Let's take a minute here at the beginning of this post to understand the difference between drawing and printmaking. Drawing is a direct process, one art work is produced. While an artist might make two drawings very similar, each work would be an individual art work made by hand. Printmaking is sometimes referred to as plate making. Here the art is created by first building a plate from some material such as wood , stone, plastic or metal. The plate is inked to produce the art work, which may be any number and each work is exactly the same.

The indigenous American artist probably did design these stones to be used as printing plates, however they mixed printing and drawing techniques in practice to produce beautiful effects. It is very likely that more than one art work might have been produced with a single plate. Through a process called “selective inking” only a portion of a particular plate was used to create an art work. When we observe the prints that appear here, we must take into account that the entire plate is visible, printed in one rub, these are documentary proofs of the entire plate structure.

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I do hope that you are enjoying the post on my blog from week to week. Like I have said in previous post, it is not as important what I write as it is obviously the rare illustrations that make this blog unique..I would like to add a word of further explanation here. When I read that Google had created Blogger I immediately thought that this would be an excellent way to offer everyone an access to the images in the collection . Please let me say that I am very satisfied with the program, and that I will continue to post. I haven't forgotten that I did say that I would also show photographs of some of the effigy stones, this is taking longer than I anticipated, but eventually there will be those illustrations as well.

Not all of us see the same reality, sometimes what we see is the product of our individual development or possibility our personal preparation. Education does prepare us for understanding and appreciating the Arts. When an individual works and acquires advanced degrees, we should all seek to honor and serve that person by accounting and posting our personal studies when we honestly feel that a truth of worth has been found. I do feel that this is the case here, that The Collection Of Indigenous American Art is an unusual collection of works, and that placing some of these works on public view is in order.

You can contact me at ciaamuseum@gmail.com

When I began the actual printing of the stones in my collection I was quickly aware that there would be many people that by all means would see the art work as a collectable domain, that to many it might represent an alternative to the” Known Artist” collections that fill gallerys and museums all over the world today. It is actually rare for “ Unknown” works to appear in large numbers in the art market. The art of unknown artist are commonly barred from most exhibitions, so there is little opportunity for the public to see such work.

Have you ever tried to select an art work for view in a public place? I mean in a place or location where a number of individuals have to agree on a particular piece! Often indeed the attempt fails entirely and the wall remains bare, “indeed”! Political ties, Religious beliefs, Nationality or the personal habits of the artist are the types of foolish predigest that will frequently halt the process, ill feelings often linger for months.

I see the art of unknown artist as a natural choice, especially when the art work itself is quite good and interesting to view. What is better than seeing a unique graphic that is entirely new to you and all other viewers as well.

Contact me at ciaamuseum@gmail.com

Well now we have the new year started, do hope that yours was a nice holiday. I would like to explain about the prints that they are enlarged somewhat by the process of importing them into the Blogger program. I am still learning about the tools that I am attempting to use. The basic idea here is that I create an artist proof using a Crayola Crayon. Most of the plates are printed only twice. The first rubbing is made on common notebook filler paper and the second is on equally common word processor paper. Then the second proof is scanned into my Epson NX400 printer which exports the image to my HP pavilion desktop, where the images are stored in the pictures file. I then use Picasa software to order the prints that are then uploaded to Picasa Web Albums on-line. You can see all of the prints that have been published here on the blog and some that I have omitted as well.

Once again please let me point out that recognizing the image is in many cases a difficult study I try to place only prints that I am certain of, but that does not guarantee that they will all be intelligible to all viewers. I do by all means recommend that the viewer move back from the monitor to study each print. Also, rotating the image 360 degrees in 90 degree clicks shows other faces of of what are multiple viewpoint compositions. Many times you may like a particular work in another position. We must remember that the artist that created these art works did not think of their works as having a top or bottom.

You can reach me at ciaamuseum@gmail.com