Hello everybody-

It's that time of year again, the time in which I ask all of you to update or send me your current address so that I may send you a Valentine.  Full disclosure, this year's Valentine will not be hand printed.  Printing the Valentines has become an increasingly time consuming process and while I love you all, I decided to spend my time working on something else this January.  Besides, five years of hand printed Valentines has a nice sort of completeness to it, right?

So what have I been doing?  I again had been avoiding working on my book project.  One night I finally sat down to work on the final print separations and realized that I really didn't have that many more layers to pull.  I got to work and now I only have two more layers and printing will be done. TWO! DONE! Unbelievable. Next comes putting together all of the elements but I look forward to that part so I think it will be a nice way to work through the winter.

Here are some pics from the latest mock-up.






So in conclusion: Send me your current address, look forward to book news SOON, check out my shop to look at available prints & drawings.

Happy 2012!!

Jodi

http://www.jodihoover.com

'Tis the season for shopping so I wanted to let you know about a few places to find artwork by some fabulous local artists including yours truly!

MICA Art Market

December 7-10, 10am-6pm

1301 W. Mount Royal Ave. Baltimore, MD 21217

http://www.mica.edu/Events_and_Exhibitions/Annual_Events/Art_Market.html

Started by MICA staff members,  Art Market has gotten bigger and better each year.  Art Market is hands down the best way to see work by MICA staff, faculty, students and alumni.  Ceramics, prints, hand woven scarves and owl pillows! Stop by and check out the work, you won't be disappointed.  I will have a selection of prints and drawings available for purchase.

Monster of a Show

Friday December 16, 5-10 pm.

Saturday December 17, 10-5 pm.

Idlewylde United Methodist Preschool

1000 Regester Ave Baltimore, MD 21239

http://www.facebook.com/events/183512968370896/

New for me this year, Monster of a Show is put together by the fine folks of Claymonster Pottery (Claymonster). It looks like an extremely talented group of artists and I am very excited to be invited to participate. I'll have prints, drawings and some screen prints available for sale.  I hope to see many of you there!


Minas Gallery & Boutique

815 W. 36th St. Baltimore, MD 21211

http://www.minasgalleryandboutique.com

For years Minas Gallery & Boutique has been one of the best places in Baltimore to see great artwork, vintage clothes, books and other collectibles.  If you are shopping on the avenue in Hampden, stop in and check out my tiny monster prints. 


Towson Framing Gallery

410 York Road Towson MD 21201

http://www.towsonframinggallery.com/

Doing your holiday shopping at the Towson Mall?  Take a break and check out Towson Framing Gallery!  Located just south of the traffic circle, Towson Framing Gallery has a selection of fantastic artwork and great prices on framing.  Currently they have a selection of my tiny monsters and some larger prints.

As always you may also find my work in my SHOP.  I may have to take things up and down because of the other shows so
if there is something in particular you are after that you don't see in the shop, please feel free to contact me directly. 

May all of you have a wonderful holiday season!

Jodi

www.jodihoover.com

Today's entry is brought to you by the current winter-like weather conditions outside of my house.  This sort of weather is not my favorite but it certainly is good at getting me to catch up on a bunch of things. So what have I been doing since July?  Admittedly, not a ton of stuff.  As much as I hate to say it, sometimes life is just not conducive to studio work.  Let's just leave it at that. 

I completed these two drawings for some very special clients.

   

The clients and I were both pleased with the results.

I have also been working on the book project, although of course it is moving forward SIGNIFICANTLY slower than I would like.  However the past few weeks have been fairly productive so maybe there is light at the end of the tunnel.

   
 

As usual Livejournal has done some weird things with the photos and as usual, I really don't feel like trying to fix it.  I am becoming increasingly annoyed with Livejournal in general so maybe its time to figure something else out. 

But I digress, you can start to see how the book is going to look in it's final form.  Now I need to do another mock-up since the final stages of printing might be a bit tricky. 

The food, the music, crafts, artwork and now- MICA Art Market!  That's right, at this year's Artscape some of my very talented co-workers and I will be setting up in MICA's Brown Building to sell our various artworks.  I will be there from 12-8 Friday thru Sunday. According to the weather report, you won't even have to deal with stifling heat! But have no fear, even if it's hot outside, the MICA Art Market also features air-conditioning.

Here's information about Artscape: http://www.artscape.org/index.cfm

Here's a link to Art Market Info: http://tinyurl.com/6yj69ma

Here's a link to a picture of the Brown Building, located on Mt. Royal Ave. right in the heart of the festival: http://www.mica.edu/browse_art/brown_center.html

If you don't make it to Artscape, you can also see some of my work at Zia's Cafe in Towson, MD: http://www.ziascafe.com/  Come for the art, stay for the yummy sandwiches!

Hope to see you this weekend,

Jodi Hoover

www.jodihoover.com

Is it time to stop referring to my current book project as "the snail book"?  It will actually be called the darts of love.  Makes it sound a little more real, right?

Here are the latest progress pics-

   

     

You can start to get more of a sense of how the final pages will look.  The collaged pieces won't look quite so three dimensional, they'll be tacked down firmly but I think you get the basic Idea.  I'm really excited about how the prints are looking on the background pages. There probably won't be much progress to report in the next couple of weeks but I swear printing will continue!

Hello all-

I just wanted to let you all know about a couple of upcoming events.

Closing Reception (Facebook event page)

Thursday, April 28th from 6:30-8pm

Hairway to Steven

Friday, May 6th from 7pm-9pm

Pleasant Plains Workshop

That's right, D.C.!!  For all of you D.C. folks who have or have thought about making the trek to Baltimore for one of my shows, here's your chance to see something a little closer to home.  For Baltimore folks......well who doesn't enjoy driving to D.C. on a Friday night?

Seriously, I am very honored to be invited to participate in what looks like a really awesome show. 

In other news, I have been hard at work printing a book written by my dear friend Miriam.  Yes, it is the same book project I've been talking about for years.  The difference now is that work is actually being done and moving forward at a decent pace.  You can follow along on my blog (http://jodihoover.livejournal.com/) or by clicking the NEWS section on my site.

Stay tuned for other news which may even include a solo show in one of my favorite southern states!

Happy spring to all of you-

Jodi Hoover

www.jodihoover.com

I've started printing the actual images for the snail book project.  For those of you who are not familiar with my screen printing process, it goes a little something like this... I print a background sheet, related images generally have a related background image.  In this case the related background sheet is a solid color with the wallpaper pattern printed over it.  The bulk of the images for the book will be printed separately and then collaged onto the background sheets.

With that in mind, here's the first color on one of the snail-lady images.




hmmm....the color on this photo is terrible but you get the general idea. See all the dotty messy stuff around the main image?  That my friends is the sign of a poorly exposed screen. The emulsion had not fully hardened or been exposed to enough UV light before I washed out the screen. If I weren't such a lazy printer I would have re-exposed the screen or used a screen filler to plug up the holes.  Since the image with be cut out of the paper it doesn't really matter for my purposes.

After the first layer is printed, I use screen filler to paint in the areas I want to remain the initial color.  With ink on the screen it looks something like this:

The purple-y parts are screen filler.  The light part is where ink can still get through the screen.  The next layer ends up looking like this:

Here you can see the dark and light ink colors on the image.  The sheets of paper are held in place by using registration pins.  That way each piece of paper ends up in the same spot. The screen is on a hinge so it can be lifted up after each pass without disturbing the registration.  I am probably explaining all of this poorly.  Maybe I'll tackle this topic in a later post.

Usually when I print I mix the next ink color directly from the one I used previously.  Often I just mix them in the same container so the process of making the new color ruins the one before it.  I suppose it's just another way of making sure I can't recreate a print edition. Because this is a book project, I want to make sure I have ink available in case I need to go back in a reprint any one image or section.  So far this is resulting in a large number of small containers with cryptic labels filling up the shelves in the print shop.  I'm finding it rather soothing.

Oh and of course, my other major printing project has been this year's Valentine!



I didn't do a big announcement and email thing this year because I printed fewer of them than usual.  However, I do still have some left sooooo if you can read this and want a hand printed Valentine then send your address to jodi@jodihoover.com.  I'll keep mailing them until supplies run out.

I've been spending a lot of time in the print shop lately and I've been pretty happy about it.  So far this year I've done print covers for two Furniture Press books (http://furniturepressbooks.com/).  The first, "Tea Party Poems" is already available on the Furniture Press site and the second, "Aquinas  and  the  Mississippi " will be up for sale soon.

I also had the great pleasure of printing baby shower invitations for my good friend Andria Linn (http://www.andrialinn.com/).  She and her delightful husband Jeff welcomed their son Oliver into the world earlier this year.  

 

I really love this image and may rework it in another print sometime soon.

Despite these side projects work on the "Snail Book" has moved forward.  The base pages are all finished!!  I wanted to have a consistent background image and use the color difference to indicate different scenes or acts in the story.  Here they are...

 

  The blue is a little blurry but I'm sure you get the general idea. Next comes printing the actual images.  Some elements will be printed directly onto these pages and some will be printed separately and them collaged into place.  Although the base pages were pretty easy to print there are a lot of them so I'm hoping that book printing moves faster from now on.

*if you are reading this on Facebook, click the "see original item" button to see the pictures.