At the risk of sounding petulant and defensive, I'd like to say enough
already! Thanks for the advice (which as I recall I said in advance I
wasn't looking for) but I really am doing just fine, and having a solid
background in science I know about changing one variable at a time. What
is all this gratuitous pedadogy? Are you all teachers and you just can't
stop?
It would be one thing if I had come in saying, "I've been trying to
print with gum and I just can't get it." Then it would make sense to get
all these responses saying, "Well, maybe you're using the wrong gum.
Maybe the wrong paper. Maybe you're holding your brush wrong. Maybe the
coating is too thick. Maybe the wrong pigment. What! Tube pigment
instead of powder. How gouache!" (I'm of course exaggerating to make a
point.) But when I came in saying, "I've already struggled my way to
where I'm making prints I'm happy with, that people are actually willing
to pay money for, and I'm just here looking for a community, not for
advice" and everyone stands around stroking their chins and saying,
"Maybe it's the gum, she needs to try a different gum. She needs to do
experiments with different pigments. We need to fix this!" I feel like
Alice in Wonderland just before someone yells "Off with her head!"
I was feeling quite dispirited yesterday, taking all this to heart and
beginning to think maybe I really am doing everything wrong, when it
came to me that the answer is in the prints. If I look at the prints and
the prints tell me I need to change, then I will change. So I drove to
the gallery and went to the wall where eight framed color gum prints
were hanging, "shimmering quietly together" (as an admirer and collector
of my work once said of a show of my prints) and the prints told me to
keep on doing what I'm doing. In the end, the work has to stand on its
own and speak for itself. The technique, of course, is only a means to
an end, not the end in itself. You may not even like my prints; they may
not seem like proper gum prints to you, that's your prerogative. I am
happy with them, although I printed for a year solid before I made
anything I wanted to show anyone, and I'm glad I didn't stumble onto
this list while I was still struggling, or I may have given up too soon.
I think it was Bernie Boudreau who said somewhere in the archives that
luckily he hadn't ever heard that what he wanted to do couldn't be done,
so he went ahead and did it.
I take some responsibility for this of course; I came on a little cocky
I suppose and presented an easy target, someone who needed to be taken
down a peg. Perhaps so. At any rate I have a show starting July 1 and I
still have prints to make for it, so adieu. When I come back I hope I'll
have the sense to join the lurkers, but knowing myself I will no doubt
be unable to resist jumping in and lobbing a few grenades of my own from
time to time, and will have to be willing to take some hits in return.
It's been... interesting. I retreat to my former solitude for now—
Katharine