May Sign-up is below this post

Scroll past this post to get to the May Sign-up for the exchange.

Back in 2004-2005 I spent some time in a print studio doing intaglio prints. I had always been interested in printmaking and I figured my first print should be the alphabet. Intaglio prints are made by scratching the image into a copper plate and then rubbing ink all over the plate and then rubbing off all of the ink except that which is stuck down in the grooves.

Then you put the plate on the press, layer a piece of damp paper on top and run it through a press that applies enough pressure for the ink to *jump* out of the grooves and onto the paper. It is cooler than heck and I would have been thrilled to have been a printmaker for my whole life. But, as with most things, I did not get started soon enough to make it my life's work. 

So, my little alphabet was boring, since I had to figure out a style that I could *write* backwards because the print would be a mirror image of whatever I scratched into the plate. Stop for a minute, if you do copperplate calligraphy, and think about the fact that the original copperplate writing was done by people who were scratching it all into a copper plate - BACKWARDS. To me -- that is why it is has zero *hand-done* quality - if it is done properly. Kudos to those people who can make their hands work like machines. It was not something that I was ever very good at.

So, my alphabet was boring - until I realized I could run the plate through the press a second time, with the image inverted. That made it so much better. I could ink the plate twice. Or I could do the second run and just count on getting a lighter image from the leftover ink in the grooves. 

I was wildly excited about these prints and I have a stack of them because - who would want a print of the alphabet. Nobody. Except maybe some of you. So, if you want one, and you are signing up for the exchange, tell me which one you would like. Or, if there are only 2 people who want them, you will get one of each. They have the cool embossed edge of the plate and if you matted and framed it, it would be a cool little piece of original art. If you want it signed and numbered, let me know.

The second print is just flourishing. I thought that it would be fun to write a personal greeting between those two lines. So, if you want me to write something, I can do that. 

I like them better without any of my writing. I do not think that I will ever be *famous* so - they will never be worth anything. I like the flourished ones better in a vertical orientation.

If you are not an exchanger, you will have to send me a request, by snail mail and enclose 2 Forever stamps.