciate the rawness and finality of printmaking; there’s no erasing a carved mark. You have to be assertive and sure of your carving, and you have to embrace the unpredictability of the carving process. Each mark is unique and incapable of being recreated. 3. You've got a very, "everyday is Halloween," aesthetic in your work. Could you give a little more insight into what inspires your imagery? Further, how has your imagery or use of certain imagery developed with your work? Halloween fascinated me as a child and I just never grew out of it. Halloween is the most magical of holidays; pagan roots with a decidedly American current form. A whole celebration surrounding the coming of winter and the thinning of the veil. Costumes to allow you to hide from the spirits… or be who you truly are. All of the imagery of Halloween evokes mystery, mischief, ancestry, and the occult. I started making spooky work in college, turned a bit away from it for a while in grad school, and then had one of those big Fuck It moments and dove headlong back in to it. 4. Your work obviously requires some very delicate woodworking, so what is your process like? How does a piece begin? Is your work rigorously planned out or do you allow things to organically happen? I sketch out designs on paper first. Very loose sketches in pencil and then sharpie when they’re more fleshed out. I transfer those drawings out on to wood (usually birch or MDF) and then sharpie them out there. I saw out the shapes and then stain the blocks red as a visual aid for carving. At that point, much of the final look is decided by carving- the sketches are sketches and the actual art happens during the carving process. I use Japanese steel gouges and a Dremel tool to carve- whatever tool I feel is best for the job at hand. I am particularly reliant on the 4.5mm v gouge. The carving stage is the most organic. 5. Planchettes are a huge part of your body of work, what initially drew you towards the creation of these objects? How has your use or making of them changed? Do you think they'll always be a staple in your body of work? Ouija boards and planchettes have been a long time interest of mine; we had an antique wooden one in the house growing up. Living in Baltimore, I discovered the strong connection between my city and talking boards and spiritualism, so the planchettes in my work are a nod to both my interest in spiritualism and to my current city, Baltimore. There is actually a Ouija board gravestone in Baltimore (it belongs to Elijah Bond, who patented the Ouija board) and my planchettes are the perfect size to use on Elijah’s stone. That’s a super inside reference you’re now in on, I suppose. Communication and the macabre, hallmarks of my studio practice, join so harmoniously in the planchette that I doubt that it will ever leave my work. 6. You've got very cleanly applied and solid colors, how do you go about laying color into your carvings? How do you select which colors go into which piece? After the carving is done, I paint the whole block. The colors are intuitive. I have a very graphic sensibility to my colors; probably because I was trained as a printmaker and not a painter. 7. How does your process differ when you're working on your more intricate cuts? Are you limited at all by your materials or do you just go for it? I use different tools for different marks. Small v gouges are employed for detail work, but scoops, larger v gouges, and the dremel suit big open areas. I select woods that exist in the Goldilocks zone- not too hard, not too prone to chipping, but not so soft that they don’t have longevity. 8. Your wood carving is clearly reminiscent of wood cut prints and there are sprinklings of print work in your feeds. Is print something you've worked with at length? Is it something you plan on working in more or moving away from? Printmaking used to be all I did… I have two degrees in it! I started getting really attached to my printing blocks at some point, and then people started buying or commissioning the blocks more than the prints, so I was doing a lot of large-scale commissioned realism pieces for a time. I got burnt out on working realistically after a while and started making spooky work for myself again. The first experimental batch of colored carvings I made went over really well, and I enjoyed making them, so I’ve been moving forward down that route. I do still print regularly, usually on fabric for patches or with my students (I’m a professor). Once or twice a year I’ll pull a formal edition of reduction prints, but the carvings themselves have moved to the forefront of my practice. 9. Going off of that, the most notable printmaking reference in your woodcarving is the imperfections that are commonly left in prints. Is this something that you strive for in your woodworking? Ah, yes, the noise. Noise is my favorite aspect of wood carving and relief printing. I amplify it on purpose. 10. Finally, PLUGS! Where can people find your work? Any shows/events coming up? Anything you'd like to share and anywhere people can find you, fire away! I just finished my 2019 show run with Oddities Flea Market in Brooklyn, which is always a good time. There are a few galleries I have work in fairly often- Verum Ultimum in Portland, OR, The Convent in Philadelphia, PA and Gristle Art Gallery in Brooklyn, NY. Should be back up in Salem/Boston in April for the tattoo convention and Daughters of Darkness festival, which is an amazing all woman maker event organized by Die With Your Boots On. I post about events I do on my Instagram, so follow that for updates. My work is always online and I am most active on Instagram (@jessihardesty). My Etsy is https://www.etsy.com/shop/PumpkinheadPrintshop. Brick and mortar shops that have select pieces of my work: The Black Veil (Salem, MA), Witch City Wicks (Salem, MA), Die With Your Boots On (Salem, MA), The Glass Coffin (Austin, TX), Deadlocks (Portsmouth, NH), The Weeping Glass (Pittsburgh, PA), and Divination Tattoo (Asheville, NC).

So, I don’t really use Facebook anymore. If anything it’s just a vessel for me to promote Plebeian to people I know who aren’t on other media platforms and to share it across the art communities that are housed on Facebook. The other day I added someone from an art group and I got a really condescending message from them. The message was essentially, “I don’t know you but I see that you’re in the arts community and I’d like to hear about Plebeian.” Now my paraphrasing sounds all fine and dandy but they opened their message with, “I’m an American Master and Listed Artist,” which I thought was super strange but whatever, I sent him a basic rundown of what Plebeian is and what I do specifically. This is where the interaction really irked me because their response was basically, “that’s all fine and dandy, but I’m an American Master, here’s a profile written about me, you can find my auction results here, let me know what I can do for you.” I was really caught off guard by this one, but still trying to be nice I sent another message thanking him for reaching out and told him that I’d take a look at his work and possibly contact him for some Plebeian content in the future. “K.” was his response. This interaction was incredibly strange but it raised a few points that I’d like to bring up to everyone. Now I don’t want to publicly shame this person, shit on their work, or give any indication of who it actually is but I’d like to use what they sent me as a “what not to do,” tool for our readers because art is a community and being pretentious to someone you don’t know at all is not the way to succeed. The first thing I’d like to bring up is how they addressed themselves: American Master and Listed Artist. This wasn’t something they said in passing either, it was how they introduced themselves in their first message, they readdressed themselves as such in the follow up message as well as using it as a part of their signature in that very same message. I’ll bring up “Listed Artist,” first because what is that? I’ve been in art for a while, not a super long time but long enough to know the commonly used titles and that’s legitimately the first time I’ve ever heard that. What/where is this person listed? But that’s not what bugged me, what bugged me was the consistent use of the term “American Master.” I’ll start my gripe with this with a little history lesson, the term “master artist,” is a term that comes from when artists were artisans and the skills of art were taught to apprentices by masters. The term then developed into a retrospective term that typically refers to the “great masters,” of the Renaissance and following periods. The term master artist isn’t even really used these days but when it is used it’s used retrospectively, as a way of looking back on a body of work and addressing how great the art and artist were. For example, looking back on the work of Robert Rauschenberg I would say that he was truly an American Master… but I’d say it was extremely unlikely that he ever referred to himself as such. I talk to amazing artists who I’ve revered for far longer than I’ve had a platform to talk to them and not once have I heard one of them refer to themselves as a master, even artists who I would consider masters of their crafts. It’s just such an arrogant term to use on yourself, to call yourself a master artist I shouldn’t have to google you and if I do have to google you it shouldn’t be hard to find your work, but I’ll get into that in a moment. I talk to a lot of artists and I’d say 98% of the interactions are extremely pleasant but I’ve never understood why some artists feel the need to condescend people right off of the gate. Why open up by saying, “I’m so and so. I’m better than you.” What do you get out of that? Nothing, all you’re doing is making the person you’re speaking with think you’re a jerk. It’s also reinforcing this stigma that the arts and artists are this elitist community and we need to erase that. Be humble artists, BE HUMBLE. I’ll lump the second thing that annoyed me into one category and that was that they sent me a write up about them and told me where I could find their auction results. Now don’t get me wrong, if the conversation had been a little bit more pleasant I probably would have asked for some sort of material like this but they asked me what Plebeian was, I answered, and then they just told me about themselves… totally ignoring what they’d just asked me about. It’s just another arrogant move to be like tell me about yourself and then just ignore the response to tell me about you. But either way I clicked the link and this “write-up,” if you could even call it that, was on the most 1994 ass website, it was only like a paragraph and a half, and featured ZERO images of the person’s work. What kind of artist profile doesn’t have a picture of the art?! Truthfully I think this person wrote it themselves because it was basically just a long winded version of what they messaged me on facebook, but that’s just the conspiracy theorist in me. The second thing was that they said I can find their auction results on certain sites. Spoiler alert: I cannot, I looked for a good bit of time. But it’s another thing of like, why try to flex on me so hard right from the gate? I don’t care if an artist has made money, I profile all levels of artists because I like their work and often because they’re just good people. So to immediately try and flaunt that you’ve made money on your work to me, after I didn’t ask or even hint that I’d like to know, is just so rude in my opinion. It’s again reinforcing the stigma that artists are elitists and I’ll never support that. I’ve gone long already but I’ll end with this, artists don’t be condescending jerks. Be good people. More often than not a person will be much more willing to work with you if you’re just nice and welcoming, don’t try to establish yourself as better than other people simply for the inflation of your own ego because no one is going to want to work with you. Had this person said, “hey I see you’re in the arts, I’m an artist, tell me about Plebeian,” I would have been much more inclined to further the conversation and potentially work with them. But since they instead used it as a platform to pump their own tires, I just thought they were a jerk and let it end at the “K” they gave me. Finally, I’ll end on one more note: as artists we have to let our work speak for itself. We’re extremely fortunate to live in an artistic era where our personalities are recognized and people want to hear about the person behind the work but it has to be an aid for the work. This person told me how awesome they were but then they sent me an article about them that didn’t feature a picture of their work and I couldn’t find any of the other things they included. I really had to hunt down this person’s work and when I did, I didn’t find “American Master” level work. Artists, speak up, promote yourself, be a personality but at the same time, be humble, don’t be condescending or rude and let your work speak for itself a bit. I pride myself on never being overly critical on this platform and I never seek to just thrash someone for no reason, but this interaction really put a sour taste in my mouth and I wanted to share some of the things that were said strictly to show you all what not to be as artists.

My intro will be brief because the coming interview has got all of the information you could ask for. But today’s feature is Frank Baseman, another artist I discovered at the recent PHILA MRKT (so I know I’ve said it before, but BIT shouts to the PHILA MRKT). Baseman’s work that drew me in was all letterpress, a form of printmaking that is fleeting in this day and age but produces such beautiful work. Baseman’s letterpress work is a real emphasis on the beauty of the medium; bold, simple prints that allow the process to speak for itself. Now, while the strength of the letters and the embossing is striking, it can be a challenge to make just letters and simple images exciting. So how does Baseman suck you in? Brain teasers. Some of these prints can put your mind in an absolute pretzel, that’s what initially drew me to his work and once I was there I stayed to take in the rest of the work. Baseman has a fun hook that pulls you into his work from a distance and the mastery of the letterpress process, brilliant color choice, and super clean layouts keeps you there, wanting more. On top of the marvelous letterpress work, Baseman is also an accomplished designer, professor, and just a super passionate artist. When I met Baseman, his passion for his craft blew me away and I knew that I had to further the conversation and share his work. As I said already, this interview is insanely detailed so I won’t ramble on anymore. Enjoy this super cool body of work and awesome interview! 1. So, to start, I always like asking about background. So, what got you into art? Any Schooling? Big inspirations? What helped shape you into the artist that you are today? Not quite sure what “got me into art,” but that is a decent place to start. I was born in Philadelphia (as were my parents before me, and two of my three brothers; I am number two of four boys). We moved around quite a bit when I was younger, mostly in the Midwest or East coast. I was not a “military brat” as much as I say I was an “Encyclopedia Britannica brat.” That is to say, my Dad worked in sales for Encyclopedia Britannica; and as he did well for the company and got promoted, they asked him to move to a new territory/or part of the country. We moved back to the Philadelphia area when I was in junior high. I ended up going to Cheltenham High School which is probably where the “got you into art” came from as they had a very good art program at the time. And family lore has it that my Dad did a comic strip while he was in high school that was published in the Evening Bulletin newspaper “back in the day,” so maybe some of that rubbed off too. When it came to deciding where to go for college, many of my peers in high school were considering going to art school, but I didn’t think I was good enough for that. So, I ended up going to Penn State University as I figured it was large enough for me to find something that I was interested in. It was during a break in a Drawing class that I discovered the Graphic Design area. After meeting with a Professor and looking into the program, I enrolled in the Intro. to Graphic Design class during my Sophomore year, and I have never really looked back. For whatever reason, Graphic Design ticked off many of the things I am interested in in general: something creative; current events; cultural activities; language and communication; history, etc. I thrived in the Graphic Design program while also taking additional courses in French, eventually earning a BA in Graphic Design. I took a Printmaking class in college and enjoyed engraving/intaglio. In the Graphic Design program, we also were completely set up for silkscreen, most likely due to the fact that my Professor, Lanny Sommese, made these wonderful silkscreen posters—many of which were printed by his students. So, as a student you pretty much had to learn how to silkscreen and we had great facilities. This was also a time that I refer to as “B.C.” (before computer), so we were doing a lot more things with our hands than simply pushing “command P.” After undergrad I ended up going to Tyler School of Art for graduate school, earning an MFA in Graphic Design. It was at Tyler that I first started to print letterpress, as there was a press there that nobody seemed to be using. My teacher at the time, Joe Scorsone, showed me a thing or two with the press, but I was basically self-taught. Thirty some-odd years later I have been practicing as a Graphic Designer my entire career, and continue to operate my own business, Baseman Design Associates. I am also a Full Professor at Thomas Jefferson University (formerly Philadelphia University), where I have been teaching Graphic Design courses since 1998. And a little over three years ago I started letterpress printing again under the guise of Base Press. I somehow have been juggling basically two full-time jobs (my design firm and my teaching) for over twenty years and I see the the letterpress work as an extension of my studio work. I work out of my house, an old Victorian twin built in 1895. I like to say that the international headquarters of Baseman Design Associates is in the third-floor middle bedroom, which I use as my design office. Base Press is in the basement. It is quite wonderful to be able to conceive of pieces upstairs and execute them downstairs. I am very grateful for my setup. In terms of other influences, there are so, so many: early in my career my undergraduate Professor (and mentor) from Penn State, Lanny Sommese; my advisor (and mentor) from Tyler, Joe Scorsone; and almost anything produced by Pushpin Studios, the Graphic Design studio. Many art movements/artists from the typography of Dada and De Stijl to the drawings and sculptures of Alberto Giacometti. I am a fan of Impressionism; and great photography in all forms esp. Richard Avedon, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Robert Doisneau. The letterpress work of Jack Stauffacher; and on a contemporary level, there are so many fine folks working within letterpress today; I have particular respect and reverence for the work of Jen Farrell of Starshaped Press out of Chicago; David Wolske; Stephanie Carpenter of Hamilton Wood Type and Printing Museum; Jim Sherraden formerly of Hatch Show Print; Dafi Kuhne from Switzerland; there are just so many. 2. You’ve got a very text-based design process, always weaving letters/words in and out of images. So how did this process and style start for you? How did this develop into your letterpress work? Is a classic process like the letterpress important to the work you’re making? As stated earlier, I took French language courses and studied French for about six years (I almost majored in French in college). Over time I have come to realize that I think I got into Graphic Design more through a language/communication/writing door rather than through a drawing or illustration door. What I mean by that is that I have always enjoyed/been intrigued by language and communication, and my extrapolation of that is my long-held interest in typography. What specifically led to my interest in letterpress? Well, I’m going to blame that one on my sabbatical. It has been almost three years since I had my first—and as yet, only—sabbatical (from what was then Philadelphia University) during the Spring 2017 semester. For my sabbatical project, my goals were many-fold: first, I wanted to go “back to my roots” and embrace letterpress printing, an activity that I engaged in while in graduate school but had not done much with since. For subject matter, I immersed myself in another one of my long-held interests: the communication and design vehicle of the “rebus”—those visual and verbal puzzles that are familiar to many of us when we first encountered them while learning to read. For some of the work, I ended up reinterpreting well-known quotes and phrases in the form of rebuses, that were letterpress printed as broadsides to produce a collection entitled “Rebus Quotes and Other Typographic Explorations.” This collection of work—in addition to select projects from my over thirty-year professional practice—formed the basis of my first solo exhibition in over thirty-years (since graduate school) mounted at Penn State University (Fall 2017), as well as marking the beginning of Base Press. Since that time, I have produced two additional invited solo exhibitions post-sabbatical, at Marywood University, Spring 2019 and University of Delaware, Fall 2018. I’ve always liked the “physicality” of letterpress, the “sensory-ness” of the printing. Obviously, you are seeing what you are printing; and it is obviously a very tactile medium and you can feel the impression. But you are also listening for the sound of the ink on the press. As a self-taught printer I also find letterpress rather accessible, rather approachable. I now think of myself as “practicing the letterpress,” in the same way that my son practices his bass guitar. 3. Your letterpress prints also pair as fun little riddles that you have to figure out as you look at it. How do pieces begin for you? Do you select a phrase and expand on the image from there or something else? Does the color bare any significance or narrative meaning to your prints? Or is it just an element to make things pop? Initially my intentions were to try to build or make a “body of work.” I settled on rebuses as the subject matter as to what to print, so I first did a lot of research into well-known quotations and phrases. I was looking for phrases where I could replace some of the words with images (there are clearly some wonderful quotes and phrases out there but some may not make for great visual/verbal combinations). In a Word doc, I would literally re-write some of the quotations and replace some of the words with brackets for images to come. For instance, “To be or not to be…” became [2] [bee] [oar] [knot] [2] [bee] etc. Why rebus as a form? I really don’t know, but I’ve always been interested in them. To me they are the epitome of “visual + verbal = message” (an old axiom I picked up in college). Think of “I heart NY” or “America runs on Dunkin’” and you will know what I mean. Most everyone is familiar with the form, even though at first, they may not know what they are encountering. For imagery I have always been drawn to the vernacular nature of old printer’s “cuts” or “line engravings,” as we used to refer to them. Those late 1800s, early 1900s old engravings from wood or metal that helped to illustrate items. By now they have become as innocuous and familiar as sort of “dictionary definition” illustrations. They are all in the public domain (so no worries about copyright infringement). Plus, I find that the vernacular of these type of images meets up well with the visual/verbal puzzle of the rebuses. As to color, I tend to print the predominant phrases or type parts first. Typically, these have been black ink (although really it is a very dark gray color). Since most of the registration of the printing revolves around this larger type, I try to get this in place first. After that, it depends on what other coloration I have in mind for the piece. I have been using silver as a kind of neutral gray (since I have been printing exclusively on uncoated paper, the silver doesn’t have the same sheen as it would on coated paper). I have been using brown as a neutral color as well. Then I have been using a pretty liberal palette of “highlight” colors to have things pop. I will admit a weakness lately for the bright fluorescent pinks, oranges and reds. I tend to work in batches; that is to say, I conceive of several prints at a time; and once designed, go to the press with several in progress. That way if I want to use a bright red on one piece, I might also be able to use the same color on another. This keeps the number of wash-ups down, and I must say I enjoy the mental challenge of trying to figure out what to print next, and what color to print. 4. Speaking specifically to printing your pieces, how does the process of rolling the prints go for you? Do you have a large collection of plates that you pull from? Or do you have things made for each print if necessary? Does the collection of plates you have affect how you create an image or what words are images and what are just letters? Once I have some thoughts about which phrase/quote/text I would like to try to make a print out of, from there everything starts as sketches. Some thumbnail, some a little tighter. Then using some of the type that I have in my collection in the shoppe (whether wood type or metal type) I usually proof the words that will not be images to see what that is going to look like. I then scan the type, and then using the computer (in InDesign) I lay out the whole piece. I work out the design this way, printing quick laserprints to get the design exactly where I want it to be, including choosing colors/making color decisions (although I have also been known to “punt” and change my color selection on the fly at press-side). If I am working on a piece that requires an image/cut/graphic that I do not have already in my collection, I find that image; size it to the size that I want; make a PDF of it and send via upload to a place in Owosso, Michigan and they make a “type high” letterpress plate for me. For instance, if I need an image of an “eye” to stand in for the letter “I,” I get the plate made of that image at a certain size. Once the plate is made, I am stuck with that size. But it’s not a bad restriction, as it forces me to work with what I have. Not the endless/endless/endless possibilities and choices that are available to us today. Sometimes restrictions can be helpful in that way. As to “rolling out the prints,” I find the whole process of printing rather meditative, rather cathartic. Once things are set up, it can be quite calming to print out an edition of prints. I also sometimes work on more abstract things where I go to the press and conceive/construct and print things more on the fly. I find this to be a liberating alternative to printing the other pieces that are already figured out. To me it is kind of like sketching; making monoprints and seeing what comes out of this. Sometimes I try to live by the adage “print more, think less,” which in my mind means to just print—and try not to judge while making; just make stuff and worry about whether or not it is “any good,” or whether “I like it or not” later. 5. When we met you mentioned that one of your prints was the only one you’d printed multiple times, are most of your prints just one and done? What is the significance of running such limited prints of your work? if there is any. Most prints are “one and done” for the limited-edition benefit. I don’t always have a set or exact number in mind when I start a print, but most prints have been of the limited-edition variety of btwn. 30 and 40. As many printmakers/printers will tell you that most of the time spent on a print is in the “make-ready”—as the word implies, making things ready for printing. That is the minute details of positioning, proofing, setting things up, moving things around so that they are just right. Once this is achieved, you might as well make a few prints, and not just one or two. So, I landed at about 30 or 40 because 50 seemed too many, and 10 wasn’t enough. I also do have to account for mistakes and errors along the way (mostly in registration); as some prints end up being 14 or 15 different colors; each color means a different set-up or make ready. So, if I start with 30ish I’m more likely to yield a decent amount of really good ones in the end. As to the “limited edition” part: these prints are special; there are not 100s or 1,000s of them. They are made by hand (albeit using a press); but still, it is a hand operation. So, I hope there is something special about the limited quantity of them, as obviously there is only a finite number of them. I also hope to sell as many as I can! So, go to www.basepress.co and look around! The one that I printed more than once that you reference was simply out of my own curiosity to try the same phrase/quote a different way. It is the only time (so far) that I have printed the same phrase/quote more than once. 6. Finally, PLUGS! Where can people find your work? Any shows/events coming up? Anything and everything you’d like to share and wherever people can find you, let it rip! First place to go for more info. (and to buy any prints, cards and such) is my website at www.basepress.co. And then follow me on Instagram (@basepress). I will be having a solo exhibition at Montgomery County Community College at the beginning of Fall 2020 semester; followed by another solo exhibition at Harrisburg Area Community College in Spring 2021. Info and details will be posted in time on my site and Insta. I have also done/sold at the Chesapeake Printer’s Fair the past two years, and expect that we will do that again this year; usually end of April. I have done/sold at the Lancaster Printer Fair the past three years, that one is in mid-Sept. Beyond that, I’m always looking out for more opportunities to exhibit and get my stuff out there. So, stay tuned for any further info. Thanks! /// Websites Baseman Design Associates: www.basemandesign.com Base Press: www.basepress.co Instagram: @ basepress

How much of the information you sense do you actually make sense of? What do your hands tell you they want to do when you're sitting still? When was the last time you let them do what they wanted? When was the last time you let your hands, your feet, your eyes call the shots for a few minutes? You're a few decades old, but your hands, your muscles, your patterns and your eyes are millions of years old. Let them take control now and again.

Where are you now? Exactly, physically. What do the walls look like, how many windows are there. How many choices did you make that led you here, and how many were made for you. Do you love the place you are in? Or does it feed on your belief that you love it? Where do you want to be, right now, exactly, physically?

I am trying this interview format again, with a new artist! The first interview was a success so I decided to try it again. My second artist I decided to interview is Mathea, @mathea_madsen. I will ask her questions (in bold) and she will respond using her iPad and Procreate. I will post her responses below. Who are you? Draw the first thing that comes to mind Create a three-color pattern Draw a monster Draw a design made with all organic shapes Make a one-line drawing Check out Mathea's Instagram: