Mezzotint Printer's notes

The printer performs many tasks to keep prints alive, crafting and designing solutions to problems posed by everyone in the project.

9607080945

The artist came in several times while I was cleaning up. The curator was here, too, and the publisher.

9607071037

I like to stop for coffee before going to the studio, and sometimes I hear the darndest things when there are other visitors like that artist. Only these are not usually artists in the same sense, but they are there to study the same techniques. This morning there was an engineer, I gathered from his talk, with someone I think was a writer or a journalist--or both.

Anyway the first one was explaining how things were run, how you spent two weeks doing the print thing in the morning and the cybernetics thing in the aftrnoon. As far as I could tell, he had it all right except I don't think he was right about it getting you a raise or a bonus. The way I think it works is you get more human structural intellectual capital. Not money. That would be a silly proposition. But then, who knows. I've seen weirder things come out of places like this.

9607061321

He's been working at the computer almost the entire morning. Now he tells me he somehow wrote over his diary, that all the notes from the past four weeks are gone. I checked my B.O.S.S., but there are only notes from about a week or so on it. Too bad.

The printer made this snapshot of the artist the day he told her he had lost all his on-line diaries of their work together. Note that in the far end of the studio (upper right corner) can be seen the intaglio press the printer uses for the trial proofs. Trial proofs are hanging on the wall behind the artist.

What does he write about, anyway? I guess we'll never know. He said at least there were some pictures of some early states--things he said would never really happen. I feel kinda sorry for him, but in a way it serves him right for not making back-ups or prints. If his diaries are so important to him, he should back them up.

9607060639

He insisted we needed another negative transparency, since the last one I made was a quarter-inch too short. Then he said he wasn't sure we'd use it in the final version. Then what's the point? So I'm sitting here in the Aloha Studio wondering whether to print the quarter-inch longer--or was it shorter?--or was it five-sixteenth of an inch? He didn't tell me to keep the proofs in both places, and I have to guess. He makes it hard with all this uncertainty. I'm not sure but what I am wasting my time!

9607051026

As I watched he poured a cup of his awful coffee into the little steel cup and took a sip. Then he scooted up almost out of his chair. peered at the Ektagraphic print awhile, then sat back down. How curious! Later, when I thought he had gone, I looked closely at the print, trying to see why he examined it so closely, as if he were looking for something or reading.

Then I saw, what I had thought were scratches on the bevel of the plate, words, written in black ink--probably with a fine drafting pen. The words ran around the plate's bevel--all the way around like a cowboy's lasso. I tried to see if the words made sentences and, yes, they did. Then I could tell it was a poem. Where was the beginning? Did it have an ending? Then he came in. I was a little embarrassed, but he smiled. When he's gone I'll try to figure it out.

9607041044

The curator was in this morning and I watched her tearing a half-inch of paper from all around Number 3. When she turned it over I was surprisd to see a faint image of the artist's lithograph, printed white-on-white. When I commented on it to her, the curator didn't answer until she had finished tearing away a strip from the edge. She was very dexterous! Then she said, "Don't you know the artist is having you print on the backs of his old prints?" Until then it hadn't occurred to me, but, yes, those were indeed his old works. How old, I wonder.

9607011225

I was eating my lunch, having finished coating some paper for two cyanotype proofs, when I noticed the curator had been in. She must have been here early in the morning. She left a cryptic note telling us to change the paper size to 12 by 15 inches, that she'd try to trim the six I'd already printed. What a pain! She added a question, too: "How am I supposed to decipher the remarks written on the backs and fronts?"

9606280858

I opened the third plaster print and propped it up on a low counter against the wall where, yesterday, I had put the four trial proofs on paper. Then I went away awhile, to Italy, the garden at Villa Shifanoia (those poor people, their ghosts still can be heard). When I came back, he had made for himself a little space, pulled a chair up close to the counter and was drinking coffee from a tiny steel cup. He had his portfolio of prints and Stevan's poems on his lap. He looked very content. "Staring time," was all he said, and I knew he didn't want to talk right now.

9606271720

Edvard never cared as much about the printing. He let the publisher or the dealer decide.

9606270608

Who is this artist, anyway? The image on his plate is dark and somewhat sinister, but when he talks to me he's not like that. He doesn't seem to care about the image--that's the really strange thing. He doesn't have that serious quality about his art, even. It's like he's playing! In fact he doesn't seem to care about art.

I showed him a newsclipping about a new prize that's being given each year and he wasn't impressed like I thought he would be. Instead, he lectured me on mutual funds and interest rates. He lectured me--imagine! Printing his plate is harder since he has this funny slant on things in the art world.

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What the curator asked me I couldn't answer. Was I supposed to write down every detail? Whether the ink didn't stick because there was too much water, or not, how could I known? Would writing it down make any difference? Scientific method...I knew she'd say that! I liked the old way; you just came in and printed all day and went away at the end. Why plaster prints, now?

9606242014

The publisher's been after me for the last 36 hours to log my work. I just mixed a batch of arrowroot starch. He probably thinks I forgot how! Just because I've been at the keyboard a long time doesn't mean I forgot how to cook. No anger. He wants the third print to be a chine colle. Be my luck the artist will stop in and have a bunch of new ideas part way through. I hope not, sort of.

Curator's Log
The curator is seldom seen but is
always seeing to it that the living prints'
records are correct and rules followed.

Artist's Diary
The artist provides the vision
and imagery of the living print,
laboring after the compelling image.

Professor's Papers
The professor explains the living print,
the history of printmaking,
and keeps the academic community informed.

Publisher's Journal
The publisher produces the bases for
living prints by supporting all the players
and keeping communications clear and on course.