Blue: A Printmaking Tangent

This week, the Blue Band took a bit of a detour in our study of earth science (though this detour isn't really that far off course).On Tuesday, we went on a field trip to Gruenwald Press, an art studio and gallery space owned printmaker John Gruenwald. While at his studio, John taught the Blue Band how to replicate a drawing using the process of stone lithography. (For all the non-printmakers out there, lithography uses the repelling relationship of oil and water to transfer an image from a slab of limestone to a piece of paper -- over and over again.)Blue got to see and experience the process from beginning to end.We used grit, time, and erosion to prepare the surface of the stone.We collectively created a design on a prepared stone using oil pencils (as well as some of the natural oil already on our hands and skin).We got to roll out the ink, and use the press to transfer the image to rag paper.After the visit, everyone became pretty interested in printmaking, and in the idea that a unique image could be replicated over and over using a totally unfamiliar process.As a result of our tangent, we spent most of Friday making our own prints.This was a pretty special moment for Blue.After using the whole morning to get to know the tools and process we would be using, everyone begged to skip pre-lunch park time, so that they could have more printmaking time. So, that's what we did. We used our break to continue working on designs, on helping on another understand the printmaking process, and on talking about how to edition and price their finished artworks.We'll continue this conversation on Monday, for sure!