Studio Thursday at the Johnson was an excellent respite from the week, that required a lot of creativity and foresight as well! The art project involved carving out parts of a linoleum tile. Then, we went on to overlay the tile with a layer of paint. Final, we used the tile as a stamp, and got a print of the negative image of our carved linoleum. There’s the catch, everything you carve out of the linoleum will be lighter than the stuff you leave on. Once you’ve carved out some of the material – there is no going back! Another catch is that any words or lettering you carve will be printed as a mirror image.

As it was the Thursday before BreakFree was going to travel to World of Dance Boston, I proceeded to carve out our iconic BreakFree symbol that we often make with our hands. I wanted the hand to be darker, so I have to carve out all of the negative space, and leave in the positive space. I also wanted to carve our BreakFree logo in positive space. This was the hardest part –  I had to carve around the BreakFree logo’s mirror image, so that the logo would be read from right to left on the print, and it would be darker (in positive space). After I finished carving out all the negative space on my print, I wanted to give my hands some texture, so I proceeded to carve out little lines along the hand to show the line of sight on the piece. I wanted the lines to lead my line of sight to the middle of the BreakFree hand symbol. After I was done with all of the carving, I coated the linoleum in the color read, another BreakFree symbol, and made the prints. Below is a picture of how they turned out!

I didn’t know what linoleum prints were. Growing up the recreational was scarce and I only really had experience with Crayola’s crayons and watercolor on looseleaf sheets. Sitting in the Johnson with fancy tools and these innovative tools for creating art, I realized how privileged I am to be a Cornell and join a program such as The Rose Scholars.

I love drawing cats so I went ahead and started creating my linoleum print of a house cat. It came out surprisingly cute and great. For my first attempt with linoleum printing, I thought I had done an amazing job.

I knew that I wanted my new prints of feline, feminine, and dark essence to go on my door. For my door is the first thing people might encounter when they want to see me. They will know that I too am, essentially, complex. Like the different but dark colors of my prints, for my door will give you snippets of my story. These linoleum prints, created on a day where I was happy and felt like I knew myself, these prints were nonetheless, ambiguous. For my door holds these prints – prints that were reaped and sowed in the presence of privilege, but oppression. For the print was messy and jagged and typical for any middle class child that first touched linoleum. For my door tells the story of an unsophisticated artist, who is exposed to knowledge and exponentially sponges it.

As much as I love to explore various forms of art, and the detail they may or may not entail, I am always anxious to making my own forms of art. This should be of no surprise for a few reasons.

One, my art is singing. Two, I’ve never been one to create a masterpiece, but I am good at spotting one.

With these things in mind, I still tried to be positive and join the linoleum workshop at the Johnson Museum. I cannot draw, so I stuck with what I know – words/phrases. My favorite phrase of all time is “GO GET IT”. The phrase helps me to remember that anything is possible, as long as I put my mind to it and work diligently.

I carved the words out on the linoleum piece given to participants, and was super excited! Why? Because it didn’t look bad or crazy. However, when I used the paint and pasted it on paper, MY PHRASE WAS BACKWARDS.

Here, I found myself a little bummed out, as I looked at everyone else’s pieces all nice and well carved. Then I remembered Jay-Z’s quote: “Cry a river. Build a bridge. And get over it.” After I wept for ten seconds, I got over it. I made four more of my backwards phrase, and thrilled to say that I arrived at a masterpiece.

It was by no mistake that I would create a piece and call it Backwards Ambition. It seemed to be a little reflective of my life at the time. A time when I found that I had ambition, but it seemed to be working against me, this piece put it all into perspective. This piece helped to bring me peace that having ambition is an accomplishment, regardless of what direction it seems to be flowing. It reminded me that ambition will always lead to something bigger and better than you ever imagined, just like this piece.

Last Thursday, at the Johnson, we carved linoleum. For those of you who don’t know what linoleum carving is, it’s a print-making technique in which you utilize a sharp, curved tool to work away at a pliable but tough rubbery surface. Because it is a print-making technique, it’s important to keep in mind while carving that what you carve away will be both reversed and negated eventually when you print it. I’ve taken a print-making class before, and for a project, we had to carve away at the same block gradually, printing different layers of colors in intervals until we achieved the picture we wanted. In this class, we did a simple, single-layer color block.

On Thursday I was able to attend the event at the Johnson Museum of Art making Linoleum Stamps. I’m not artistic in any way, but I was able to create passable sunflower stamp.

The last time I created stamp prints was in intermediate school, so the step-by-step instructions were both informative and nostalgic. My prints were okay (not really but let’s pretend they were passable) and the most important thing was that the event was scholarly and fun! I’ll definitely plan on making time next semester for Studio Thursdays, hopefully improving my nonexistent art skills.

This event definitely earned my stamp of approval.

Studio Thursday at the Johnson is always a fun and interesting night. This week we made linoleum prints, which involves sketching a design, carving the design on the linoleum block, and then painting over it and stamping it on a piece of paper. Now, I’m not the most crafty person, but this seemed simple enough for me. I started off fine; sketching a fox as my subject. However, when it came time to carve is when things got dicey. You have to press pretty hard to carve the linoleum, which makes it extremely difficult to stop exactly where you want to. And, as the instructors kept reminding us, once you carve there’s no going back. After some practice and a few minor mistakes I was finally satisfied with the final product. Below are some pictures of my block and a few of the prints I did.

I highly recommend everyone go to studio Thursday at the Johnson, even if, like me, you don’t think you have any artistic talent. It’s really easy and the instructors are very friendly and willing to help!