No Telling the Times, the Number of Times

Here we have the completed 4-color reduction linocut "Loon in Maroon" (2015). A remake of an original woodcut made in 2013.

Clearly I've made some strides forward. I learned a lot on this print, and I'm ready to get working on some original stuff after solving a few issues that arose in the printing.

I'm tempted to go back through my entire catalog and redo prints that failed as woodcuts. But what fun is that? Gotta move ahead.

So, of Maroon. I have a link on an earlier post that will take you to a video made for Ken Nordine's "Maroon" on Youtube. You may think you don't know Mr. Nordine, now in his 90s, but you do. He's a well-known voiceover artist, and you've heard him on plenty of commercials. He inspired Tom Waits to begin adding spoken word tracks to his albums, and they have worked together. 

His album "Colors" is mindblowing; it actually began as a series of radio spots for a paint company. Here is the poem in its entirety:


'Think of the times, the number of times, that you can make rhymes with that friend - maroon

There's the month of June - maroon

There's a singers croon - maroon

As she sings a tune - maroon

To an orange moon - maroon

Like a crazy loon - maroon

Please say prune - maroon

With a silver spoon - maroon

How high is noon? - maroon

Tell me soon, tell me soon, tell me soon, tell me soon

No telling the times, the number of rhymes, that we can make with our friend maroon

Platoon, cartoon, monsoon, lampoon, spitoon, baboon, octoroon, macaroon, baffoon, afternoon, opportune, pantaloon, immune.

Yeah, there's so many rhymes for good old maroon

I'm sure if you try you can think of a few that have slipped me by

See what you can rhyme with maroon

Do it soon, do it soon, do it soon'

------Ken Nordine, "Maroon."

Dance By The Might of the Loon

Loon puns are hard. Luckily, the first color was not. I photographed this drying on the clothesline, backlit to show detail. The color is a very pale yellorange. Yes, yellorange. It will comprise the moon and the moon reflection.

Don't strain. The details will be clearer as the darker colors go down.

Loon-ar Landing

In December 2012, after settling back in Hamburg, I unpacked my studio and set to work on a new woodcut print. The print was inspired by "Maroon," a track off of the sublime Ken Nordine album, "Colors."

So much went wrong with this print, I won't detail it. But I was very unhappy with it when it was done. As you look at it here, you can see that one of my biggest problems was the most common problem -- coverage.

There were three problems affecting coverage here: the grain of the wood (which is such an awesome thing in woodcuts, but has been a nightmare in reduction printing), the grain of the paper, which had way too much texture for this type of printing, and the fact that the paper was like card-stock. Woodcuts fare better when the paper has some give. But it's what I had. And at this point, having just found refuge back in my hometown after a horrible exile in the city, we were scrounging pennies (we're scrounging nickels now, so everything's much better).

But now, 2.5 years later, I want to give it another go using the linoleum I recently purchased. Come walk with me as I redo "Maroon." In the meantime, go check out Ken Nordine's "Maroon" on Youtube!  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9pwyjqq2ju4