Salon des REfUSE closing Sunday, Rollin' on the River happening in Garrison, NY in Oct.

When we first moved to Beacon, I bought a couple of sheets of MDF and created a rough desk/work surface for Angelika and myself.  A real no frills, slap-dash affair.  Eleven years on, this desk, worn with age and reconfigured more than once, has followed us from apartment to apartment to apartment..
We're planning a more major move in the next year or so, and this desk will not be accompanying us.  It's really just an amalgam of this material which is happening to serve the purpose of a desk.  It will have little value for anyone else once it's dismantled.....

I've cannibalized part of the desk, specifically the desktop and one set of shelves with doubled as a support for the top to use as the woodblock I'll be printing from during the Garrison Art Center's Rollin' on the River steamroller printmaking event on October 5, 2014.

I've assembled the MDF pieces into a four foot by eight foot piece and have commenced to hacking at it.  Some of the imagery I'm working with comes from the cobble forms and markings from paved areas around Geneva's lake front areas.  The rest of the imagery is a bit of a crapshoot.  Just as the material of the woodblock is a mash-up, with seams and preexisting wounds and screw holes, the composition too will be a little ad hoc.  Ad hoc, but still responsive to the whole.  Visual elements pushed against each other and settled in in the layout I nudged onto the surface.   I think everything is sitting nicely now.  Now we'll see how the execution goes.

Early in the carving process.

The diminished desk with prosthetic top and legs

The Salon des REfUSE exhibit at the GAC is entering its final weekend.  It's been great fun and a real pleasure to be part of it.  We'll be de-installing early next week.