Behind The Print: Desoto Motel

In May of 2013, my wife and I were driving in the Southern Tier along the Pennsylvania border. We hadn't planned on going to Olean. If you know us, or you're AAA, you well know that we usually don't plan on anything. Soon we found ourselves touring the city and finding the aged neon signs and midcentury architecture engaging. It appears that sometime around the middle of the last century, Olean was flush with cash, saw a building boom, and then the boom went buss. As the floods of fortune ebbed, gems like the DeSoto Motel were left to bear witness to a better time.

Aficianados of mid century design, we were immediately struck by the DeSoto, which sits down the street from St. Bonaventure University. Not quite in a state of disrepair, as it has only been vacant a few years, it is definitely showing the wear and tear of a life unloved. The postcard photo to the right shows the motel in happier times.

There is hope for the DeSoto. It was bought by a Buffalo firm known for turning around neglected architectural gems.

The photo at left is my first attempt at the print. The print suffered from a number of problems, not least of all was poor registration. I also wasn't happy with the neon red color or the solid yellow. I think I was being over-influenced by Ed Ruscha's screenprints at the time. A drawing class and a rededication to the art of woodcut printmaking put me back on track for what eventually became "DeSoto Motel."

Torrential Output

It's been a very busy weekend in the studio. Not sure what spurred it, but it resulted in getting way ahead on two new prints. The first, tentatively titled "Sunflower Farm," had an interesting unintended consequence. Having learned from my issues on preveious prints, I decided to put down a blue sky without inking the whole block. Then, when I printed the nice bright yellow, I got hills! Green hills! And they're right where I was planning to put green hills. Unfortunately, this anomaly will get printed over anyway, as it isn't the green I want, but it was a nice surprise I will have to revisit down the road.

 

And here's a little shot of the "Sunflower" block to give an idea of the layout. More on how this picture came to be will follow in the coming days and weeks.

 

And here is the first and second states of the "Desoto Motel" print. Since you can't really tell, the first color was a white very lightly tinted blue. This will be the outdoor lights on the exposed ceiling just outside the foyer. I'm really excited about this print, as it is an evening scene calling for both very bright and very dark colors, a print of great contrasts.