Interview, Sans Pictures...

EB - Do you have a thesis or a mantra behind your work?

GC - Not necessarily. It's more that I do what I'm interested in. So if you want to be technical, that's a theme. My interest is mostly in humans.

EB - That looks like a pencil drawing.

GC - Actually, that's a print. Do you know anything about print making?

EB - Don't you cut into blocks of rubber?

GC - That's for relief. (Greg spends a lengthy time describing the processes of printmaking, going very in-depth about drawing with a grease-crayon on limestone) I don't have any etching plates with me, but I can take you down the hall to the print room and show you the plates I have there. Once I physically show you, this will make much more sense.

[We arrive at the print room]

GC - This is the print room. I'll start off with the press. This is the litho-press here. I'm not going to give you a play-by-play of what to do, but this is the stone here, and I'm not going to touch it because it's 200 lbs and it's probably someone's work, but do you see how there's a drawing on it?

EB - Yeah.

GC - Basically, what you do is you draw on it with a grease pen, and the grease sinks into the rock. The whole concept behind lithography is that oil and water repel each-other, so what you do is you draw with the grease pencil. Then you do a bunch of processes I'm not going to explain --because it's all technical stuff that you don't need to know-- but then you put water down, and the water surrounds everything except for the lines you drew. Then you take rollers with oil-based ink, and you roll it on top of the stone. The ink sticks to where the grease was, and the water repels the ink away from the stone.

EB - I see...

GC - Then you take the stone over to the press, which exerts an extreme amount of pressure. You run the stone through the press and there's a squilgee. The total amount of pressure is probably around 400 lbs, though I may be understating it. That's basically a lithograph.

EB - These 200 pound stones are in compartments. How do you move them around?

GC - There's a hand-truck over there with a hydraulics-based lift. Some stones are around 50 pounds so you won't need it, but most would need the lift.

EB - Interesting...

GC - But stones are hard to work with, so I like to use plates. Photo-plates are interesting. Here's a print I did. I drew the image in a sketchbook, and then scanned it into the computer at 500 dpi, and then enlarged the image and printed it on a large piece of transparent film. Then you align the transparency over the plate and the plate reacts to UV light much like film, and the image I drew becomes preserved in the plate.

EB - So this plate isn't safe to have in any sort of light?

GC - No, because then it starts becoming exposed and it gets messed up. This plate shouldn't be out for too long, but it's been developed and it has a special developing fluid on it, a sort of photo-preserver.

EB - What kind of material is this?

GC - This is aluminum, but back to the initial question... I like drawing human figures. Occasionally I would draw human/animal hybrids, like the greek minotaurs and the egyptian sphinx, but now I focus on humans.

[Greg displays a plate of his]

GC - With this, I was playing with the idea of the picture plane in relation to print making. This is a very technical drawing, as I can get very anal about line work. This was a try at something new. I put the border right around the figures. I arranged the composition to make it look as though these figures were falling from the top of the picture, with plenty of room at the bottom. I wanted to do something with these forms, and play with light and shadow. The great thing about print making is that I have so many copies of everything and I can try new things without worrying whether they are reversible or not. It's like the safety net of the "undo button" on the computer. When it's finished, I can have as many copies as I want.

EB - Aren't the original copies the best, and the later copies lose fidelity and value?

GC - No, not with print making. I know with casting the first mold is the finest, with the later ones being worse... I'm pretty sure the more you cast something, the smaller it gets.

Anyway, I'm working with print making to find out why I'm working with print making. So, if I'm in it for the duplicates, I might as well be doing digital art. I want to see what I can do that is intrinsically print related. I can draw in illustrator, I can put a brushstroke on it, I can print it and make a collage. But there's no fear of messing anything up. So I'm trying to isolate what makes print making unique. I'm going to experiment with the UV light exposure, making a sculpture, and using the shadow of the sculpture to create a print. I'd want the sculpture and the print to both be displayed together. I have a pretty formulated idea of what I want my thesis to be.

I do design and I do print making, and while I love both, I've chosen print making even though I'm proficient with computers. So I bring the two together for my image making.


Note: Pictures aren't uploading. I'm going to try a post with just the images.