Since I’ve gotten a couple of questions I’m posting these pics to show how the crossbeam sits in the supports at either end of the rack, and how the bottom end screws into the tabletop (and unscrews for removal). And anytime someone starts my morning by saying, “Great rack”, I’m glowing into the afternoon.
I stole this print-drying rack design from a very fine artist whose work I admire heartily and who’s been generous with her expertise. Thank you, Sherrie! It works great!
Don’t you love the green plastic roofing tacks holding the clothespins to the 1×2?
This is a linocut of a Black-breasted Puffbird, which I observed, spellbound, on the Wheeler Trail in the rainforest of Panama’s Barro Colorado Island, in a tree-fall gap about 500 meters from the trailhead. There was a broken tree with a flush of new leaves at the top, and the Puffbird sat and surveyed its surroundings from the upper branch. I stood almost beneath it for many long minutes which gave me ample time to work on the foreshortening. This print is an edition of 30 on very beautiful Japanese Hoshi paper. This rack holds exactly 31 prints, 3″ apart, so I have one space for a good artist’s proof. And I’ll be leaving for the Island again next week, for a sketching/painting/birding/thinking/writing two-week sojourn in the romantic tropics. High time for one of those! And I am so loving my new print-drying rack!
See the rainbow?
It’s NOT raining, hasn’t been for a few days, and it’s finally dried out enough to get the mower (fixed) mowing. It’s an unbelievable year for wildflowers as you can see from these pics of the barn buried in Virginia creeper, Monarda punctata, and Rudbeckia. I’m in two shows in the next two months, one in the Oklahoma City Underground, a curiously sci-fi sounding pedestrian tunnel system beneath our fair city which has been recently upgraded and revamped, and now includes shops and an art gallery, soon to be hosting Traveling Through Artist’s Eyes, July 19th through October 5, 2007. The other show, titled The Passionate Menagerie, is opening August 3 (please plan on joining me there if you’re in town!) from 6 to 9pm, is at JRB Art at the Elms Gallery in the Paseo in Oklahoma City. It will feature a lot of my tropical bird paintings in acrylics and in pastels, and also a good bunch of four-legged subjects. Many drawings as well as paintings, and perhaps a few block prints. I carved up another block today and I think I will proof it this afternoon. Here’s the image, a bluegray gnatcatcher perched in a crape myrtle, right now blooming in my garden. I drew the flowers directly onto the block (while standing in the hot sun), then added in the little gnatcatcher, which I’d sketched earlier near the same spot.
It’s funny, but I think the block is pretty just like this!
Mighty Mowin’ Mike
Rudbeckia, trumpetvine, Bartlett pear tree
Rudbeckia, Monarda, and a freshly-painted barn
