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The art exhibit in Salobreña’s Moorish castle to which you have been looking forward so fervently takes place at the end of this week: Thursday, Friday and Saturday, July 26-28. This is the first edition of this show, organized by the International Club of Salobreña (made up of most of the foreign residents) and the town hall, and everybody is fascinated to see what kind of reception an art exhibit of these characteristics is going to get. The show is only on for three days–correction nights–and only from 8:15-12:00 p.m. So if you blink you’ve missed it. Entrance is free and there will be refreshments a the Thursday-night opening. Here’s a link to their website. And here’s the lovely poster they’ve done:

SaloArte exhibit poster

P.S. Please remember the three nights are Thursday, Friday and Saturday, and not  Friday, Saturday and Sunday.

What’s a “gallinero” and why should you want to stay there?

Goodbye to Brenda Eubank-Ahrens and her marvelous group of art students from the International School of  Bremen, Germany

I say “artists,” rather than “art students,” as these young people from Brenda Eubank-Ahrens’ art class at the International School of Bremen functioned with all the maturity, concentration, enthusiasm and talent of fully-fledged artists. (Have a look at some of their solarplate work in the album of photographs which follows. This is only the monochrome work from the first two days. We didn’t print their color stuff till the last day and Mike didn’t have the chance to shoot it, as he was busy preparing the big  end-of-course barbecue.) This was the third year running that Brenda has come to Granada with a group of 17-18 year olds, and it was, again, a great pleasure to work with them.

If a  picture is worth a thousand words, here’s about 60,000 words on our three-day solarplate experience in my studio in Granada:

What we were listening to: http://youtu.be/GypIrhqmv3o

Printmakers from all over Europe meet in Granada to make big impressions.

Today an international group of printmakers held the social event of the season in Granada. They called it “Impresiones Gigantes” and it created a delightful all-day inky-arty enclave on the city’s Paseo del Salón, the evocative pedestrian boulevard beside  Granada’s 16th-century botanical gardens located on the left bank of the River Genil.

The large linocuts, pressed by a road roller, came out surprisingly good. The artists were chuffed to be the protagonists of the day, and the public was surprised and interested. Although the event had no commercial intentions (God forbid!) a few of the visitors insisted upon purchasing some of the work. Mike made a lot of snapshots that you can see in the following album.

But first we should say thank you to Brian Berry, the benevolent Irishman, member of Cork Printmakers, who brought the concept to Granada a few months ago and worked to make it a reality. Thank you Brian, and everybody else who worked on the project. We’re already desiring to see what you’re going to come up with for next year!

Boston printmaker, Dave McDonnell, in Maureen Booth's printmaking studio in GranadaThe McDonnells, Dave Sr. and Jr., were here last week from Boston. Maureen’s studio en the Sierra Nevada foothills outside Granada was just one more stop on Dave senior’s longtime quest for the great photogravure print. The novelty of Maureen’s approach this time was that they were going to use solar plates to create images based on four-color CMYK separations. It was an experiment for all concerned. Continue Reading »

What’s a Gallinero? And why would you want to stay there?

Cathy Naro and Maureen Booth in Maureen's printmaking studio in Granada, Spain

Chicago printmaker, Cathy Naro, who was here last year around this time, has returned for another workshop with Maureen. This time they’re working on combining some of the solar-plate prints Cathy made last time with liquid-metal techniques. Continue Reading »

Brian Barry of Cork Printmakers is promoting a three-dayfestival of steam-rollered linocuts in Granada this year (place and date to be announced).

 

 

Irish printmaker, Brian Barry, the member of Cork Printmakers who participated in the organization Ireland’s first giant-prints-pressed-with-a-steamroller event, has arrived in Granada with his portable street-festival giant-linocut show. Having spent the past few weeks contacting and organizing local artists he now has enough participants and has ordered big, 80×190 cm., artist’s linoleums. As soon as they arrive the Granada artists will begin carving their images into the linos, which will then be inked with big paint rollers and laid down under paper or fabric to have the image trasferred by means of a standard road-works steam roller. Here’s a link to the new Impresiones Gigantes website, and a video of a similar event staged in Missoula, Montana last year.

Sounds like a lot of fun. We’ll keep you posted.

What’s a Gallinero? And why would you want to stay there?

Australian artist, Lorna BurdenAustralian artist, Lorna Ryan Burden, came to Granada last spring with her husband, Roger. She discovered solar plates then and was looking forward to returning to Melbourne and springing them on her printmaker friends. When Lorna and Roger left she said what almost everybody says, “We’ll be back!”

Sure enough, they’re back. After dazzling her colleagues with solar last year, she’s dedicating herself this time to learning liquid-metal printmaking and she’s producing some wonderful museum-quality prints using that technique (see photographs below).

Roger’s art is restricted to architecture, so when he’s in Granada with Lorna he spends his time taking long walks along the river, reading and taking it easy. Lest he get bored this time, I invited him on the first morning to take a long stroll around Granada’s high points. I haven’t done that for years, and the tour surprised me almost as much as it did Roger. Continue Reading »

Rainy-Day Light

I love this time of year. Yesterday Mike walked down the river road to the village bakery and took his camera with him. Here’s what was happening in the river:

Wall mural by El Niño de las Pinturas on the Cuesta la Escoriaza in Granada

Granada doesn’t have a contemporary art museum, but it has one of the finest grafitti artists in the world, Raúl Ruiz, El Niño de las Pinturas. (Here’s his web site.)  Raúl started painting on Granada’s walls in the 1990s. Over the past two decades, besides adorning his home town with a distinguished collection of wall art, always while dodging Granada’s municipals,  he’s been invited to take his work to the walls of Portugal, Holland, Italy, Venezuela, Hungary, Belgium, France, among other places. Well-documented followers calculate that Raúl has more than 2,000 murals all over the world.

El Niño de las Pinturas, grafitti in Granada

His work is both idealistic and poetic, and tends to feature brief prose poems done in exquisite calligraphy along with evocative scenes of infancy and adolescence, scenes which sow tenderness and solidarity wherever he works. These human elements are contrasted with the voracious metaphoric gears and train wheels that permeate industrial society.

Grafitti by Raúl Ruiz, El Niño de las Pinturas, on the Cuesta la Escoriaza in Granada
Raúl says:

“Cansado de las mismas respuestas,decidi cambiar mis preguntas”
“¿son números lo que tu alma nutre?”
“¿quizás el materialismo se está apoderando de nuestras almas? ”
“¿Qué hacer con juegos que siempre se pierden?”
“…sólo quien a renunciado a la victoria y a la derrota encuentra su camino… “
“…y haciendo cosas que rompo para arreglarlas y volver a romperlas paso mi tiempo…”
“y el tiempo se acaba…y la vida no espera…”
“el mundo está oscuro…ilumina tu parte…”
“Y donde miro si ojos no tengo…”

Tired of the same old answers, I decided to change my questions
is it numbers that your soul nourishes?
Perhaps materialism is devouring our souls,
What shall we do with games that are always getting lost?
only one who renounces victory and defeat can find his way…
making things that I break, just to mend them, then break them again, I spend my time…
and time runs out… life doesn’t wait…
the world is dark… enlighten your part…
Where do I look if I don’t have eyes?

What’s a Gallinero? And why would you want to stay there?

Artist's book homage to Syrian poet Nizar Qabbani

This artist’s book is an homage to Nizar Qabbani, the Syrian poet and diplomat (Damascus, March 21, 1923 – London, April 30, 1998). The prints are illustrations for a series of love poems from his book, “On Entering the Sea, the Erotic and Other Poetry of Nizar Qabbani,” English translation Interlink Books, 1996.