My artistic ambition during this time in Uganda was to learn and be inspired by Fred Mutebi, a prolific and colorful woodblock printer here. Much of his work is social/ political statements, visually symbolic. His technique is reduction printing, using only one block of wood per print, and making editions of ten to fifteen prints rubbing by hand—no press. He says there is not one press in Uganda now.

Here’s what I have done while here:

Print one: Snail. I saw a big, four inches long, snail walking along a plant, and made a three stage reduction print using my usual inks, with transparent colors overlapping each other. I printed each stage separately so that I would have an example of my work to show the students. I got one fairly ok print, but it was kind of a fumble. Go to full post for more.


Print two: As we were planning the class, Fred showed his new series of prints about the US election. They have stars and stripes mingled with zebra stripes, and complicated metaphors.

So I started a larger print which represents the continents each by a different bird. The big message is Peace, in letters, and also an Origami peace crane carrying an olive branch. So far I have printed two of the three stages, so not all the birds are visible yet. I did the printing after the class took place, and by then realized that the scheme of things here is about lots of goopy ink, in whatever colors. And not that literal. An elephant can be red. So I dove right into it. But printing by hand, with the paper that I got from Fred which I don’t think is quite top shelf, is tough to get anything like I am used to. Splotchy, fingerprints, hand registration is wishy washy, I’m in first grade again.

Print three: During the class, I decided to pick up the same equipment and supplies that the students were using and use a different approach to the way most of them were working. I drew from observation (as opposed to images from imagination), and didn’t outline the forms with a line like most of the first two days student prints. I wanted to experiment myself, and also show a fresh idea. I think this affected a number of the student prints. At least they started asking me to help them figure out their questions a lot. I like this print. The colors went on bright and crisp, and I had fun. The new thing here was mixing white with the ink, rather than transparent medium. So the colors are opaque, and go on like oil paint as contrasted with watercolor.

Print four: A young artist named Hassan came to class on the last day and showed me his prints on his laptop. He asked, “In the U.S. You are printing light to dark, yes? Well most of us here print dark to light. We print the light colors over black.”
Light bulb graphic here.
OK, tell me more. So he did a quick demo with what we had out on the table—he paints a black square the size of his board. He gets the plywood boards from a salvage section of the market that used to be packing crates. Then carves his lines, prints it, and the lines are black. Phil has two woodcuts here that he bought from a gallery at the equator, and pointed out that they seem to be printed with the light colors over black. So we went to Hassan’s studio, way back in a neighborhood with chickens and a goat, and are bringing back a number of his cool prints for the shop.
So I can hardly wait to try this. I don’t have any acrylic paint, so I mixed Elmer’s glue, which I keep in my fixit bag for woodcut repairs, with black gouache, and painted my squares black. Then today I made a big goopy palette of ink, got a roller in each hand and dove into it. Again here, the white ink mixed in is a whole different deal.
Shazam.
Crispy black lines with cool color. I love it!
This is the way I have figured out to do paintings in recent years: opaque paint on a black ground. So go figure. This is the unexpected gift in seeking fresh ideas from the world.
The idea is from one of the stories I was told in Sembabule: Mr. Tortoise got selfish and ate all the party food himself. Mrs. Tortoise was so enraged she prepared his bed with pangas and knives. That is why to this day the tortoise’s shell is rough with cut lines.