PBI 2014: Guest Blogger Charlie Wisseman and Printing in Relief

Charlie Wisseman is a retired pathologist who now does mixed media art with a current emphasis on book arts and papermaking. Charlie creates some rather amazing works of art, and I encourage you to visit his website and looks at some of the pictures: www.charleswisseman.com. Charlie took a printmaking class at Paper and Book Intensive this year and agreed to share some of his thoughts about it here on my blog.

Ryan O'Malley, assistant professor at Texas A&M in Corpus Christi,Texas, taught a class in reduction relief printmaking at Paper and Book Intensive in May 2014 at Ox-Bow. As a first-time printmaker with no graphic training or drawing skill, I was a little worried going into this class, especially after seeing the amazing work that Ryan brought to show. His aesthetic is darker and more graphic-novel-like than my usual taste, but the work is dense and graphically powerful enough to pull any viewer in. I chose a graphic from a book to use as my image, and did fine.

Charlie's reduction print made in this class

Ryan taught us the basics of reduction printmaking using carved MDF panels with red and black colors on white base paper. This process is simple and cheap enough for me to play with at home, using an old etching press that a friend passed on to me. I do not aspire to have the astonishing speed and control of carving that Ryan demonstrates, but this is definitely a beginner-friendly process. Ryan was available until late every evening to help, and always willing to assist with corrective carving. By the end I was becoming almost too aggressive with the carving tools. Easy to remove material, but difficult to correct mistakes!

A few of Ryan's printing blocks.

A display of the prints made by the students in this class.

Ryan showed us a simple registration system using Ternes Burton registration pins taped to a jig, affectionately known as "Frenchy". Experience with students has taught Ryan to add some protections to prevent accidentally running Frenchy through the press. As a bonus, Ryan showed me how to print my brain image onto a tee shirt. The print I brought home looks great. My only regret is that the reduction process of carving the block between colors means that there is no going back to do any more complete prints. Only the portion of the image for the final color remains, but the block itself is worth framing.

- Charles Wisseman

Guest Blogger Charles Wisseman, on Daredevil Letterpress at PBI

Charles Wisseman is a retired pathologist who now does mixed media art with a current emphasis on book arts and papermaking. Charles lives in Champaign, Illinois and has a website where he shares some of his work: www.charleswisseman.com. Charles took a letterpress class at Paper and Book Intensive last month where they were literally printing in circles, and any other shape they could manage.

Daredevil Letterpress was taught by Jessica Spring, who teaches in Washington State and runs Springtide Press. She encouraged us to think outside the rectangular box when setting up a letterpress layout. Everyone liked the type held in a circle between a roll of tape and a pipe clamp. This opened our mind to the possibilities, and each participant took a different approach.


Printing circular type.


Printing curvy type.
We all were introduced to the wonders of the California job case, the pica pole, the Vandercook press, mixing ink, cleaning up in the least toxic manner, etc. People were encouraged to do prints with more than one color, and to try for a high level of quality.

There is only one Vandercook press in this studio, so print time had to be scheduled. Jessica spent long hours monitoring the printing. Despite the scheduling difficulties, there was a very cooperative atmosphere.

I decided to use the poster press, on loan from the Morgan Conservatory, because this is what I have at home. I have some wood type, also, so I did a layout of wood type held in a galley tray by a carved-out 1/2 inch foam core. Others liked this method of holding type and made complex and sinuous arrangements of type and image. I opted for all hand inking in the poster press to give a very variable edition for the class portfolio. I also tried some of the pressure printing techniques I had seen in the Sarah Bryant class the week before.



Examples of class work
Others did complex linoleum cutouts, water color additions, sewn in thread, images in speedball cutout material, and color gradients. I had little previous experience in letterpress, so all of this seemed daring enough for me. The portfolio looked great, and one set sold well in the scholarship auction. Thanks to PBI for bringing in this innovative and humorous instructor.

- Charles Wisseman

Guest Blogger Charles Wisseman, on Moku Hanga and Martin Vinaver

Charles Wisseman is a retired pathologist who now does mixed media art with a current emphasis on book arts and papermaking. Charles lives in Champaign, Illinois and has a website where he shares some of his work: www.charleswisseman.com.

Charlie has been at PBI every time that I have been there and I think he's been there many times more. This year at Ox Bow, he took Martin Vinaver's class on Moku Hanga, a Japanese woodblock printing technique. He kindly agreed to share his class experience here on my blog.

Martin Vinaver was an unusual presence at PBI this year ( May in Oxbow in Saugatuck, Michigan). He is a Mexican from Vera Cruz who fell in love with Japanese woodblock printing, which led him to learn Japanese and spend several years in Japan learning this art form from remaining masters. This is a difficult and labor-intensive process which is in decline. The samples of older prints from Japan show an almost superhuman degree of fine detail and carefully drawn lines.

On returning to Mexico, he set about working with some other Mexicans and foreign artists to try to "Mexicanize" the process, because some of the Japanese materials were very expensive or unobtainable in Mexico. He gave a talk on his art center progress so far, with U-tube clips showing the making of paper from old towels discarded by local tourist hotels, lithograph stones from local quarries, locally cast metal parts for presses, local colored earths for pigments, carbon black from the local bakery, fat for lithography crayons from local sheep, etc. The website for his organization is www.laceibagrafica.org.

In the class we did not try to reach the level of the old masters. Each person tried to carve and print an original 4.5" x 6.5" block of shina plywood to learn the traditional methods of carving (including registration points), mixing pigments and printing on Japanese paper using a traditional baren. Martin brought carving sets of traditional style made locally in Mexico using steel from older quality European files. These were for sale after the class, and I liked the tools enough to buy a set. He brought powdered earthen pigments from Mexico, demonstrated traditional baren-making (which we all tried).

We were all feeling pretty good about our designs and carving, until Martin came in on the third day and said that we needed to carve our negative spaces deeper to avoid stray ink transfer. In the cold studio space this was not welcome news, but the final results were worth it. I carved a turtle design using two blocks.

Moku Hanka Woodblock Print by Charles Wisseman


Carving to have color areas contact without gaps or overlaps was harder than I expected, but we were all pleased with the results. The main challenge is to think in terms of color areas rather than lines. I have no graphic training, but found the final result pleasing.

Martin's other contribution was tai chi instruction in the open before breakfast every day. I liked his style better than other forms I have tried, but probably can't find a teacher here. What a great way to start the day, though.

Martin Vinaver leading tai chi at Ox Bow