Adventures in Printmaking
Art Inspired by the Great Stupa of Dharmakaya in Colorado
This year has been pretty crazy for Charmellow. I saved some printing presses from the scrap yard in the spring and have been on a mission of rediscovering my printmaking love ever since. The presses are out in Hoxeyville, 15 miles or so west of Cadillac. They are in a friends garage, covered, along with the rest of the shop. I will do a post about the equipment soon!
Anyway the presses in general have inspired me to start hunting for vintage blocks, carving my own linoleum blocks and lots of experimentation at home. I wrote a nice long list of my favorite places I've visited in the world so far and plan on making prints and plates out of them somehow.
The Great Stupa of Dharmakaya in Red Feather Lakes, Colorado is high on the list of favorite places. I went there one summer when I lived in Denver, while attending a music fest near by. It left a huge happy impression on my heart. In my search for what I love I remembered I loved this place SO MUCH. I’ve been doing a lot of yoga and it just came together to make this.
The stupa is the only one of its kind in Northern America. It stands 108 feet tall, and has an 18 ft. tall golden buddha in the temple. Its nestled in between a couple of small ranges, and you can feel the energy of the place as soon as you park your car. I loved exploring the park area and hike to the stupa, and the temple was awe inspiring. I hope to go back and visit soon, and take them a print!
The first edition of final prints are in blues, gold, red and white. I am thinking up a color scheme to go on some new green paper I have. They will be available on this site soon, and at select stores around the Cadillac area.
Posters for Locally Grown 8
Let's make something!
I had a super fun summer of making things for fun people! A local vocal power house and amazeballs lady I know from Cadillac, Rachael Davis asked me to make her some posters. I obliged and what ensued was a bunch of good clean fun.
The concert is the eighth installation of a series called "Locally Grown" that invites people that came from Cadillac High School to come back and perform their songs with the orchestra.
Rachael is a literal singing angel that will bring you to tears. Its happened to me many times. Maybe I'm a cry baby, maybe not. So I'm jumping way ahead but the concert was amazing. I sat there and remembered all the band concerts I performed on the very high school auditorium stage I was watching. It was incredibly nostalgic and sweet.
In hind site incredibly humbling to make art for.
So back up to before the concert, cause, you know I was printing them that day. Rachael came over to my house and HELPED ME PRINT THEM. How fricken cool is that? Its cool. Really cool. So anyway I loved every minute and am incredibly lucky to make design for people I admire so much.
