Tag: art

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Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion at Gallery 69

A two color relief print with a blue and pink rainbow roll

I meant to post this back in February but things have been hectic. You may know I run a Free Little Art Gallery called Gallery 69 where we (surprise!) give away art for free. Well, it’s mostly been my art because I’ve made a lot and have it on hand. If you scroll through old posts though you will find other artists who have contributed.

But here’s the thing… now more than ever, we need more diversity.

I’d like to help curate a gallery that includes artists who may currently be underrepresented. Listen, I’m an old, white, straight man. I want to help share art from those who are not old, white, straight because face it, we’ve had it pretty good for nearly, well… forever.

It’s not much, but we’ve all gotta do whatever we can. I will write blog post about the art and artist, put the art in the gallery, and try to pay some cash to artists.

Thanks to a (small) budget from a few friends I have a little bit of money to do this, and I started talking to one artist but they never got around to sending me any art. I had offered money and even offered to make physical prints of their digital work, but hey, sometimes email go unanswered, people get busy… I get it.

So I’m about to email a friend, and I’ve written this post to help hold me accountable.

Finger crossed this works… I’d like to help where I can, and this seems like a simple thing, so let’s do it!

(And if you want to help support this effort, get in touch with me!)

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WMSE Art & Music – Fight the Power

I posted about the Sydney Hih piece I made for the WMSE Art & Music event, but I made a second piece as well this time! I used the boom box that the character Radio Raheem carries around in the film “Do the Right Thing”.

I remember seeing the film when I attended UWM and took a lot of film classes. The issues addressed in the film haven’t really changed much over the years, as we’ve seen in 2014 (twice) and 2020 and on and on and on over the years. It’s 2025 and in some ways shit is even worse than ever before.

But… I digress. “Fight the Power” seemed like a good title for this piece, as it’s something we need to keep in mind daily in these uncertain times.

WMSE has been an independent radio station fighting the establishment for over 43 years, and introduced me to so much amazing music over my lifetime that I though this music-related art was a good fit.

Like my other frame, I did the same prep work of sanding, painting, staining, clamping, gluing… I still really like this illustration. I drew it on an iPad using Procreate but tried the linocut style again and think it worked well.

The plate was the largest I could create that would fit on my press, which is 9 inches wide. Luckily it’s about the limits of my printer as well. (Though I could probably print in multiple pieces and assemble if needed.)

I ended up making one test print and then one final print for this. I don’t know if I’ll make more… maybe at a smaller size (on handmade paper?) but I do like this as a large print on some high quality paper.

As with all the art I donate I really hope someone is willing to bid on this and give it a home, while also helping to keep WMSE running and on the air for years to come.

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WMSE Art & Music – Sydney Hih

A framed Sydney Hih Illustration for WMSE Art & Music

A framed Sydney Hih Illustration for WMSE Art & Music

One of my pieces for the 2025 WMSE Art & Music event is my illustration of the Sydney Hih building. If you didn’t live in Milwaukee around the 1980s/1990s and dive into the counter-cultural music scene you may not be familiar. Read about it at OnMilwaukee or Urban Milwaukee.

A framed Sydney Hih Illustration for WMSE Art & Music

I always struggle with the edges of the 12″x12″ boards as they are just plywood and kind of rough, so this time I sanded them, filled the holes, sanded some more (and I hate sanding!) and then applied some black paint. It’s not perfect, but it’s better. I spent way too much time on the edges.

A framed Sydney Hih Illustration for WMSE Art & Music

For the frame itself I laser cut a piece of 1/4″ Baltic Birch and stained it black, which I think looks really nice. I glued it down to the board but the frame was warped so the gluing process took a long time and all the clamps I have. Once it was finally glued down I painted the edges black (again) and added one more coat of black stain to the frame. I am mostly pleased with how it turned out but because it’s my own work I can see so many areas of improvement for next time. I’m sure no one else will see what I see.

Still, this process worked well enough that I did it for another board and yet another board that my daughter Madeline did.

Here’s a version of the digital illustration that I created with Procreate. This is a part of my history, and is for many of my people, those who grew up going to shows and seeing bands play, and playing in bands.

Pete at the mixing board

I’m sure I’ve told the story of how I ended up running sound for the Sunday morning punk rock shows at The Unicorn (located in the basement of the Sydney Hih) but here it is again. One day we were setting up and asked Gus where the sound guy was and he said “You do the sound!” So we did… I wasn’t in a band at the time so I just started setting things up and got some help along the way, and I think from then on we just ran the sound for the local shows. Just one more step in a life of DIY.

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Lino-Style Relief Print

I’ve been using this 3D Printed Printing Plates method for almost a year now, and one of the issues I’ve had is that most of the designs tend to avoid thin lines, and the reason for that involves the limitations of 3D printing. Thin lines get delicate because of how 3D printing works. (There are some workarounds but they are… complex.)

The other issue is that I really like the look of linocuts, including chatter, but since I am not carving away materials in a reductive process there is no chatter, unless we add chatter.

Here’s an illustration of a cassette audio tape I did in Procreate. Instead of drawing it like I normally would, I flooded the layer with black and then erased to get white, so this is sort of a reductive process since I am taking away ink (or pixels, as it were) which is somewhat similar to carving away materials.

I have not perfected this technique, and I think there are some good possibilities with it. I’ve noted before that I don’t carve linoleum for a few reasons, mostly arm pain. Besides that though, the digital to analog process offers a few great advantages. You can resize things, you can easily fix mistakes, you can make multiple plates since they are 3D printed (so iteration is built-in), and they are extremely cheap. Most of my 3D printed plates are less than $0.75 USD.

Once I finished the Procreate drawing I exported it to a PNG file, brought it into Inkscape, and then created a vector file from the bitmap file. Since this is a “rough” style of art I wasn’t too concerned with anything being precise, but it looked like a pretty good translation. From there I used the method outlined in How I 3D Print Printing Plates to make the 3D file to print.

Here’s a render of the 3D model of the printing plate. I usually use 1mm for the bottom flat part and 2mm of “raised” art which has worked well for previous designs, but I’m also wondering if I can get away with 1.5mm or 2mm for the flat part. It’s worth testing and easy to do!

The reason for changing the flat backing plate versus artwork ratio is to help those thin lines be a little stronger sine they would not be as tall. Hmmm, something to consider!

This is what the sliced plate looks like before sending it to print. I printed it on my Bambu Lab A1 mini 3D Printer which is a small printer and actually perfect for these small plates.

Ready to print! Here’s the first print along with the printing plate all inked up. I’m using my Provisional Press for this. I love the Provisional Press because it’s under $200 USD and works great for my needs.

Finally, here’s the print framed. (Yes, I 3D printed the frame.) I like where this is going, and will definitely be working on this idea in the future. I think part of what gets me excited is that I am still figuring this stuff out as I go, and there is learning and exploration as part of the process. Always room for improvement, and always new discoveries and surprises along the journey.

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Skulls (2D and 3D)

A post I made on Facebook while at Ink Curds:

Me explaining my process: “So I 3D printed a skull, then I photographed it, then I made a drawing from the photograph, then I 3D printed plates from the drawing, then I made a relief print using the plates… oh, and I made the paper with a 3D printed mould & deckle, and used 3D printed registration pins for the two-color print… I guess I’m a printmaker.”

Right, so the print you see above is a two-color relief print of a skull. Down below you can see the two printing plates. (Remember than I 3D print my plates.)

I’m not the best at just drawing something, and I almost always use reference images, and occasionally do tracings of photos. This comes into play with this particular print.

Back in 2019 I 3D printed this skull, which I got around to posting about in 2020. It took a while because I sanded it, coated it, painted it, and then (attempted) to weather it. Hey, sometimes projects take a while!

Then around February 2024 I ended up turning the photo into a two-color illustration that I could use to make the two printing plates.

So we started as a 3D file that was printed to become a real-world object, then photographed it and made it into a file. I then used that file to create two printing plates and printed it.

But wait, there’s more!

I also ended up using that photo for a digital illustration…

Ah yes, here’s a post about my Skull Sketch from May 2024.

The thing I really like about this process is that I used my own materials throughout the process (with the exception of the original STL file of the skull) and I didn’t need to look for images that I did not create. I will freely admit right here that I probably get a little too close with some of the reference images I’ve used in the past, and I’d like to get fully away from that so my own photos and illustrations as subject matter for prints is a goal moving forward.