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I did a few printing projects for art class in the eighth grade. My late mother had saved them all those years. I basically did block printing and engraving. Unfortunately my mother didn’t keep the engraved plastic and block printer plates themselves. Here is what she kept.
This is a mimeographed sheet where I had to do a sketch of what I wanted to engrave on my plate. As the instructions stated, I had to do the sketch on that sheet and turn it in to the teacher for approval before I could begin work. I drew Betty Boop riding a horse. The sheet also showed that I got an A along with the teacher’s instruction that only said “Print C.” Sadly I no longer remember what that particular lesson was like and I’ve since forgotten what the teacher meant by “Print C.” I circled “greeting card” among the suggested jobs list.
The next graphic shows the same sheet from the back. It’s obvious that I drew the same Betty Boop and horse drawing in the same location. I probably drew the original drawing using a heavy pencil on the front then I managed to trace over the lines and shapes in the back.
The sad part is that my mother didn’t keep either the engraved plate or the output from that engraved plate. I only have the original rough draft of that engraved plate.
The next image is clearly the output from a block print that I did, although my mother didn’t keep the block printer plate. It depicts Snoopy from the Peanuts cartoon dressed as the World War I flying ace who’s taking on the Red Baron from the top of his doghouse. Although I don’t remember why I wrote “Wet Paint” on the bottom of the print in pencil. Usually in art class whenever we created something using a messy medium, we would put that piece off on a side table so it would dry. It didn’t make sense for me to write “Wet Paint” when the piece wasn’t going to be wet forever.
While I was shooting footage of the latest episode in my ongoing web series The Baltimore-Washington, DC That Tourists Rarely See in downtown DC a few weeks ago, I came across this utility box near Union Station where someone had wheat pasted this poster featuring a quote by Martin Luther King that, sadly, still resonates today. It says “Everything Hitler did in Germany was legal.” It was a Holocaust reference but it’s also a pointed commentary on the fact that just because something is legal doesn’t make it moral or right. After all, slavery was once legal in the United States but that doesn’t mean that it was ever moral or right.
I took part in a block printing workshop at The Space, a makerspace located in the Beltway Plaza shopping mall in Greenbelt, Maryland.
I basically did a unicorn block print. I have it at home now so if I ever want to make more unicorn prints, all I have to do is buy some ink, get some paper, grab a brayer, and just do it.
I recently made my first trip to the Station North Arts District in Baltimore since 2017 (when I drew some NSFW drawings of disabled burlesque performer Jacqueline Boxx at Dr. Sketchy’s Anti-Art School). I spent 2018 being mostly grounded within a 10-mile radius of my home in the Washington, DC area because my alimony ran out before I found work so I was too poor to do much traveling.
I basically focused on going to the DC chapter of Dr. Sketchy’s mainly because the events were held closer to my home. On that day I decided to check out the Baltimore chapter that was being held that night only to discover that the event was sold out! Yeah, I could’ve bought tickets online the night before but given my current work situation, I wasn’t sure if I was going to be able to make it until the night of the event when I found that I had time to go to that event. So I took a risk and found that it was sold out. It was the first time I had ever encountered it because usually those events tend not to sell out. Next month I’m going to have to seriously consider buying a ticket online depending on what my work schedule will be like.
So, as a consolation prize, I walked around the area where I found that much has changed since my last visit in 2017. There were a few murals that I haven’t seen before, such as this one.
There were some businesses that have either closed down altogether or moved elsewhere (such as Red Emma’s, the worked-owned cooperative bookstore and coffeehouse that is now located in another part of Baltimore). There were a few places that have opened since my last visit in 2017, such as this one.
There were a couple of wheat pasted posters that looked visually interesting.
I know that in Dupont Circle in Washington, DC there is a Made in DC store where all of the items were made by local artisans. It looks like Baltimore has its own Made in Baltimore store. Unfortunately that store was closed the night I was there so I wasn’t able to go in and look.
Then there is that one billboard that used to get painted over with hand-painted slogans like Who is Land Banking, Where Does the Buck Stop?, and Whoever Died From a Roughride. Since then it looks like someone has decided to crack down on the unauthorized political commentary and replace the painted slogans with this official billboard ad touting how current Maryland Governor Larry Hogan and Lt. Governor Boyd Rutherford and the rest of the current state administration all stand with Baltimore.
The only downer of my walk is what happened to this mural that I had photographed on a previous visit back in 2014. At the time there was a convenience store and the mural reminded me of a scene from a silent movie. Here is what it looked like back then.
That convenience store has since gone out of business but the mural managed to remain as late as 2017. Sadly, on my last visit, some asshole decided to cover it with his/her own graffiti.
It’s one thing to paint on a blank wall outside but to intentionally do that to someone else’s art without any kind of input from the original artist basically makes the graffiti artist proclaim the following to the world: “I AM A SELF-CENTERED ASSHOLE WHO ONLY CARES ABOUT MYSELF AND DON’T GIVE A HOOT ABOUT OTHER PEOPLE’S CREATIVE EFFORTS.” It’s a shame that this happened because I felt it was one of the nicer murals that was on display in that part of Baltimore.
Like I wrote in a previous blog post, I attended two festivals in one day. The first one was the smaller Greenbelt Blues Festival, which I already wrote about. After attending that festival, I went to the Hyattsville Arts & Ales Festival, which was a larger event. Here are the photos I took of the event while I was there.
This sign erroneously said that this festival was held on September 10. In reality, it showed up on September 22.
The festival was well-attended and there were all kinds of arts and crafts on display along with local bands performing. The local craft breweries were selling their craft beers and ales. The weather was warm and pleasant (the humidity was low that day). All in all I had a good time and many of the festival goers also enjoyed themselves as well.
I only purchased one item at this festival. It’s a small bar of soap made from honey and it has a bee motif on it.
Years ago I took a series of non-credit classes through George Washington University’s Continuing Education program in my successful quest to get a certificate in desktop publishing. I did it mainly because I had hoped to land a better paying job than the data entry work I was doing at the time for a now-defunct computer reseller.
Ultimately my effort to get a certificate was for naught because when I finished I found that there were very few jobs in the desktop publishing field, despite all of the hype that I read in the media at the time saying that desktop publishing was a red-hot field. I ended up using my desktop publishing skills helping out with my church’s newsletter as a volunteer for a few years back in the 1990s. That was the best I could do with my desktop publishing certificate because I found that many would-be employers could have cared less that I got that certificate and I was offered the same clerical jobs that I had worked at before I went through that program.
Here’s another indication that getting a desktop publishing certificate was a wasted effort in the long-run: These days many word processing programs have desktop publishing features built-in so even a middle school student can quickly whip up a newsletter or flyer without even touching Adobe InDesign or a similar desktop publishing program.
From time to time I still use my outdated copy of Adobe InDesign to whip up a flyer or brochure on request from someone else. The most recent example was a calendar I had created for a few months for The New Deal Cafe, a non-profit cooperative cafe located in Greenbelt, Maryland. The idea was to have a calendar showing the upcoming musical acts and other events that were going to happen at the cafe soon. I did it as a volunteer in exchange for a free meal.
Here’s one of the calendars I produced for the New Deal Cafe.
Here is what the calendar looked like after it was printed and hung on the door of The New Deal Cafe.
That stint started last August and it lasted four months until January, when the head of the cafe’s Marketing Committee decided to take over production of the calendar herself. Since then I haven’t seen any new calendars hanging in any of the cafe’s outside windows. I’m only writing this post about my stint now because I wanted to show to people that I’m capable of doing desktop publishing layout work.
Last Saturday I had a pretty busy day. In the morning and early afternoon I helped out my support group for people who are separated or divorced with its spring yard sale in Crofton. (I took a bunch of pictures there but I’ll upload them at a later date.) I made sure that I left no later than 2 p.m. so I would have ample time to travel north to Baltimore so I could arrive at an entirely different event on time.
I attended the Poor People’s Campaign’s Art Build + Theomusicology Training that was held at Oak Hill Center. I parked my car on a side street and walked about a half a block. I found that Oak Hill is located in what looked like a one-time industrial area that has fallen on hard times over the past few decades.
Despite the seediness of the neighborhood, I found a few bright spots, such as Midway Park and a neighborhood that looks fully inhabited.
Oak Hill Center is located in a building that looks like a typical white industrial building on the outside. In fact, if it weren’t for the banner on this door, I would have walked past it.
Oak Hill looks way more impressive on the inside. It’s a combination of a library, art studio, and makerspace. It’s nice, big, and airy.
The room where the workshop was held was decorated with prints related to the Poor People’s Campaign.
The next shot shows the room where the bulk of the workshop was held.
The workshop started off with learning how to sing a few of the songs that are affiliated with the Poor People’s Campaign while watching a few online videos that one can access anytime thanks to YouTube. We learned how to sing “Everybody’s Got a Right to Live” and “Somebody’s Hurting My Brother.”
Afterwards we split into two groups with people who preferred to sing walking over to the library end of the building where they continued to practice the songs while those of us who were more into creating art stayed in the same room where we engaged in some large-scale screen printing. The objective was to screen print large banners that would be flown in Annapolis by protesters on the Monday after Mother’s Day.
We did the screen printing assembly-line style and there were times when we switched jobs or took a break and let someone else take over the job. The whole process was pretty lively and jovial at times.
Even though I stuck with the screen printing the majority of my time, there was a time when I felt thirsty so I went into the other room to get a drink, which was where the singers were rehearsing the two songs. One of the singers saw me getting a drink and recruited me to yell insults at the singers as loud as possible. So I was yelling things like “COMMUNISTS!”, “DEGENERATES!”, “GET A JOB!”, and “GO HOME!” I was relatively restrained in my yelling because I really didn’t want to delve into yelling anything racist (especially since there were a few African Americans present) or something that’s really offensive to someone (such as using a religious slur). After a few minutes of yelling insults, the singers thanked me for doing this. Apparently they were preparing themselves for the possibility that counter protesters would yell nasty insults while they were singing so they wanted to learn how to sing despite distractions.
After my brief role as an obnoxious counter protester, I went back in the other room and continued with helping people with screen printing while I took photos. There were two young sisters who accompanied their father to this workshop. At first they were focused on doing their own drawings.
But then, once the screen printing was underway, they became fascinated by the process and they were eager to help. So we allowed them to carry the newly-printed banners over to the person who was hanging them on the clotheslines.
Here are a few shots of the newly printed banners drying on clotheslines.
The last photo shows a chart indicating how many copies of which banners needed to be printed. By the end of the workshop we made great headway. The workshop is going to be repeated at the same place tomorrow night but I won’t be able to make it. If the next workshop is as productive as the one I attended was, I’m sure that the organizers will meet their entire production goal by tomorrow night.
A few days before the Women’s March on Washington I attended a screen printing workshop at Art Works Now known as The Art of Resistance. The participants were screenprinting signs and t-shirts that they could use either at the march or use at a later date. I took a few photos during my time there.
ReCreative Spaces, which opened back in 2015, was a studio space for artists and makers located in Mount Rainier, Maryland. Last month I got word that ReCreative Spaces decided to close its doors. I wanted to go to its Farewell Party last month but I decided to scrap that plan when a snowstorm coupled with below-freezing temperatures hit the area and I just didn’t want to risk going out too far from my home and risk either getting in a car accident or slipping on some ice on the sidewalk and risk injuring my hip replacement. (Although that storm made some pretty pictures, such as the ones I took that day.)
Ultimately I went to the last ever event at that place, which was basically a going-out-of-business sale where everything must go. Here are a few pictures I took while I was there.
I only found two things that I decided to purchase, both of which had cost me a total of one dollar. I got a pack of inkjet fabric sheets.
I also found this Christmas rubber duck that I thought was cute enough to purchase on impulse.
Here’s the rubber duck next to my small collection of Ginger Cottages. This rubber duck is now currently residing in storage with the rest of my Christmas decorations.
Since I’m publishing this post on a Thursday, I’ll make this into a Throwback Thursday by highlighting just a few past photos of ReCreative Spaces along with links to the original posts that they appeared in.
The first and only time I ever took part in a vendor show at Recreative Spaces.
Photo originally published in the September 21, 2015 post.
I created this Christmas card during Small Business Saturday at ReCreative Spaces.
Photo originally published in the December 9, 2015 post.
The time ReCreative Spaces sponsored Art in the Park(ing Lot) where local artists painted murals on a soon-to-be-torn down shopping center.
Photo originally published in the August 23, 2016 post.
The time I made this Christmas ornament as part of Small Business Saturday at ReCreative Spaces.
Photo originally published in the December 19, 2016 post.
When I saw this funky Christmas tree made entirely of wood.
Photo originally published in the December 27, 2016 post.
When I colored a page from an adult coloring book.
Photo originally published in the January 12, 2016 post.
I created this postcard-sized collage.
Photo originally published in the March 3, 2016 post
I’ll never forget the time after Donald Trump was sworn in as President of the United States where ReCreative Spaces hosted this mural.
Photo originally published in the March 16, 2017 post.
From time to time ReCreative Spaces had musicians and deejays provide the tunes at their events, such as these two musicians.
Photo originally published in the May 22, 2017 post.
I’ll definitely miss going to their events because I usually enjoyed myself as I made art and met some new people.
Sagittarius Dolly 
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