Kite Flying II

It's Kite Flying Time

It's the first day of lent...clean week...and it's also kite flying season.

I think the combo is perfect, and I'm not alone.

The greeks traditionaly take their kids out to fly kites on clean monday.

It's one way to connect joy to ascetic effort.

We are looking at the positive, in order to make our repentence about real change in the right direction.

So I found a really easy kite design that takes 1 minute to make, and flies really easily.

I took a picture, but I can't find the wire that connects my camera to my computer.

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Just a random personal factoid:

Just got back last night again from PA. Touching down at LAX completed my 18th take-off and landing since this Christmas. Crazy.

Viscosity Etching

VISCOSITY is a unique method of printing more than one color from a single etching plate. In traditional etching a separate plate is generally used for each color. The viscosity technique is based on the principle that an oily (or greasy) ink will reject a less oily (or viscous) ink. The viscosity plate (usually zinc) has to be bitten with nitric acid to many different levels. The finished plate is first inked in the traditional manner, rubbing the ink into the lower levels and then wiping the surface clean. Then a second color is selected, oil is added, and it is rolled onto the surface of the plate with a hard roller. The third color is rolled on top of this with a very soft roller. The roller, being soft, deposits the ink on the intermediate levels of the plate. The second color, on the surface, should reject most of the third color. Then the plate is printed onto damp rag paper with the tremendous pressure of an etching press. What actually happens is magical! The colors react in all sorts of strange ways and, depending on the oiliness of the inks, the thickness of the rolled ink, the pressure applied to the rollers, and any number of other conditions, each print is a little (or sometimes a lot) different from the others. The term Edition Variable (or E.V.) is often used to describe these prints .

-this article and the picture are both taken from the site of the Artist, Julita Jones, a printmaker who did her grad work at C.S.U.F. (I saw her grad exhibit when I was taking classes there, and the work has stayed with me ever since.)
check out www.julitajones.com

Calder gets a Cold

It was a cold day in Philidelphia...but, seeing a Calder sculpture
on a walk through the city during a snowstorm was really fun.
I love Calder. He's playful, and I the motion is his work
captivates me.
I want one of my own.