PRINTING THE LOCUS AND THE SEA SQUARES

From the Living Prints ‘N Video Pioneers Series

The following is the sound track from “Printing the locus and the Sea Squares”—a 24 minute color videotape made in 1982 as Bill Ritchie demonstrated how he combines several processes into making each unique print in a variable edition.

The video begins with a slow panning movement of the finished print--which the viewer is about to see created.

In the background you can hear the noises of other artists in Triangle Studios, a co-operative space Ritchie shared with other artists. Norie Sato, one of the other artists, tries her hand at recording Bill with his new video camera.

Ritchie also recorded scenes he later edited into the video to give viewers some added insights into the methods that went into the creation of the plates.

Ritchie voice over: Each day I printed in that series in the month of September, I often would roll out my ink and create a monotype on a poster. The 1981 posters. I’d make a monotype, on the poster and then draw back into the ink while it was still wet. And in that way I created the composition for the updated version of the poster for the show at Stone Press.

The updated version of the monotype was then rendered into a transparent positive, which I drew, and that in turn was used to make negatives for plates to be printed in a split fountain for the show--for the special poster for the show.

By rolling the inks out in this way allowed me to test the colors for the printing for that day. So every day I printed, in the September cycle, I mixed up new colors for the print and would usually do a monotype for the posters.

(To the camera) I restored it. Before it was only thirty minutes old before it got damaged, and two hours later I had restored it.

(Resumes narrative) Not only could I get different color variations using this monotype method, I made five or six different versions of it, from blues and greens to oranges, very bright oranges and darker grays and so forth, all of them blending from the bottom. While the ink was still wet, I could draw into the ink with the end of a brush or a stick and I could map out the composition that would finally be the poster.

The composition in the poster--of the printed, on the earlier 1981 poster--transfer that drawing to the mylar with ink and press-type for the numbers, and using this transparent mylar master I could begin to, I could use the transparent mylar master to make the negatives. And the negatives were used, in turn, to make the plates which were, of course, used for the offset lithograph color on the offset press at Atomic Press. That was the sixth color printed on what was already a five-color poster from the 1981 cyanotype show.

On the last day at Triangle, another artist working was Norie Sato, and actually she did a lot of the camera work for this videotape, too. She was working on one of her laminated paper pieces. It was a kind of festive day--one of the festive days--at Triangle Studios because it was Norie’s and Nancy Mee’s and my last day at Triangle. So there was champagne and some goodies and lots of silliness.

(In the background, a woman’s voice interrupts). See, coffee! (And a crashing sound as the filter falls out of her grip).

Bill: Margi Beyers. Another artist working in the studio that day was Beth Elliot, working on what she called her “spring line” in her wearable art. This is the first day I’ve been able to use my new video camera so I spent some time in Beth’s studio, taping her cut-outs which were in her last show at Rosco Louie [Gallery] in Seattle. I thought they made great video.

I can’t resist doing some teaching with the video camera around that Norie was using to record me while I printed the Locus and Sea Squares. (Voice moves to live audio).

Bill: . . . Number seven. You know, Dan Smith Number 7 is about the most ordinary black ink you can buy. And I mixed it with Dan Smith Indigo. I don’t know if you can buy Dan Smith Indigo because he gave it to me as a sample. That might mean it’s under development.

Hope that’s enough!

Can you see that this is a black plate with red and black lacquer on it?

Norie: No.

Bill: Maybe in color you can.

Norie: Maybe in color.

Bill: That plate has to be warmed on the hotplate to make the ink soft. Making that plate black with lacquer--with red lacquer and black lacquer--was a kind of peculiar thing to do but I did it primarily for myself. You see, when you print the plate that’s painted that way the paint wears down every time you ink it up and wipe it. It wears off a little of the paint.

So, by putting a red layer down first and then a black layer [of lacquer] as I printed it over the month it would wear down through the black to the red, which would give me that kind of antique Japanese lacquerware effect. It’s something I could enjoy while I was looking at it. It also is a kind of joke because we commonly lacquer our lithography, and I like to think someone will come along and say, “Why’d you lacquer that plate?” and I’d say, “Well, it said to that in the book.”

Bill narrates as he works: . . . Well, then I brayer the ink all over so that it’s nice and uniform, before I start wiping the plate. Oh, there’s one more thing that I do. I give it a little oiling.

(In the background another woman is heard to exclaim, in a long singing complaint, “Ohhh nooo....!”)

Bill: (Referring to the sound of her voice) I think Beth made a mistake. I oil this end of the plate because it never gets inked. So there’s some danger that it will stick to the chine-colle print, so I want to be sure there’s a little separator layer there.

Then I put on my gloves and I wipe the plate. This is the last of my tarlatan. Everything is the “last of”. Everything I use, it’s the last of this and the last of that. Because I worked right up to the wire. I didn’t buy any new material. I just kept using my old things. ‘Til they were all used up.

Everything I didn’t use I sold to Debbie Van Tuynen. Including my press and all my inks. I used up all my plates, and the plates I didn’t use I sold to Debbie Van Tuynen. And all my old plates I sold as scrap metal.

I had a hundred and thirty-three pounds of copper plates that I sold as scrap metal. And I had sixty pounds of zinc.

Norie: So how much did you get, Bill?

Bill: Fifty dollars. Wasn’t that clever?

Norie: Buy a couple of videotapes.

Bill: No, my wife spent it.

Norie: On dancing lessons.

Bill: (Laughing) On dancing lessons. And groceries. And last night my daughter bought a record with the last of it.

Let me do a paper wipe, okay? First you take a telephone book and get it all sticky with this sticky transparent ink. Can you see? And then your hand sticks to it, see? And it makes a paper wiper.

But you have to cool the plate. Because this takes a nice clear color on it and I don’t want any black tone hanging around on the surface. (He wipes the plate).

(Unintelligible remark) It’s always fun to see to see whose name is on here [the telephone book page]. (He calls out to anyone who is listening) Anybody know Ben Takayoshi? (Someone answers, joking) Hey, yeah!

Bill: Once I took off one of these pages, and this wasn’t very long ago, and it had my name on it. It did! It was in the “R”s. I lifted it up and it was the year that my name on the top, and I looked and it said “Bill Ritchie”. Ha ha.

Voice over: So the idea is that you have two colors on the plate at once. You have intaglio ink, which is in the incised lines, the etched-out lines, which I had applied at the first and then wiped off the surfaces. Now as I completely wipe off the last residue of the tone, it gets it ready for the second color, which is going to be applied with a roller.

Lacquering that plate gives me the two colors that you can see here and because the color is black the camera isn’t going to show the black that’s in the actual etched line. But every piece of the texture--every area of texture has attracted a little bit of the black ink.

The plate was made by photo-engraving a map of the Lake Powell area [Arizona, Utah states) this is a map that I have composed over the last couple years in the series called the Locus and the Sea Squares. And following the photo-etching I did a lot of deep etching and aquatinting, and in the lower part I did nine photo etchings to get the outline of my print, the Sea Squares, based on the print of Hokusai.

That section of the plate didn’t serve any real function, it didn’t print, I didn’t actually use it for a printing image I just put it there to look at.

(A loud crash in the background)

Bill: It’s Margi again! Welcome. (Laughter. Then to Norie). Are you recording. Okay, this is called stenciling, and surface rolling.

(Margi says something in the background).

Bill: This is our day to drop things! (Then, back to the camera). First there’s that mask. Then there’s this mask. This just holds the roller up so it won’t go over the edge.

Voice over: You realize this is a four-inch roller, and a four-inch roller will only apply ink uniformly for about twelve and one-half inches. The plate is fifteen inches wide, so . . ..

Bill: Now this roller is too narrow to go over the whole thing, in one revolution, so I have to (illegible). This roller is so small I have to go in two directions. I have to feather the colors to meet each other. And they have to feather at different places so the first time I do it here, then I do it here, then I do it here. And then they all feather out even.

Voice over: The inks that were shown in the first part of the videotape are the same ones that I’m using now so you get the connection between making the monotypes were a preparation for the monotype poster and the actual prints. So that was a pattern that I followed every day; I mixed my colors out and blend them and do a monotype and then those same colors were used as the background or the overall color for the print.

Bill: Now I take the mats off and touch it up a little bit. That mask helps this raise to a point on the print. And there’s a little edge where the roller was a little too short. I’ll just soften the edge a little. Of course the plate was so oily there the colors blend very nicely and you can never see it.

Voice over: That’s a popular technique to use with rollers, especially in lithography, and you also see it in silk-screen. It’s called blended color and rainbow rolling--it has different names. In the trade it’s called “split fountain.” The same technique I used when we printed the poster. You get the effect by frequent and numerous rolling back and forth, and every time you roll the color gets a little more smooth.

(In the background people are uncorking the champagne)

Voice-over: There’s Nancy and Norie, and Margi and Beth. I shared Triangle Studios with ten other artists and on this particular day there were only about five or six who were able to make the afternoon champagne happy hour. [There is] Jeff Bishop. This kind of impromptu snacks were not uncommon at Triangle. Particularly if we could find some reason or some excuse to celebrate.

Well, I go back to my pasting, back to the next stage and the last stage of the process, which all happens within about a ten-minute span of time.

Bill: You see I do the edges with Yes Paste because it’s a tougher paste than arrowroot starch. I’ve got these little beads of paste around the edge. It really will be a challenge if you can see those beads. It will be a testament to my skill as a paster! Then I do the paste--the arrowroot starch.

Norie: I’ve got it about as close as I can go.

Bill: But it’s pretty. Now watch the paste come down.

Voice over: This piece of paper is going to be laminated when the paper goes through the press. It’s called chine-colle, but of course you have to have the paste in between and in this instance I use two: The Yes paste, which is a commercial paste and then one that I make myself, it’s very easy to make from arrowroot starch. You go to a health food store and you buy some arrowroot starch and you mix it with some cold water and you cook it to the consistency you want.

Bill: There, that should be enough paste for the last print that I am printing at Triangle. How’s that look?

Okay! Now I will hurry along, Norie, because I know you’re . . . and I’ll go over to the press bed and I’ll run it through.

Voice over: I usually printed these on a Dutch etching paper; it’s called Van Gelder Zonen. I printed on an number of different kinds of paper, again, in the spirit of the variable edition.

Norie: (Dramatically) The tail! It’s the tail.

Bill: It’s the tail! Okay? And this gets warmed. This one gets warmed on the hotplate, you see.

Voice over: There’s my registration system. The ordering and the placing of the plate and the paper in relation to each other is called registration, and this ensures that if you have colored areas that are supposed to line up with line areas, that kind of thing, then you have to have a registration system. So the plate goes down first, after the paper is loaded into the press and this is the hardest part. Registering the woodcut which has the paste on the back, which is a lightweight Japanese paper and it’s covered with paste so it’s damp and very soft and fragile and you have to register it into those little marks and keep it from touching the plate as it goes through.

Remember there is just a layer of sticky ink laying on the plate and if the Japanese paper fell down on it it would tend to smear it, creating an effect called “push.” Which isn’t very attractive to me, so the only way to avoid that is to hold the papers off the plate until they are actually going into the press and printing.

I don’t have an assistant so I taught myself how to run this press with one hand and a foot. It’s called “Hand and foot method,” while it leaves my other hand free to manage what’s needed on the paper. Holding up the paper for example. And now you see the purpose of that thing called a tail, which is just a piece of carpeting with a bulldog clip attached to the end. That holds on to the etching paper to keep it from flopping down on to the plate before it’s supposed to.

For those who aren’t familiar with this type of press, the other things are blankets, heavy wool blankets that make the impression. There, now, that’s the paper’s down, release the clip and that’s all there is too it.

Bill: Almost done. That was it. That was the last print.

Margi: Everyone cry. Cry! They’re not crying. They don’t believe me. Here Norie, here’s you champagne.

Bill: Oh, it’s beautiful. Ohh, it’s just gorgeous. Look at that, Norie. Now wasn’t that terrific. That’s just perfect. Can you see it Norie?

Norie: Nope. I’m still focusing.

Voice over: A variable edition print is a kind of monoprint insofar as there is no emphasis on making all the of the prints identical. Instead, the printing process, from the plates, serves the artist as a means to discover different ways of perceiving the composition. It’s somewhat like a musical performance, or a musical score. No two performances of that piece are going to be identical.

Bill: Now it has to go into the blotters. That’s all. Thank you Norie!

Norie: You’re welcome.

Bill: (Fading) It takes about three days to dry . . ..

End of program.

Bill Ritchie’s mailing address is Emeralda Works, 500 Aloha #105, Seattle, WA 98109. Telephone 206-285-0658. E-mail is ritchie@seanet.com. This transcription is copyrighted 1997.