Etchings and Engravings – Currently On Display at Fort Bragg Library

Etchings and Engravings

by Doug Desmond, Larry Thomas and Jacob Hewko

Etchings are a traditional form of intaglio printmaking. The artwork is scratched through a wax ground on a metal plate. The exposed metal is then bitten with an acid solution. The wax is cleaned from the surface and the plate is rubbed with ink to fill the acid-etched lines. Excess ink is hand-wiped from the surface. Dampened paper is placed over the plate and both are run through a press under heavy pressure. The paper picks up the ink from the well of the etched lines.

Engravings are patterns carved into a printing plate. The basic process is to engrave the image on a metal plate, apply ink to the plate, wipe it so the ink only remains in the engraved lines, then press it onto paper to produce a print of the image.

Using engraving, an artist can make either highly detailed images or images with a sketchy quality, depending on the number and thickness of the engraving lines.

About the Artists:

Larry Thomas‘s work is represented in the collections of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the National Museum of American Art in Washington, D.C. as well as numerous other public and private collections.  He is the recipient of two National Endowment for the Arts Individual Fellowships and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art SECA Award; has shown in numerous solo and group exhibitions regionally and nationally, and has work in the permanent collections of artist’s books at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Houghton Library at Harvard University, and Stanford University’s Cantor Center among others.  His many awards and accomplishments include; visiting scholar in residence at the American Academy in Rome, resident artist at the Djerassi Resident Artists Program, the Ragdale Foundation, and the Sitka Center for Art and Ecology.  He retired in 2005 from teaching and administrative positions at the San Francisco Art Institute where he served in several capacities from 1981 until 2005, including Associate Professor of Printmaking, Chair of the Department of Printmaking, Dean of Academic Affairs, and Interim President.

Each summer he teaches a drawing workshop at the Sitka Center for Art and Ecology on the coast of Oregon and in 2010 conducted a similar concentrated drawing course at Haystack Mountain School of Crafts at Deer Isle, Maine.  In 2008-09 he served as Visiting Tutor at the Burren College of Art in Ballyvaughan, Ireland, and conducted a specialized workshop in drawing at Bennington College under the sponsorship of North Country Studio Workshops.  Additionally, he has served on many grant panels and has participated in several international cultural exchanges sponsored by the Ford Foundation and Columbia University and the U.S.I.A.  He has served on the Board of Directors for the Alliance of Artists Communities, the Headlands Center for the Arts, on the Advisory Council for the Flintridge Foundation, and the Sitka Center for Art and Ecology.  He received his Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from the Memphis Academy of Arts, his Master of Fine Arts degree from the San Francisco Art Institute, and an Honorary Doctorate from the Memphis College of Art.  He currently lives and works in the rural northern California coastal community of Fort Bragg. from www.LarryThomas.info

Doug Desmond was born in Austin, Texas in 1935 and grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area. He considers himself self-taught, although he did attend The California College of Arts and Crafts in Oakland on a scholarship, the University of Texas, and later California State College at Hayward. He has participated in many group, juried, and one-man shows, and is included in many collections throughout the United States and Europe.

For the last twenty years Doug has worked mainly in graphic illustration. His media include pen and ink, oil, watercolor, etching and sculpture.

In 1989 Doug moved from the Bay Area to the Mendocino Coast and now lives with his wife Marilyn in the little hamlet of Caspar, which is about four miles north of the village of  Mendocino, about 150 miles north of San Francisco. (from www.dougdesmond.com)

Jacob Hewko is gluten-free–but he’s also one of the Mendocino Coast’s most talented and provocative young artists, breathing fresh life into the local art scene and creating images on paper that rival your most bizarre dreams.

After a few years working as a bike messenger in Portland and San Francisco, the corn chip-munching minimalist recently moved back home to the Mendo Coast to focus more on his art. You can find his work at Odd Hours Gallery in Fort Bragg and Frankie’s Pizza and Ice Cream Parlor in Mendocino, as well as on Etsy.  (from theava.com/archives/3734)

Etchings and Engravings are on display in the glass case in the front of the Library. Check them out while you have the chance!