The prints are very similar, but they feel different…  The blue ones are a bit ‘crisper’ somehow and moodier.  The green ones have a more liquid feel and seem a little less brooding.  Both editions are quite good, I think — no matter where one looks, it’s interesting.  I read a lovely book last week — and was struck by this passage:

“…a puddle from last night’s rain is evaporating; a puddle in which Magistrate Shiroyama observes the blurred reflections of gulls wheeling through spokes of sunlight. This world, he thinks, contains just one masterpiece, and that is itself.“

From “The thousand autumns of Jacob De Zoet”
by David Mitchell (Random House, 2010)

Grass 2.2, July 23, 2010, 22.5 x 72 inches, woodcut from 16 cherry plywood blocks on hosho paper by Iwano Ichibei, edition of 4

detail -- registration check lower right

detail -- registration check upper left

detail -- registration check lower left

detail

detail

detail

detail

detail

'Grass-2', July 16, 2010, woodblock print, 22.5 x 72 inches, 16 blocks printed onto 8 sheets of hosho paper by Iwano Ichibei

computer controlled router carves block on sheet of quarter-inch plywood

another view of CNC machining area

Printing accessories, clockwise from lower left: larger mizu-bake (water brush), camelia oil (baren lubricant), pigment suspensions and pigment application brush, smaller mizu-bake, baren (printing pad), hanga bake (printing brush)

Using misu-bake to dampen block

applying pigment to dampened block

using hanga-bake to brush pigment evenly into block

sliding sheet out of paper-delivery drawer and registering it to kento in block -- right foot about to tap switch to close drawer

turning crank to print sheet

after printing block four -- prints in take-up drawer under press.

after printing block 15 -- sheets in take-up drawer under press

detail of completed print

detail of completed print

detail of completed print

detail of signature and seal on completed print

www.youtube.com/watch?v=M1rqU-TUiBI

Paul Catanese and Dr. Angela Geary have been contracted by A&C Black Publishers to co-author a book on Computer Aided Manufacturing in Fine Art Printmaking.  Paul was in the audience during my talk at SGC Chicago and later asked me if I’d be willing to ‘be a chapter’ in the book.  I said ‘SURE’ (duh)! In recent months, Paul has interviewed me at length by email, phone, and now in person, since he was in Kansas City last Friday and Saturday recording our conversations, photographing in the studio, poking around, and getting real specific on exactly how I use CNC and other computer technology in my work, especially in woodblock printmaking.  Friday morning when my drawing of Chandler was nearly complete, Chandler and Zac (videographer) met Paul and me here in the studio and shot video of Paul saying nice things about my work (and Chandler saying nice things about his portrait).  So it’s turning out to be a nice little collaboration!  Chandler, by the way, seemed to really like this drawing:

"Chandler", 2010, 84 x 45 inches, drawing in pen and ink on 300 lb. hot press Lanaquarelle paper

detail of head

detail of bottom center

detail of bottom left

Michael is a great guy, established artist, extroverted, outspoken, and a bit larger than life.  We’d made a date for him to visit my studio and shoot sources for a portrait while he was here, and I thoroughly enjoyed him!  After the shoot I went to a huge breakfast with Michael, his wife Mary Ann Strandell, and Chris Brown (another guest artist in town for the event) at YJ’s, the cozy cafe next door to Birdies (Peregrine Honig’s lingerie shop)…  What a great morning — I don’t get out much --  this was so VERY stimulating!!!

Thanks, Michael, for the wonderful morning, and for your patience in modeling — I think you turned out to be a very interesting head!

"Michael", 74 x 44 inches, completed June 20, 2010, pen and ink on heavy watercolor paper.

Detail of pencil signature and ink squiggles

Detail around eye

Detail

detail

www.youtube.com/watch?v=5IvmKYXyyAk

What a HUGE disconnect between the instant of the snapshot, the hundreds of hours to produce the drawing, and the video record of the lecture…  Mind boggling!  So mind boggling that I can’t comment beyond the mention…  YOU think about it! 

Thanks SO much to artist, Peregrine Honig (also see HERE), who bounced purposefully for two hours on the small trampoline in my studio as we chatted and photographed hundreds of mostly very blurry images while she wore her fabulous black and silver sequined mini dress with matching bunny eared hat!!

You may open a higher resolution version in a new window by CLICKING HERE

It’s a bit difficult for me to illustrate such a long image on a web page, so here’s an experiment suggested by Scott Goldberg — I’ve rotated the drawing vertically and enabled a script so that as you move your mouse over the image below, an enlargement window should appear and you can magnify any area you please.

You can make the window larger or smaller and magnify or reduce the image in the window by holding down your mouse button and moving left and right and up and down.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=C38ADTUEJlo

The six eccentric turnings which are the legs were VERY fun to carve!  I used a ridiculously sharp one inch skew chisel to accomplish the turnings — what a satisfying activity!  Because I repeatedly switched the centers of each workpiece, the knife was only in contact with the wood through part of each rotation (and it’s rotating FAST) — so with patience, a steady hand, and many pounds of paper-thin shavings removed, the completed turnings were shiny and smooth and ready for finish without sanding or anything else!  Each cut was improvised and it felt to me that the leg called out to me each time to switch centers and continue — it seems trite to say this, but…  I do SOOOoooo  enjoy the so-called dialog between mind and object with  each moment of process leading the way to the next.

One part of the project which made me very nervous whenever I thought about it was the significant hand-carving which would be required to perfect the intersections between the turnings and the rectangular solids of the leg tops.  Because these were all very eccentric turnings, the curvy parts had to terminate well before the rectangular solid parts began.  Because the location of the rectangular solid leg-top was improvised AFTER the turning was completed, it was all very touchy-feely and interactive decision making on the fly.  Once I’d completed the turnings and then completed cutting the rectangular solid leg-tops from the turnings, I could begin to find the intersections of the rectangular solids with the curves by hand carving with a sharp flat chisel.  I began on a Saturday morning and intended to take a break a few hours later.  I was really getting into the gentle carving, making very thin shavings and approaching each intersection slowly and precisely.  When it seemed I’d been at it an hour or two, I checked the time.  Ten hours had flown by and I was already late for dinner!  What a perfectly pleasant way to spend a day — very slowly, one shaving at a time, carving down to precisely the surfaces of the curves and planes.  It was SO much easier than I’d imagined and my mind was SO light and happy as I worked out these shapes.  Satisfying.  Very satisfying.

The bench and upholstery all turned out decently enough and the bench feels (and is) strong and comfortable. 

Eccentric turnings from 3 1/2 inch square mahogany blocks -- the leg tops will be cut from the unturned blocks and the bottom blocks will be removed.

The top blocks have been cut to 2x2 inch dimension prior to mortising. Then I'll hand carve the precise intersections between curves and the planes of the tops.

upside-down legs -- mortises have been cut and a first coat of shellac applied -- looking VERY good to me! Three coats of shellac were applied in all -- each rubbed in with a cloth -- very nice looking finish!

rail tenons have been glued into mortises in legs -- everything fits!

bench assembly and glueup almost complete

corner braces installed (these make the mortise and tenon construction VERY strong) and the bench is ready for upholstery.

Upholstery looks good and bench sits in its new home (our home) under my portrait of Linda. It sits well and is quite comfortable! YAY!

I first painted the paper black with sumi ink.  Then I gilded the clothing area in silver leaf.  My plan was to paint black on the silver leaf in order to define her clothing and to build white acrylic in layers to define her skin.  After completing my plan, I dug back into the darker areas of her skin with black acrylic and then repainted with the white.  It improved!

Now I’m very much looking forward to my next Peregrine project which is ready to begin now.  It’ll be an 18 x 8 inch accordion-fold book of 16 pen and ink drawings of Peregrine in this same black and silver sequined bunny-dress.  The plan looks spectacular.  Maybe an edition of three of these?

Peregrine, painting in acrylic and sumi ink on silver-gilded paper, 90 x 38.5 inches, completed April 17, 2010

detail

Closer detail showing paint application white over black over white over sumi in face and black over silver gilding in clothing

It was a fairly large show and very fun to hang (and hang with her again)!  Rebecca organized the images in an interesting way — boys on one side, girls on the other!  It made a whacky sort of sense to me!

When I arrived for the opening, Rebecca had arranged for Camille Dautrich (writer for Springfield’s News Leader paper) to interview me which was pretty fun, though I’m no expert at that sort of thing.  Then I presented an hour-long lecture copiously illustrated with slides and video and THAT was a blast!  Maybe 30 faculty and students were present, they had lots of interesting questions and comments, and I felt it had all gone very well.  Several arts faculty took us to a great dinner (Linda and my daughter, Allegra, were with me) and, exhausted and a little drunk, I slept most of the way home while Linda drove.  Very satisfying event!

Here’s a short video walk-through of the exhibition:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=RVTWyU4pgXQ

North installation view (photo: Rebecca Miller)

East installation view (photo: Rebecca Miller)

North-East installation view (photo: Rebecca Miller)

South installation view (photo: Rebecca Miller)

hour-long slide and video lecture was well received - audience seemed especially to love the many short videos of work in process. (photo: Rebecca Miller)

Drury University

The Department of Art & Art History and the Pool Art Center Gallery

Paintings, Drawings, and Prints: MIKE LYON

Pool Art Center Gallery

940 N. Clay Avenue
Springfield, MO  65802
417-873-7263
www.drury.edu/pacgallery

March 5-26, 2010 viewing hours: Monday -- Friday, 8am -- 5pm and Thursday 8am -- 8pm

Artist Talk Friday, March 5, 6-7pm

Opening Reception Friday, March 5, 6-9pm

This review appeared in the Springfield News Leader:

NEWS-LEADER. News-Leader.com Tuesday, March 16, 2010 78

Artist creates through computer programs

by Camille DAUTRlCH

It’s complicated.

No, I’m not changing disciplines and reviewing Meryl Streep’s recent movie. I’m talking about the process by which Kansas City artist Mike Lyon creates his monumental works of art, now on display at Drury’s Pool Art Center.

Armed with a knowledge of centuries- old printmaking techniques as well as a mastery of how to write contemporary computer programs, Lyon uses his brains, rather than his hands, to create his art. The results, a qmple dozen of which are packed into Drury’s gallery, are fascinating. The more you look, the more you see.

Occasionally, people give him a hard time about the way he makes art, Lyon said, claiming it’s the computer, not him, that’s responsible for the finished product. He begs to differ, however.

“I spend months figuring out the codes for my works,” he said, adding that every movement of the pen or airbrush is an X-Y coordinate. “I write programs that write programs.”

Lyon’s facility with computers came early. With a college degree in architecture from the University of Pennsylvania, he went to work for his family’s cattle- hide processing business in Kansas City in 1976. While there, he developed a computerized system to facilitate the grading of hides.

That idea took off in a big way, and Lyon was able to sell his invention and go to work full time as an artist.

Dautrich/Exhibit should appeal to artistic, analytical

In addition to his architecture degree, Lyon earned a BFA in painting from the Kansas City Art Institute, and before he made art on the computer, he made it like everybody else.

“When I was a student, I stood at an easel and painted what I saw,” he said, “and I did it well.”

Talking to Lyon, however, it’s clear he’s too precise a thinker to spend his days with a brush in hand. Writing computer programs to make prints, drawings and paintings was the logical next step.

Still, history plays a role. He’s heavily influenced by Japanese woodblock prints, as well as by the 17th century French engraver Claude Mellan.

It was Mellan’s “Sudarium of Jesus” that inspired Lyon’s pen-and-ink work of his wife, Linda, a huge portrait created out of spiraling squares that begin at the center of Linda’s nose. Get up close to the work, and it’s a series of incredibly-detailed squares, but back up, and Linda’s face, more than six feet tall, comes immediately into view.

Portraiture, especially faces, makes up the majority of this exhibit, although there are several full-length representations, a couple of landscapes, and a stunning back view of a nude that’s front and center when you enter the gallery. Lyon’s parents, his wife, his son and several self-portraits are all included in the show.

Viewers will no doubt make comparisons to the work of Chuck Close when seeing these paintings and prints, but there is a difference. Lyon has his own agenda and his own techniques, although the largehead format is similar to that of Close.

This exhibit should appeal to both the artistic and the analytical mind, and Lyon believes that he has found a way to combine scientific understanding with aesthetics.

“I don’t know how to describe how I feel,” he said, “but I do feel. Also, I like figuring stuff out.”

The exhibit continues through March 26 at Drury University’S Pool Art Center, 940 N. Clay Avenue. Gallery hours are 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday, and 8 a.m.-8 p.m. Thursday.

For more information, call 873-7263.

Camille Dautrich reviews the arts for the News-Leader.

PRINT QUARTERLY, XXVI, 2009, 4, Page 409

NOTES

MIKE LYON. For various reasons, very modest exhibition catalogues are sometimes worth noting in Print Quarterly. This is the case with Figuring it Out: Prints and Drawings by Mike Lyon (Manhattan, KS, Marianna Kistler Beach Museum of Art, Kansas State University, 2009, 8 pp., 10 col. ills., free), which includes an essay by Bill North. For this photorealist printmaker has made use of his knowledge of computerized technology to create a series of digitally based colour woodcuts. Mike Lyon studied at the University of Pennsylvania and the Kansas City Art Institute before going to work in [976 in his family’s cattle-hide processing business. There he invented a computerized system to automate the process of grading cattle hides. This led him to set up a successful computer hardware and software design business, which specialized in providing warehouses with a computerized system for automating orders. In 1991 Lyon sold the company and became a full-time artist. A great admirer of Japanese aesthetics and printmaking and an avid collector of ukiyo-e prints, he taught Japanese woodblock techniques at the Center for Contemporary Printmaking in Norwalk, Connecticut. He based the designs for his own woodcuts on photographs. Lyon used Prussian Blue ink similar to that used in aizuri-e woodcuts and followed Japanese methods in printing. Rather than printing from multiple blocks, however, he used a single block, reprinting it to achieve the results that he desired by the reduction woodcut method.

In 2004 Lyon decided to use his knowledge of computers to further his art, acquiring a ShopBot CNC (computer numerically controlled router) designed for woodworking applications. As North describes, he adapted the machine to carve his blocks. The first woodcut that Lyon printed using the ShopBot was carved from fifteen separate cherry plywood blocks, although he maintained his approach to the work conceptually as a reduction woodcut. This print of a full frontal head close to the picture plane bears similarity to some of the works of Chuck Close. More recently Lyon has created a large-scale print of a reclining nude, using paper especially made for him by Iwano Ichibei. To print it, he designed and made his own printing press with a five-by-ten feet bed, and adapted the elements of an electric garage door to act as a drawer, which cantilevers over the bed laying the paper on the block as the drawer retracts. Lyon has also used the machine to create immense photographically based pen and ink drawings.

The exhibition also included eighteen Japanese woodblock prints from the artist’s own collection. Dating from between c. 1767 and 1928, these were chiefly of actors and beautiful women, the two illustrated in the catalogue being expressive close-up facial portraits. Cori Sherman North provides a brief description of ukiyo-e prints to accompany them. MARTIN HOPKINSON

www.youtube.com/watch?v=vfWE9APnTpI

view into dining room from entry hall

chandelier completed -- VERY difficult to photograph!

detail of lit chandelier (this is pretty close to the way it really looks, I guess)

Linda and I spent a pleasant couple of hours sculpting clay leaves at our kitchen table. We used knives and cookie cutters and pencils (this shot was taken after the leaves had been used to produce molds, so they are a bit damaged and cracked). OH! The modeling clay MUST be sulfur-free or the latex won't set up properly (learned the hard way -- YUCKY)!

Two-part liquid silicon rubber for mold making

closed up with surgical rubber tubing and ready to pour

030-Mold in plaster support

Silicone rubber mold with slit opening

molds in warming box -- polyester resin works best if molds are around 120 degrees F and kept warm during setting up. Polyester does not cure where exposed to air (surface stays tacky). It shrinks during cure, so castings thicker than about 1/8 inch tend to pull away from mold during cure leaving unattractive dull surfaces and, in extreme instances, surface tackiness. Warm molds help a lot! My space heater (low cost) solution worked well, but isn't recommended due to fire hazard!

polyester resin casting station

Polyester resin, catalyst, measuring syringes, etc

welding station

empty and upside down 50 gallon drum gas welding station -- I welded three wires into each of 120 8-32 hex socket head machine screws

Screws lined up and ready for welding -- nut not only holds the screw rightside up, but also makes sure threads are functional after welding

E12 chandelier sockets with wires soldered on. Heat shrink tubing and small strain relief designed to snap into 1/16 inch housing

preparing to snap bulb pigtail into housing

SNAP! Makes a nice clean interface!

Cast leaves in various autumn colors in box

one of several boxes of castings

soldering up the power circuits -- step by step: 1) cut and strip wires to length 2) with heat shrink out of the way, connect the wires 3) solder 4) insulate with heat shrink

three wire stems welded to each screw

leaves glued to wire stems welded to screws

leaves

core partly assembled with leaves screwed into sides and lights top and bottom

lights on top of core assembly

core almost complete

view of nuts which fix stem screws to sides of core -- on front side, welds are visible

soldered up wiring fits neatly in trough of core

chandelier on dining table ready for installation -- each of 360 leaves must be carefully bent and arranged around lights and core

chandelier hung in place and powered up

powered up chandelier -- installation complete

chandelier is lit

It seemed to take forever to narrow the photos down to a handful — some of them full figure and some just of the head.  Topper and Linda and I consulted and, based on Toppers dislike of my favorite head, I decided to use the standing portrait he liked best.  It turned out to be VERY difficult to get an image I liked and which I thought wnted to become ‘art’.  After MUCH adjustment back and forth, an image eventually developed which I thought worthy.  However, that image was a BEAR to complete.  For some reason, I could NOT keep my pens working and went thorough over 150 of them before I called it ‘done’!!  But the drawing turned out very well, I think!

"Topper" 2009, 79x38 inches, pen and ink on Rives BFK paper

detail

detail

I received a very sweet note from Topper after I delivered the framed drawing:

November 2, 2009

Dear Mike,

Your artwork is absolutely captivating.

Seen from afar or near – from a “micro” aspect, or a “macro” aspect – it simply soars. The overall composition is commanding and, at the same time, any square centimeter of that overall composition is utterly fascinating in its intricacy and rhythm

Mike, you are a truly grand visual artist.

And, I must add, a very smart human being. You continuously demonstrate intellectual prowess as well as psychological observations of considerable perspicacity.

And add this to your “human package”: you are just a prince of a guy.

Congratulations my friend, on your marvelous accomplishments, but also simply on the qualiry of the life you have led.

Sincerely,

Topper

www.youtube.com/watch?v=IB5Mn9A0eeE

Linda, Sandy Kemper, Mary Feigenbaum, Christine Kemper, Frank Wewers, Helen Wewers -- the champagne begins!

The group arrives at the Beach Museum of Art in Manhattan, Kansas

Group photo at the Beach (standing l-r): Bill North, Helen Wewers, Christine Kemper, Sandy Kemper, Frank Wewers, Mary Feigenbaum, Linda Lyon, Hanna Blick (reporter), Mike Lyon lying down on the job (photo: Thomas Park)

Bill North explains something or other to Sandy Kemper

Frank Wewers is blown away by a large pastel drawing

Helen and Frank Wewers with Christine Kemper

Mary Feigenbaum and Linda Lyon

Frank Wewers speeds by 'Jessica Paper Dolls' drawing (or print?)

Thomas Park (right) is happy to see us

Bill North begins a tour of the curatorial, storage, and framing areas under the museum

Christine, Mary, and Frank in one of the works on paper rooms

Sandy and Christine Kemper relax outside the Manhattan Courthouse after our visit to the Beach Museum and a quick tour of the Strecker Nelson Gallery

We arrive at Cafe Beautiful in Lawrence, Kansas

Linda and Mary at Cafe Beautiful

Interesting 'stuff' including this 16mm projector decorate the dining room (across from a hookah parlor) at Cafe Beautiful

The first of eight courses at Cafe Beautiful - egg and shrimp custard baked in a squash shell

Mmmm-mmm good! Sandy LIKES it!

Linda and Mary during first course

Christine and Helen, too!

Sandy and Frank deep in conversation

Hashi on green ceramic platters

Beautiful and delicious fruit are being served by Cafe Beautiful owner, waiter, dish-washer, Chef Ken Sukan

Chef Ken Sukan was our very gracious host

The fruit course was (temporary) sculpture and VERY edible!

the group enjoys a moment of conversation between courses

Chef Ken Sukan puts the finishing touches on a 'salad' of veggies in a cucumber roll bowl -- DELICIOUS!

A snapper shashimi was served

hamachi wrapped california rolls with grilled unagi (OMG)!

Check out that sculpted cherry tomato!

STILL having a LOT of fun halfway through the two hour service! WHAT a day! What a wonderful evening! What a great time with the best of friends!

Senior Curator of the Beach, Bill North, met us and guided the group through a tour of the permanent collection.  I THINK everyone got to see the exhibition rooms with my work, but I’m really not sure because a reporter for the K-State newspaper, Hanna Blick was waiting to interview me…  I think I talk WAY too much — she had LOTS of questions and I enjoyed looking at the work with her and describing my various processes and techniques and what interested me about each…  When we finished, Bill gave us a tour of the museum’s extensive storage for works on paper, paintings, his office which was FULL of books and articles and lots of stuff organized in piles on his desk and bookshelves and floor and everywhere — lots to look at in there!  And in one of the file drawers he showed the large 10-drawing proof sheet I’d made over several months with different approaches to “Jessica Paper Doll” — it was a thrill to see that again after some months and I appreciated it much more.  I realized that I’ve been missing it!

I was pretty tired as we boarded the van for a 90 minute drive to Lawrence, Kansas for a special dinner at Chef Ken Sukan’s ‘secret’ Cafe Beautiful.  Sandy and Christine had been raving about the Cafe for months.  Reservations must be made at least six weeks in advance.  Even though Cafe Beautiful does no advertising and doesn’t even have a sign out front, it seats only six (seven for us) and is very populer.  Now I understand ‘why’!  WOW!  Chef Sukan was born in Korea and trained there, in Japan, in China, Taiwan, France, and decided to move to Lawrence, Kansas after folding a map of the United States in half both ways and Lawrence, home to the University of Kansas, was exactly at the center.  He spends eight or nine months a year serving two to six guests in two seatings daily and the rest of the time he travels and teaches cooking and his special ‘Midwest’ sushi technique.

Cafe Beautiful shares the second floor of a downtown Lawrence storefront at 728 1/2 Massachusetts Street (785-84307423).  The other tenant is a very smokey bar aptly named Hookah House where (duh) people sit and smoke tobacco from hookah pipes, drink, and chat away.

Dinner was relaxed and elegant in eight beautifully designed courses.  Although I was exhausted when we entered, when the first course arrived I woke right up!  It was all delicious and gorgeously plated!  Really wonderful dining in an unusual setting and the best company. Chef Sukan made it all look easy and this was the perfect finish to a long and wonderful day.  Two minutes after we arrived home, I was sound asleep and felt just great in the morning (which is truly amazing given the mass quantities of champagne, wine, and sake I consumed throughout the day)!!!

THANKS so much Sandy and Christine for organizing this — you were GREAT hosts!

This and the previous painting of ‘Lee’ completed a few days ago are experiments in the sort of light and dark over mid-value drawings which were popular in Europe 400 years ago.  I’ve selected two examples from the Goldman Collection of Italian drawings.  I was lucky to see the exhibition of this wonderful collection at the Chicago Art Institute last year — you can obtain the FABULOUS catalog of the collection from Amazon.com well worth the $47 price!

My approach is very similar to the tack I took with my “Jim” lithograph — overlapping layers of line to communicate the value gradations of the image, but the paint makes these much more tactile — the paint builds a very heavy impasto as it overlaps and makes an interesting if somewhat bumpy surface — I LIKE these!

www.youtube.com/watch?v=GMydBVkprok

the painting begins with white acrylic paint applied to tinted paper

here the white painting is about half done

the white painting is complete

painting of black is about half-done -- LOVE those moire spirals!

detail showing the Paasche Flow Pencil painting black over heavy impasto

painting of black nears completion

the painting is complete

detail of painting

'Lee' and 'Joanne' complete

www.youtube.com/watch?v=xWWuUOdYOZ0

The painting nears completion as black paint is applied over tinted paper and white paint.

'LEE' 35 x 21 inches, 2009, acrylic paint on tinted paper.

Bill North and I had some interesting discussions about ‘what is a print’ in connection with this edition. Initially I’d intended to print each sheet in colors, then draw on top in register. In the end, I chose to draw in red, blue, and black inks to produce what is to my knowledge the very first fine-art edition of drawn drawings (or prints)… In the broadest sense of the word, I think, the noun ‘print’ is synonymous with the noun ‘multiple.’ But, since this image was created on a single sheet of paper, roughly 5 x 12 feet, even the word ‘multiple’ is subject to question. BEFORE I tore the sheet apart, it was most definitely a pen and ink drawing. Once I’d torn the sheet into 45 pieces, each about 10x15 inches, it became an edition of ‘prints’ I think, even though each is an original drawing.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=-UQz0LdcRgU

"Jessica Paper Doll" 2009, 10x15 inches, pen and ink on paper

example of a 19th Century Japanese paper doll woodcut

a contact sheet of the photos I considered for the paper doll drawing(s)

one of the (many) late mock-ups for the drawings

a sheet of 10 proofs with various approaches to the drawing - about a month of work from the first to the last

final drawing with red ink begins

final drawing with blue ink underway (blue on red)

5x12 foot drawing completed and ready to tear out the 45 'prints'

www.youtube.com/watch?v=27jBIlBDtfg

from the Beach Museum of Art web site:

Figuring it Out: Prints and Drawings by Mike Lyon

April 14, 2009 -- July 18, 2009

Donna Lindsey Vanier Gallery

Kansas City-based artist Mike Lyon is the 2009 Friends of the Beach Museum of Art gift print artist. This exhibition features a selection of the artist’s recent prints and drawings, as well as examples from his extensive collection of Japanese prints. Lyon earned a BA in architecture and fine art (University of Pennsylvania, 1973) and a BFA in painting (Kansas City Art Institute, 1975). In 1976 he put his career as an artist on hold and joined the family business, a cattle hide processing operation in Kansas City his great-great grandfather started. Lyon invented a computerized system to automate the cattle hide grading process. In 1978 he founded Grading Systems, a computer hardware and software design company. Longing to make art full-time, Lyon sold his business interests and returned to his studio in 1991.

Lyon’s interest in computers and machines informs much of his recent work as a visual artist. His large-scale prints and drawings (as large as 84 × 45 inches) are based on his digital photographs of the human figure and inventively merge traditional art making methods and computer technology. Lyon’s work also demonstrates his keen interest in Japanese aesthetics. For example, his bust-length portrait heads recall the tradition of okubi-e (big-head picture) images. Lyon has an abiding passion for Japanese art and culture and is an avid collector of Japanese ukiyo-e prints.

Lyon’s prints and drawings are created with the aid of a ShopBot CNC (computer numerically controlled) router, a programmable machine designed for woodworking applications. He has modified the ShopBot to create a giant drawing and block cutting machine. With data from the digital photographs, he calculates millions of lines of movement code with which to program the ShopBot. This code instructs the machine how far to move an ink pen or a router bit along the X (length), Y (width), and Z (height) axes for each mark or cut. The final images can require as many as 12 million lines of code and nearly two weeks of non-stop drawing or cutting.

“Figuring it Out” is sponsored by the Friends of the Beach Museum of Art Business Partners.

Cover of catalog from the Beach Museum 2009 exhibition

distorted panorama of exhibition

sign at front door advertising the gallery-talk

Linda with "Annette" and "Linda"

Crosby and Anthony drawings - senior curator Bill North at right

Printmaking with Extreme Technology (Erik Brunvand, Chair with Edward Bateman, Stephen Hoskins, and Mike Lyon) 10-11:30am Friday, March 27 at Columbia College, Hokin Lecture Hall, 623 S. Wabash Ave, room 109

Printmaking is an art form that celebrates and embraces new technology in a way that other media do not. This panel gathers an international group of artists that are using extreme technology to make works that can only be called prints, but that are far removed from traditional printmaking techniques. These techniques include printing on silicon chips with image sizes measured in micrometers (millionths of meters), prints that include LEDs and other electrical components, 3D printing where the result is a solid object, the use of 3D computer modeling tools to create virtual worlds that are then printed digitally, and a wide variety of ways to use CNC routing in the printmaking process.

(l-r) Erik Brunvand, Steve Hoskins, Ed Bateman

The auditorium begins to fill 20 minutes prior to our talk - once underway, every seat was filled and people were in the aisles along both walls.

There were 120 – 140 in the audience when Erik introduced our panel and we got underway.

Ed Bateman is an assistant professor of art at the University of Utah and a working artist.  He described 3D modeling, adding skins with texture and color to wireframes, ray tracing, and sometimes days-long output to printing equipment.

Stephen Hoskins is the Hewlett Packard Professor of Fine Print and Director of the Centre for Fine Print Research at the University of the West of England in Bristol, UK and Vice-President of the Royal Society of Painter Printmakers.  Steve talked about his work in rapid prototyping with binder and powders (including firable ceramic powders ‘printed’ on his equipment), and showed some colorful nested models he’s produced.

Erik Brunvand is Associate Professor in the School of Computing at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City, Utah.  He teaches chip design and described the process of printing transistors and capacitors in layers on silicon wafers.  He showed some of the colorful images he’s ‘printed’ microscopically in empty areas of some of the  micro-chips he designs.

Our talks seemed to be enthusiastically received and there was time for 30 minutes of questions and answers.  VERY FUN!

So the ‘Linda’ drawing combines some new and some old ideas and techniques. For whatever it’s worth, I have been intensely interested in ‘new’ ways to communicate image and in process. I am so highly entertained for days on end by the various means at my disposal to precipitate thoughts and ideas into ‘reality’ — from my ‘mind’ in this instance to ink on paper! From abstraction to object and, it seems to me, so very directly! Process is relatively easy to discuss — aesthetics nearly impossible, so although ‘image’ is extremely important to me, the underlying process of ‘choosing’ my images is mainly unconscious or ‘felt’ and I just don’t have a clue how to talk about that. Process for me, however, is conscious and so easier to communicate. I suppose my images of people and other stuff will have to speak for themselves (LOL)!

Late in 2004 I began to think about the ‘spiral’. Spirals seem so… Infinite! Difficult to contemplate! Contracting to the infinitessimal, expanding to the infinite, mind boggling to construct and control! My great friend, Jerry Vegder, saw images of my earliest ‘machine drawings’ and pointed me to a Jacques Mellan (1598-1688) ‘Head of Christ, Sudarium’ engraved in 1649.

Now doesn’t this just drive you MAD? I mean, it’s quite a trick to hand engrave an image like this, a single line spiraling out from the nose with the width varied to produce the various values in the image, but HOW can one define such a procedure? After worrying this over for a while (four years?), I believe that I now have it all worked out! Although generating a list of movement commands to produce a spiral of any dimensions and number of rotations was quite a stretch for me (a simple interative application of trigonometric functions readily available in worksheets and programming languages), to really prove to myself that I had it more or less under control, I designed ‘Linda’ of spirals within spirals — approximately 3,300 ‘square’ tiles (each tile approximately 1x1 inches) pave a spiral in my ‘Linda’ drawing, and each of them is itself ‘spiraled’ to produce the values which eventually read to the mind and eye as a person’s face.

Although I ‘tried’ to constrain my drawing inside the ’tiles’ in order to leave a very narrow undrawn margin around each (I considered painting these margins with narrow lines of size and then gold leaving prior to drawing, but that seemed risky as Hell for a first attempt and I decided to leave that for a future work), but I required over 12,000,000 lines of movement code and there were many small errors in my calculations, so the drawing is (aren’t they all?) imperfect and the margins between tiles vary because a ‘few’ of my drawing lines escaped the tile boundaries from time to time.

Still, it boggles my mind to consider that this drawing (and most drawings, really) are produced moment to moment, the tip of the pen rolling from place to place leaving its slender black track as evidence of a long meander.

The image was designed in 10 layers as if it were a reduction print, beginning with the darkest areas in the image, each subsequent layer is ligher in value and includes the areas covered by previous (darker) layers.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=fbuosJE_2fs

You can see (if you watch the video above) that the darkest layer is drawn with the lines ‘spiraling’ very close together. Each subsequent layer is drawn the same way, except the distance between lines increases as lighter and ligher value layers are drawn. In this way, the values in the image are produced by cross-hatching, in this case the lines are all variations on the spiral theme!