Catch up with me and my work at any (or all) of these 2023 scheduled events!

ART FAIRS

December 8th, 6-9pm (Friday Ticketed Preview) & Dec 9th 10-4pm (Saturday free & open to the public) Crafted Social’s Winter Market: A winter celebration with traditional and contemporary craft, art and spirits at the historic Greyline Station in Lexington.
December 16th (Saturday) 11am to 5pm: Last Call Art Market at West Sixth Brewery – your last chance to buy that perfect, unique gift!

March 11 (Saturday), 10am – 5pm – BOOTH 237: KY Crafted Market at the Alltech Arena in the Kentucky Horse Park, Lexington, KY. Visit Starpointe Studio’s booth and shop the best visual arts and crafts of the Commonwealth.
March 12 (Sunday), 10am – 4pm – BOOTH 237: KY Crafted Market at the Alltech Arena in the Kentucky Horse Park, Lexington, KY. Visit Starpointe Studio’s booth and shop the best visual arts and crafts of the Commonwealth.

May 13 (Saturday) – Noon – 5pm for Halftone Zine Fest at 21c Museum Hotel in Lexington, KY. A welcome return of the event formerly known as the KY Fried Zine Fest – find my table and shop/browse your way through small press publishers, self-published zines, local writers, and artists!

WORKSHOPS

November 19 (Sunday), 11am – 2pm: Demonstration at Kentucky Artisan Center, Berea. I’ll be there printing a fun take away and chatting with folks about my wood engraving process. Stop at this amazing travel center and browse the wonderful Kentucky art on your next road trip!

March 31 – April 2: A weekend wood engraving workshop at Starpointe Studio! Get 15 hours of instruction over 2 and a half days in a lovely rural setting. Instruction covers material basics, creating and transferring images, tool sharpening, engraving, DIY printing, plus pro tips and tricks.

July 3 – 8: A week-long Wood Engraving workshop through Frogman’s Print Workshops at their new location in Iowa City. This is my first time going to the legendary Frogman’s to teach a workshop – Jim Horton and Deborah Mae Broad taught wood engraving for years when it was in South Dakota. I’m honored to be following in their footsteps.

July 16 – 28: A 2-week wood engraving intensive, Wood Engraving: Mighty Detailed Prints at Penland School of Crafts in the beautiful Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina. A rare treat to explore wood engraving for such a long duration – we’ll talk about 2-color printing and experimental application of wood engraving and cap it off with a print exchange!

October 6 – 9: An in-person wood engraving workshop in the south of France at the Louis Jou Foundation in Les Baux-de-Provence! More details and registration here: https://www.starpointestudio.com/shop/classes/weekend-wood-engraving-workshop-in-france-october-6-9-2023/

EXHIBITIONS
November 10 – December 30: Wood Engravers’ Network 4th Triennial Exhibition, Arts Center of St. Peter, Minnesota.

February 7 – 26: 84th Annual Society of Wood Engravers Exhibition, Bankside Gallery, London, UK.

The post 2023 Workshops and Events appeared first on Starpointe Studio.

Craa-ack! As relief print artists we don’t talk often about the mistakes, accidents, or failures that lead us to a final composition, color choice, or resolution. Or how those accidents sometimes have nothing to do with aesthetics, rather they were hard lessons about materials, physics, chemistry, patience, and/or common sense. So, I’m going to share my most embarrassing wood engraving mishaps with hopes that we can have a great discussion, learn from others’ mistakes, and swap disaster stories! – Joanne Price

Anyone is welcome to join the conversation (you don’t need to be a WEN member) — bring your disaster stories and your questions — this should be a cracker!

If you missed this exciting event, WATCH THE RECORDING: https://youtu.be/PCPx51ni1E4

Find out what disaster struck this reductive self portrait…

The post Wood Engraving Disasters – Virtual Presentation March 21, 2021 appeared first on Starpointe Studio.

The post Starpointe Studio Virtual Tour appeared first on Starpointe Studio.

SUPPLY LIST
– 8.5 x 11 inch copy paper (inside pages)
– Cover material (cereal box, other recyclable paper board material, fabric, wrapping paper — even draw your own cover illustration on plain paper)
– thread (embroidery thread, string, yarn, ribbon, etc.) in a length that is a little longer than twice the height of your book
– Scissors or sharp knife (like a box cutter, with a cutting mat)
– Sewing needle, paper awl or a nail — an unbent paper clip can work in a pinch to create thread holes.
– Pencil
– Ruler

PREPARE THE PAGES AND BOOK COVER
For this example, I am using 8.5 x 11 inch copy paper. You can use whatever size paper you want. I think thinner text paper is good for the inside pages.

I start by folding an 8.5 x 11 inch sheet of copy paper in half.

Cut or carefully tear the paper along this fold. Then, fold the paper in half again. If using copy paper, you can make up to 6 folded pages. Fold your paper neatly, matching edges before creasing.
Nest the folded pages together so the tops are all matching (you want them all to be the same size).

With all the pages together, measure or find the center and mark it lightly in pencil in the center fold. Do you see where I am holding a needle at the center mark? See how it is in the center fold of the nested pages? I have made two more marks — one to the right and one to the left that are 1/2″ to 1″ from each paper edge also along the center fold.
Next, pierce all your pages at once with your needle in the places you marked. You want three holes along the center fold.

Select and prepare your cover material. I’m using recyclable paper board. The cover material should be the same size — So for mine, my open pages are 5.5 inches tall, by 8.5 inches wide, so my cover is the exact same size.
If I wanted to use a part of the paper board that didn’t already have a fold, I could *lightly* score/cut the outside “spine” of the cover with a box cutter or knife to help it bend more easily. If you are using thinner material for your cover, like paper, it will be easy to fold without scoring/cutting.

Put your punctured pages inside the cover you have created. With all the edges matching hold the group of pages and cover together without letting them move and using the holes you have in the pages, push a needle, awl or nail through the cover as well. All the holes should line up so that when we sew the book together, the edges of the pages are neatly contained within the cover — no page edges or corners peeking out.

1. With your threaded needle, go through the cover and pages’ center hole from the outside and leave a “tail” of about 3 inches sticking out.

2. Now go through one of the open holes with the thread and needle. Again, leave that 3 inch tail sticking out still.

3. Take the needle and thread from the outside of the cover going inside through the last remaining open hole.

4. Take the needle and thread back through the middle hole (inside to outside) — be careful not to pierce the thread on your way through the hole.

5. Knot your thread — I use a square knot to secure the thread. The remaining thread can be either trimmed to within a 1/4 inch of the book or kept long and decorated — you can put beads or charms on the extra thread or make it into a bow. If it’s extra long, it can be a clever, built-in bookmark.

A finished pamphlet stitch book using a recycled cereal box for a cover: This is a very easy binding technique to apply to zines, short stories, blank journals or sketch books.

Post your creative versions of this simple book structure and follow me on social media — tag “Joanne Price Starpointe Studio” on Facebook and @starpointestudio on IG and Twitter.

The post Pamphlet Stitch Book: Step-by-Step appeared first on Starpointe Studio.

After finishing the engraving, the block was printed on the very same printing press that Melanie VanHouten (JSP Artistic Director) helped me move into my studio on a frigid day in January 2017! The “Thank you” cards received the same royal treatment as the engraving – going through sketches, color and font selections – before a final design was selected. While the card was digitally designed, the printing process is the same as the engraving — printed on my 1925 Chandler & Price clamshell press. For a sculpture park, I wanted to get a really nice embossment of the design in the paper — creating a sculptural relief — from relief printmaking! The card’s paper, Flurry, is made using wind and hydro energy — responsible environmental choices are the default for Starpointe Studio and JSP.

Photograph of the old tobacco barn – ant’s eye view. (Photo credit to Joanne Price, June 7, 2018)

Panoramic photo with newly planted trees and soon to be planted native flowers and grasses for prairie restoration on the south side of the driveway to Josephine Sculpture Park. Photo credit to Joanne Price, June 7, 2018.

One of several sketches first submitted to Artistic Director, Melanie VanHouten, for approval.

After making some changes to the drawing/composition, a final sketch is ready to be transferred to the 3 x 4 inch endgrain Maple wood block for engraving.

The end grain block with drawing transferred and engraving process begun. The surface of the block is toned with black printer’s ink to help my brain remember that what I carve away will be white. Some elements of the drawing are further clarified and/or decided as I engrave.

Further progress on engraving. The white is a chalk I use to help me see the lines better. In wood engraving, the block is cut by hand with tools called burins – one tiny line/mark at a time.

The finished print displayed above the engraved block. Notice that the image is reversed.

And finally the green part of the “Thank you” card being printed on my 1925 antique printing press.

And then, 2019’s end of the year thank you note to donors (who gave over a certain amount) received a handsome bookmark with part of this image — printed directly from the woodblock with some hand-set metal type. Josephine Sculpture Park is a favorite place of mine — supporting art in Kentucky, serving a largely rural area, creating a space where science and art can come together (ie: NASA Museum Alliance Night Sky Tours, Frankfort Audubon Society programming), and JSP’s commitment to nature and art education, and sustainable land stewardship. JSP supports all the things that I love and believe in! If you’ve never visited JSP before — you should visit now — they are open everyday, 365 days a year. Find the sculptures I used in the print! Hint — they are not where I have drawn them.

Illustration with hand-set metal type.

Front and back of the 2019 “thank you” bookmark.

The post Josephine Sculpture Park Special Commission Project! appeared first on Starpointe Studio.

The Ayatana crew decked out in bug nets seeking lightning bugs.

A mosquito with my blood — artfully arranged and lit at the direction of professional macro photographer and consumer electronics industry veteran, John Healey.

Capturing all flying insects at Mer Bleue Bog with Moth expert Diane LePage.

A blinded Sphinx Moth found by luring moths with a bright light and white sheet between 9pm and 12:30am

The epic and beautiful Maman sculpture by Louise Bourgeois at the National Gallery of Canada. The bronze spider sculpture has a sac containing 32 marble eggs!

Using my clip-on macro lens to explore my own garden — look a wheel bug!

And then, a strong Frankfort, Kentucky community supporter, Bob Patrick generously gifted me a beautiful binocular microscope and petri dishes to study insects! Wow! Bob also donated a 15-inch telescope (it’s taller than me!) and many other astronomy materials, equipment, and books to my husband, Dan Price, NASA Solar System Ambassador! Wow — talk about level up! Thank you Bob!

Salt Marsh Moth caterpillar ready for a hug!

The hairs of the Saltmarsh caterpillar seen under higher magnification — look at those barbs on the hairs. As far as I know these caterpillars are not poisonous.

The post Bugged Out at Ayatana this Summer appeared first on Starpointe Studio.

I started by drawing directly on the block.

This print was originally printed with a construction steamroller at the Portland Museum in Louisville, Kentucky. The free public event was organized by Rachel Singel of the University of Louisville and supported in part by a grant from Burning Man.

The edition was printed on a large Takach Press at the University of Kentucky with printing assistance from Charles VanMeter.

The post Flight Path: From Block to Street to Press appeared first on Starpointe Studio.

Cutting the block is very physical and obviously there is a huge amount of wood chips created from a block this big!

These prints take a lot of work and planning and sometimes I don’t get things right the first time, which is easy to forget when I’m only posting the finished pieces and not every step of the process. As I was cutting the 18 x 24 inch woodblock, I realized I should have included a prey animal to allude to the hunting tradition. So, I decided that I would add a little rabbit as part of the screen printed colors.

3 of the 5 screen printed colors complete – the 6th color comes from the woodblock.

The post Spring Sprint appeared first on Starpointe Studio.

– A Jackalope in black & white — a woodcut interpretation of the mythological wild-west-beast.

– An illustration for Wells Book Arts Center’s fifth chapbook, Negative Compass by Bret Shepard.

– And three wood engraved illustrations for the University of Kentucky King Library Press’ upcoming letterpress publication, “Ma non e una cosa seria” (But it’s not really serious, 1917), a Luigi Pirandello play translated from Italian by Ann Colcord for the University of KY’s King Library Press. A comedy in three acts following a wealthy womanizer and the homely/humble manager of a boarding house. The book will be available late 2018 from the King Library Press.

The post Cool Inspiration – New prints! appeared first on Starpointe Studio.

Continuing our support of a healthy environment for birds and beneficial insects, this creative workshop will guide you through the process of making paper by hand with seed inclusions. This unique handmade paper can be used as a small note card or a gift tag specifically designed to be planted in the ground to grow native KY flowers and grasses that are necessary for butterflies, Hummingbirds, bees and beneficial insects!

The paper can be formed with a variety of cookie cutter shapes, including butterflies, bats, trees, flowers, dinosaurs, moons, stars and much more. Join the fun – meet me at the paper making tent at JSP’s Fall Arts Festival!

The post Up to Our Elbows in Paper Pulp at Fall Arts Festival this Sunday September 9! appeared first on Starpointe Studio.