A Wonderful Legacy & Exhibit

How lucky my brother and I are to have a dad – Ilgvars Steins – who still makes amazing art well into his eighties. Shown above is a recent watercolour/pen & ink titled Soup du Jour. Since moving in with Paula and I he has been busy making new work, adding to a huge collection [...]

Riverside Artsfest ~ 2010

For the last ten years our Dawson City Arts Society has organized an arts festival in conjunction with the Discovery Days holiday in August. Discovery Days is about remembering the discovery of gold on the creeks and the beginning of the Klondike Gold Rush in 1896. It’s a three day event that covers a lot [...]

Curating my dad’s show

A couple of years ago I moved my dad into the self contained suite on the first floor of our house, including his Scandinavian furniture and decades worth of his artwork. I have an opportunity to curate an exhibition of his work at one of our galleries here called the Confluence Gallery. Initially, the concept [...]

Shiva Inks

I found this nice box of Shiva block printing inks while organizing my studio. Unfortunately Shiva no longer exists as an ink manufacturer. They operated out of Chicago and eventually moved to their final home in Torrance, California. I believe they ceased operation four or five years ago. Shiva’s palette was based on the Ostwald [...]

Soviet Era Video Store Clerk

Here’s a photo taken with a Sigma DP2 and the amazing Foveon image capture chip. I try to do everything manually on this camera since it’s pretty bare bones anyway being the poor man’s answer to the Leica X1 rangefinder digital, but I’ll bet the DP2 takes better pictures. This is my friend and local [...]

Reduction Linocuts

Need inspiration or guidance on reduction printmaking? I know I do. Here’s a great overview on the methods used by Los Angeles printmaker Dave Lefner. I’ve been following his art for awhile. His work-ethic and approach to his craft is very motivating. Ahhh, so much to do, so little time… Here’s a great video by [...]

Wood Engraving Block Making

Here’s a couple of boxwood stumps along with a branch sitting on my messy band saw. The one in the foreground is about 8 inches across at the widest part. As you can see the wood is quite dry showing those splits in the wood. So the trick is to get as much yield as [...]

Opening at YAAW

YAAW stands for Yukon Artists at Work, with an emphasis on the term “work” just so we can be sure that making art isn’t simply the happy consequence of too much free time. Informed people know that a serious art practice involves lots of work, therefore it’s good to have that reflected in the title [...]

Pecha Kucha!

Okay, a year ago I didn’t know what Pecha Kucha meant. A Mayan ruin in the Yucatan perhaps, or another way to say hootchie kootchie? Now that I’ve attended two and presented at one of them, I now know that it’s a very happening and groovy event involving ten presenters following a predetermined theme, each [...]

Timothy Cole

Timothy Cole is another master wood engraver whose technical proficiency amazes me. He spent his entire career in the late 1800′s and early 1900′s interpreting the work of master painters like Constable and Hogarth. I happen to have in my possession his engraving of Mona Lisa, signed by him in pencil. It’s printed on a [...]

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