Molly Hashimoto

North Cascades Printmaking Workshop

Print by Ellen Tennis

Print by Sally Yeager

Here are two prints that took trees as their subjects--in particular, trees with elegant beautiful trunks.

More North Cascades Printmaking Flora

Print by Mara Adelman

Today I'm sharing more of the wonderful prints created by students in the workshop I taught last weekend at the North Cascades Institute.

Print by Lindsey Frallic

These focus once again on plant and vegetable life!

 

 

 

Prints by Brooke Larrabee

 

 

 

Prints by Allison Dennis

Spring Flora in the North Cascades

This weekend I saw a great display of plant life at the North Cascades Institute's Environmental Learning Center. One of my favorites was this Maidenhair Fern, nestled in a small rivulet that flows freely in late spring. It's surrounded by Douglas firs and Pacific dogwoods, bracken fern and other understory plants.

To the right is Indian Paintbrush, blazing away along the roadside on the way to Diablo Dam.

Several students chose plants as their subject matter and I'll share a few here and in coming posts.

 

Print by Pam Clancy

 

 

 

 

Print by Linda McPherson

 

 

Prints by Codi Hamblin

 

 

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Printmaking in the North Cascades with Friends

Printmaking in the North Cascades with Friends

This weekend I taught a class for the North Cascades Institute on printmaking without a press. We used easy-to-carve materials, lovely papers, inks in black and white and all colors, and also employed watercolor to tint the prints. It was an extremely congenial group of artists, causing me to reflect once more on what a democratic and collective enterprise printmaking is. There is something about it that fosters friendship. I can just compare it to painting plein air watercolors: there  we often seek out our own quiet path, in order to work undisturbed, and have no one block our view. If we paint the same view, comparisons are inevitable. In printmaking, we need access to brayers, inks and paper, and all of it is shared. Everyone in this workshop had very unique and distinct ideas--all of them brilliant--there was no chance of anyone feeling somehow less skilled or talented--it was all about the ideas! Here's our classroom with several artists at work.

Up in the mountains the inspiration really abounds--I love looking out the window and seeing the conifers, mists, and Pyramid and Colonial Peak.
If I ever feel tired, just walking out the door to see what's blooming nearby refreshes me.
Pictured left is a beautiful native shrub: a red-branched ceonothus.

Below are more prints, and I'll be writing more about our weekend and our art in coming days.

Blossoms & Boughs: Kids' Watercolors

Yesterday I taught a workshop on spring blossoms and boughs at the Mercer Island Library; participants were all ages, but primarily 8 to 12 years old. I was so impressed with what the kids came up with--I had brought a huge bunch of lilacs to share and some big orange poppies from my back yard, a branch of a currant, and they'd gone to the library woodland garden and observed ferns along with other woodland plants.  They did recognize all the plants but weren't sure of some of the names--I was really glad to be the one to introduce them to the pleasures of the lilac!! Both its fragrance, appearance, and the joy of painting it! And any child, or child at heart, can't help but love the big splashy orange poppies. I often think I should take them out of the garden, as they don't really go along other colors I have planted, but I can't bring myself to do it, and yesterday was further proof of how special those orange poppies are.

More New Student Art

Watercolor by Polly Sanford

Today I'm sharing more art by my students; these two paintings were done in my Watercolor Flowers and Gardens course, being taught at University Heights Center.

Watercolor by Joan Cox

Both artists took advantage of our season of tulips to create these paintings.

New Student Art

Watercolor Sketch by Patricia Hall

I am delighted today to share some of the work being done in my spring weekly watercolor classes at University Heights Center in Seattle. These two sketches were both done with a playful and light touch, employing watercolor and pen and ink.

Watercolor sketch by Sally Yeager

Siena and Duccio

Maesta, by Duccio

Last fall I traveled to Siena with the class I taught for Il Chiostro. One of the highlights of our visit to that incomparable city was the Museo dell'Opera del Duomo.  Siena's greatest masterpiece, the Maesta Altarpiece by Duccio, inhabits its own dark, mysterious room in the museum where it glows incandescently with ruby and sapphire-hued colors and radiant gilded backgrounds. Zbigniew Herbert wrote an entire chapter on Siena in Barbarian in the Garden, and once again, I found a kinded spirit in him and his insights about Duccio. He mentions that the American scholar Bernard Berenson compared Duccio to Giotto and found Giotto the greater artist because he looked forward to the Renaissance, where Duccio looked back to the Byzantine world. More recent scholarship has corrected that view; Duccio exemplifies all that is great about Gothic art, as Herbert writes, "its exaltation, naturalism and inclination towards drama." Another thing that Herbert admires about the work is its history. " It is the one of the earliest described homages of ordinary people to a work of art."

That homage was described by a contemporary account: "On the day the picture was carried to the cathedral, shops were closed...The townsmen with lighted candles went side by side, trying to take up the places closest to the altar; behind them, with great piety, went women and children. And on their way to the cathedral they walked around the Campo...and all the bells tolled joyfully in honour of the great painting...

Herbert wrote, "after Duccio, one really has no desire to look at anything else."  My group and I visited the rest of the Museo, but I found nothing else of interest there after the Maesta...and I know there was much that was great there, but the Maesta simply overtakes you and the rest of the collection seems pale and lifeless by comparison. We went to a room of reliquaries which was rather fascinating, but it was so Baroque and decadent, compared to the genuine religious feeling of the Maesta. Interesting to think of the "progress" from the Duocento to later centuries!

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Western Junco: Relief Print

Western Junco & Hydrangea

I recently completed this relief print, and thought it would be fun to share what inspired it.  I spend alot of time observing birds, both in natural areas and in my garden and try to have my camera ready when I see something interesting. Western juncos nest in my yard and are present year-round, so they aren't at all rare, but one time early last summer I saw one hopping around in a big hydrangea bush.  There was something very striking about the contrast of its brown plumage and the rich green leaves and the blues and violets of the flowering shrub. The junco had fluffed himself out that particular cold wet morning, so didn't look typical of the species, thus I opened my bird guidebooks to find the general characteristics.  I am really fond of Roger Tory Peterson's illustrations. I think they are especially beautiful, so I use him most of the time. I don't slavishly copy--that wouldn't be right, but I do like to make sure I am drawing certain things correctly, like feather arrangement, and coloration, bill type, and general proportions.

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Printmaking in the North Cascades

There Lives The Dearest Freshness Deep Down Things

Yesterday I drove up to Darrington and Granite Falls to offer programs for their libraries, both part of the Sno-Isle Library System. The theme for our journals was Nature Play, and our subjects were birds' nests and eggs, and early spring wildflowers. The drive was spectacular, in spite of the rain, heavy at times. The cottonwoods, alders and bigleaf maples in the Stillaguamish River Valley were all in their earliest stages of leafing out, presenting a diverse tapestry of greens--really it was almost heartbreakingly beautiful...I thought of Gerard Manley Hopkins's poem "God's Grandeur."  one of my very favorite poems.  Here are some lines that seem very appropriate for Earth Day weekend:

Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;

   And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;

   And wears man's smudge and shares man's smell; the soil

Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.

And, for all this, nature is never spent;

   There lives the dearest freshness deep down things...

 

I'm including a few of the paintings participants created yesterday, and they all capture this beautiful spirit of nature's freshness.