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Message 1
From: "April Vollmer"
Date: Sat, 17 Dec 2005 12:10:17 -0500
Subject: [Baren 29581] Ansei Uchima/Cate Fitt
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Cate Fitt, Hi, I wanted to respond to your posting about Ansei Uchima at
Sarah Lawrence. I met him at his last exhibition a few years ago. He was
paralyzed, but came to the reception in midtown Manhattan in a wheelchair.
Great artist, and an important teacher.

April
www.aprilvollmer.com


>Ansei Uchima taught printmaking at Sarah Lawrence College and I learned
moku-hanga from him in the late 1960s. I still have some of those prints.
After college, no more printmaking until about 3 years ago when I spent a
week in the Virginia mountains at a monotype workshop. Made one monotype
then began carving lino and I haven't stopped. In between I have been deeply
immersed in textiles and some painting. All my brushes from college have
long since been moth eaten and tossed but I would love to take a workshop to
get me started again in moku-hanga.
Next step for now is to switch from lino to wood.
I'm enjoying this thread.

Cate Fitt (Annie Fitt's sister)
Richmond Virginia

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Message 2
From: Nels Johnson
Date: Sat, 17 Dec 2005 17:58:48 -0600
Subject: [Baren 29582] Rotating my baren
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Greetings,

I just finished the second proofing of my first woodblock since my
workshop this past summer at Druckstelle (http://www.druckstelle.info/
en/) in Berlin. Although not perfect, it came out better than the
first proofing. I'm encouraged enough to order some fairly decent
paper to print it on. I'll post a scan of today's print when they
dry. I printed on an inexpensive paper designed for oil based inks.
After the block "warmed up" I printed on some japanese papers I had
laying around. They were very light weight, and proved to be almost
unmanageable when trying to fit into the kento. It is black with
shades of gray. I was surprised at how the shades of grey varied
from the inexpensive oil based paper compared to the japanese paper
made for water based inks. The grays were much lighter on the
japanese paper.

Reading the instructions that came with the baren, they mentioned the
disc inside the bamboo sheath should be rotated fairly often. How
does one do this? Do I have to untie the sheath, rotate the disc,
and retie the sheath, or is it possible to rotate the disc without
untying the sheath?

Thanks for the help with this.

Nels

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Message 3
From: Dave Bull
Date: Sun, 18 Dec 2005 09:08:19 +0900
Subject: [Baren 29583] Re: Rotating my baren
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> ... I printed on some japanese papers I had laying around. They were
> very light weight, and proved to be almost unmanageable when trying to
> fit into the kento.

Sounds like calligraphy paper, not printmaking paper ...

> Reading the instructions that came with the baren, they mentioned the
> disc inside the bamboo sheath should be rotated fairly often. How
> does one do this? Do I have to untie the sheath, rotate the disc, and
> retie the sheath, or is it possible to rotate the disc without untying
> the sheath?

The coil is rotated by holding the baren flat in one palm, and using
three or four fingers of the other hand to press the ategawa and twist
it in place. (A very slight moistening of the fingers sometimes helps).
A new tightly tied baren skin can be extremely difficult to rotate.
Tapping the edge of the baren _lightly_ on the printing desk can
sometimes help jog it 'loose' a bit.

Dave
(... crazy busy working on the last print of the current series, and
getting next year's projects (plural!) set up ...)

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