SJICA Monotype Marathon 2007

The ICA (San Jose Institute for Contemporary Art) has a fund raiser every year, called the Monotype Marathon. Last year I participated as artist, this year I decided to volunteer my time to help out and help other people print their monotypes. That even happened last weekend and I helped out at the Pacific Art League in Palo Alto. You can read more about the Monotype Marathon here.

In addition to volunteering I also donated one of my own monotypes for the auction. I made it in a little private monotyping session I did last weekend, after tanking up on inspiration at the Pacific Art League ;) The monotypes, including the one I donated will be in the exhibition at the ICA from June 8 till June 23 and on the evening of June 23rd all the monotypes are in the fund-raiser auction.

So check out the exhibit and the auction. It will be fun!

By the way: the piece I donated is a so-called "ghost". Monotypes are one-of a kind prints where the artist - for instance - paints on a plate and then the plate is printed in a press. You can try to print the same plate a second time, but this print will be much weaker in intensity than the first one and generally look quite different. This second (or third) print is called a "ghost".

This particular print was an experiment because I actually printed the ghost on black paper. Ghosts may be so faint that the image might be almost non-existing when you print on black. Indeed this print is very very subtle, but it is also really interesting and unusual. That's why we chose it for the auction.

I hope you'll come by and check it out in person :)

Just for comparison, I also include the first print of that plate, printed on white paper. You can see just how different these two monotypes come out.