I love this Group Project we do together. Click to enlarge.
It’s 8 feet tall by 6 feet wide (or thereabouts).
Tag Archives: matt ballou
Mezzotint Rocking Deck
I’ve been working on an apparatus to help me streamline and control my mezzotint copper plate preparation. In moving toward the incarnation you see in this post I built 3 other models, each one becoming more and more refined and tweaking elements that didn’t seem to work.
Ultimately what I wanted was a rotating deck that would keep the copper plate stable and offer ease of movement through the different angles one has to use to rock the plate properly.
The rocking deck would also need a secure place for the rocker itself, and a place to keep the blade protected when not in use. The sheath I built on the forward end of the deck holds the rocking blade without contacting the serrated edge of the blade at all.
Learn more about mezzotint here. See some of my mezzotint work here. Two really great mezzotint artists are Michelle Rozic and Stewart Duffin. Check them out.
New Lamentations Mezzotints on the Way
I’ve got a show coming up next Spring at Gordon College in Wenham, MA. Though I’ll be presenting 50 or more works, a good portion of them will consist of mezzotint prints. I’m well on my way to completing the group I want to exhibit; the prints will follow the imagery from Lamentations chapter 3, verses 1 – 20. Below I’m posting some shots of the newer plates – click the title to read the verse.
Some Interesting Sculpture
I think this (and some other stuff) has been influencing me in various ways…
In the forms I make for students to work from (drawing above, painting below)…
…and in the forms that make their way into my own work. Below, an experimental brick-based sculpture and a mezzotint featuring an invented pentagonally-based structure.
Art and Submission
My latest essay is now up for reading on Neoteric Art. Please check it out.
Current Shows, Catalogs, Essays
A lot going on these days.
The show I’m in at MANIFEST in Cincinnati has just released the catalog (cover below, click it to order one – it’s volume 43, bottom of the page).
Also, I’m included in a show at McNeese State University. Click here for more info. If you’re near Lake Charles, LA, go check it out!
I’ve got an article in the Columbia Daily Tribune up as well (and keep on the lookout over at Neoteric Art for my upcoming essay on Art and Subjectivity!). Click here to check out the Tribune piece. Below is one of the pieces I talk about (click it to see more about the image at the Brooklyn Museum):
Barefoot and Pregnant (and Majestic) in the Kitchen
Alison looking awesome in the kitchen today… 
Lamentations Series Continuing On
I’ve been continuing work on the Lamentations 3 series – see the latest work below (and an earlier note here). You can see one of the other paintings in the series here.
You can probably see that I am referencing Arnold Bocklin‘s famous painting Isle of the Dead – which he recreated many times – in this work. The connotations it carries with it seemed like a good basis upon with to embed my own reference and image.
I am also pulling from Nerdrum‘s recurring figure of alienation, seen in his Man in an Abandoned Landscape and Iron Law (center, distance).
Beginning Painters, Spring 2010
I have a pretty good crew of beginning painters this semester at the University of Missouri. I’ve been teaching the course a little differently this year, jumping into making stretchers and stretching canvases, working directly with color from the start, and assigning many, many more preparatory works than I usually do. I’ve been showing them Diebenkorn, Tim Kennedy, Sangram Majumdar, Catherine Murphy, and Uglow. The students seem to be responding.
We’ve been talking a lot about the color and direction of light, focusing intensely on how value shifts over forms and through spaces. I’m enjoying a lot of what they’ve done. Here are a few of the current project (all are oil on canvas, each approximately 14 by 14 inches):
Sarah Burch
Arin Hennessey
Dannah Moore
Jesus Roman
Katie Westhusing
Alyssandra Wilkey
