It was an inspiring experience to watch Jason’s project progress during his two weeks at Oehme Graphics. He truly immersed himself in experimenting with the endless ideas inherent through the printmaking process. Jason made prints using solar plates, collagraphs, stencils, vellums and carved komatex board, all simultaneously and interchangeably. Each series (and every piece, for that matter) has its own personality, yet they all look beautiful together as a cohesive group. His enthusiastic energy and love for creating is present in each one.
Every morning Julia would take down the prints from the wall (we staple the edges to the wall in order to dry and flatten the pieces), and by the end of the day, it would be completely covered again. Jason was thoughtful and thorough in his decision making when choreographing a piece, but unselfconscious and uninhibited in his pursuit of getting the work where he wanted it. This would sometimes mean pieces would stay up for a couple of days, so Jason could meditate on them, and then final layers would be added to pull the various elements together.
It was great fun to work with him (from our printmaker’s standpoint) because of his willingness to play with the process, and his ability to utilize the multitude of techniques that we introduced to him. He also added some bumpin’ new stations to our Pandora account, which kept us groovin’ and motivated through our 10 hour days!
The first moments of undertaking the komatex as a matrix for prints–using intaglio wiping (leaving ink down into the carved out spaces and wiping away the top) in conjunction with relief rolling the board with brayers. This technique coats the top layer with ink and leaves the carved areas white.
Introducing the “Stairway to Heaven” portfolio by Oehme Graphics!
Every year, each artist that comes to Oehme Graphics, in addition to their individual projects, will also be making an edition or a series of monoprints of twenty prints (plus proofs). The only regulation is that the image fits on a 12” x 12” piece of paper. The shop will display them all at the end of the year (where they will live) on our very long stairway that leads to our lovely living space upstairs and down to our happy shop. The annual collection of the prints will also be sold as boxed portfolios, containing a print from each artist. Watch for the official announcement soon.
The above picture is a few of the images Jason’s variant edition will contain.
With ink on some of Jason’s prints still wet, he had to sign them while they were still drying on the wall!
Sue, Jason, and Julia, weary but happy after two weeks of nonstop crazy printing!
Please contact the shop to see images of Jason’s work. They will be available to view and for sale on the Oehme Graphics website shortly.
At the end of the month we will host our first monotype workshop, and then Ken Buhler comes in March! In the meantime we will be getting our site up and running. Prints from Oehme Graphics Collection, which contains prints from over a hundred artists, will be available for sale, as will all the work from the projects of Jeffrey Keith, Susan Hambleton, and Jason Rohlf. We can’t wait to get all this amazing work up on the site and share it with you all!