Matt Youngblood Project Update

I will have a minimum of three pieces. Piece 1 has been shown in class and is on newsprint. I doubt I will alter this piece anymore and am considering it complete. Piece 2 is on Reeves BFK and has not been shown in class. It consists of some drawing in pastel and some form of printmaking/painting. Piece 3 is a collage of all the prints I showed during Critique 2 for group 2. I am now making it a point to work with larger plates in my printmaking practice, reflecting on the three pieces above and the large size they are. I was talked out of doing the largest plate that I could, but am still doing a plate that is the largest I’ve done before. This is the next project. I may make this next piece into a collage to better fit with the overall quality of my pieces. I think I have exhausted myself on trying to explore Noah's idea of incorporating painting and printmaking, or make printmaking more like painting, at least to any complex degree. I am staying more closely to printmaking now.

Piece 2 was made by taking small rectangular strips of copper plate and coating them with ink and putting them through the press many times with multiple copper strips laid down. The surface of the paper was first painted. The final touches were done with pastel.

I think what I am doing here is essentially trying to find an alternative form of printmaking, or not settling for the standard practices I see in the SMU printmaking courses. That is why I am now reluctant to just have the prints themselves, and instead want to make them into collages. I also will not be going back to small plates, which was actually the norm for me before this class.  

For the collages, I am using the Reeves BFK paper we use in printmaking, and simply organizing the pieces however I want. I am trying to make the pieces rectangular in form, and am trying not to do the whole collage all at once. One thing I have now added to my art practice is that I will rotate the piece to different views, and not work on it from one single axis or view. I do see potential that I could take the idea of the collage further, but don’t think I will take it further than what it is now.

I estimate I will have one to two more pieces by the time of the exhibition. So, I will have four to five pieces total. I don't have any titles for the pieces, but think I should probably include them, along with a little card with cataloging information. We discussed alternative ways of arranging the pieces in the show in class, but don't know if I am going to do this.