Press the button and…

see what happens!  After a day preparing surfaces and doing a few little quick and simple transfer prints, it was time today to take a deep breath and go for it.

I started the day as yesterday, using those first couple of hours to run a couple of errands and tick things off my list.  Time is tight when the days are taken up with class and one place I needed to go was M&J on 6th Ave, not that far away from the hotel or the IPC.  My list included “linen twill tape”, a simple enough thing to buy – but when I got there, look at the selection.  I mean, how can a girl choose?!  Whilst I really only wanted cream, I got white too, plus pink….and why not get some green as well?  Oh, and that pale blue is so pretty…they’ll all go through the printer in due course

I arrived to find Mary prepping some aluminium plates for printing – we’d chosen some images for this shiny metallic surface and sometime soon will be doing both a transfer onto them and, I understand, putting them directly through the printers too.  Hmmm…!

We spent the morning creating all kinds of textures and then using Inkaid in a variety of colours to create a receptive surface for the ink.  We prepared black paper, brown kraft paper, card, collages, old bits of artwork and things we’d brought with us.  We added a couple of coats of Inkaid to the substrates we’d created yesterday and made a new one with aluminium duct tape.  Before long, the whole floor was covered in sheets laid out to dry.

We left all of this drying over lunchtime and Jordi and I ran back to the hotel because today we had a special lunch.  I’d booked a package which as well as four nights for the price of three, also included a picnic lunch, which we’d booked for today.  Oh my, what a grand affair, all packed up in a real hamper, complete with bottle of wine!  Teddy Bear James was ready to tuck in too!

Back to work though – we couldn’t wait to get going with the printing!  However, before we could do that, we needed to put the papers in the dry press for a minute or two to straighten and flatten them.  At home, they’d be ironed using the usual iron and baking parchment but here there are enormous heat presses and the prepared surfaces are sandwiched between two non stick sheets and held in the press at 150F and then cooled under a metal weight.  It made quite a difference to most of them though the brown kraft paper was going to prove a challenge, in spite of the careful pressing, it turned out.

The computer set up isn’t easy for printing, involving the need to get up on a step stool to load the paper into the printer which is high on a shelf.  The huge printers are Epson 3880s and we were turning out prints at an incredible rate – thankfully, all included in the class fee!  Having gone through all the print options and changed all kinds of settings I had no idea existed (how helpful it is to have a professional print technician in the class!), it was time to hit the “print” button and step back and wait.

What would the end result be like?  Anxious faces peered into the printer tray to see what was coming out – here a large railway engine is appearing, I hope!

The central table began to fill with all kinds of interesting and exciting images – the large sheets of small colourful pictures are intended for the metal sheets and were printed out on the huge printer by Mary.

As we produced sheets and sheets of prints, we began to realise that matching the correct image for the particular substrate was key to success, and perhaps tomorrow, we’ll create the substrate with the image in mind, rather than vice versa.  I was pleased with my print of Colombo harbour on the duct tape surface but will perhaps have another go with the railway engine tomorrow, to see if we can improve on today’s effort.

After class, we headed downtown to Madison Square, where I just had to take another photograph of my favourite Flatiron building. Love it!

Our destination was the Shake Shack, where the queue was rather long and we were very thirsty.  Time for one of us to take the “B line” and skip to the front to buy two beers to drink whilst we stood in the “A line” to order food!

Cheers!

Though there’s a Shake Shack nearer to home now and another on the West Side, we agreed that there’s nowhere quite like the original and best, the Shake Shack in the Square.

Even if there are birds.

And squirrels.

And I get VERY jumpy!

Today, there was also art in the Square .  Echo was rather striking and as the people of NYC chilled in the park, listening to the live band on stage, we made our way back to 6th and the bus back uptown, via Eataly.  It had been our original intention to get gelati there but by this time, believe it or not, we were Too Full For Dessert.  I know…  But Eataly was buzzing, the place a licence to print money, so full was it (and is always, according to Jordi!)  We promised ourselves dinner at Otto tomorrow instead.

In answer to Dorothy’s question of yesterday, I’ve tried to include hyperlinks to product websites which include UK sources.  I am also reliably informed by the lady herself, that she has many useful links to the sources, too.

A great place to learn

Where else would the combination of jet lag, a 24hr diner serving great breakfasts a few doors down and round-the-clock shopping on the doorstep enable me to get such a flying start on the day?

Before 9am this morning, I’d had breakfast, done a quick trot around the block to drop into the drugstore for latex gloves and into Staples for some scissors and a couple of 4gb memory sticks currently on offer for $5 each.  Fifth Ave was just getting started, the air was fresh from yesterday’s rain and the day was starting well.

By 9.45 I was sitting outside the Institute of Photography on 6th Ave, when Jordi arrived.  I’d been watching the arrivals in the reception, wondering who might be taking the same class.  What would our fellow students be like?

The answer was, people much like ourselves.  Eleven women and one chap, two teaching assistants and Mary, our tutor.  After brief introductions and a speedy outline of the class programme, we were started on our first, simple image transfer using hand santiser gel – who knew?

The institute is a fascinating place with every room crammed full of equipment and exciting art work.  We’re working in a fairly empty studio for the messy bits and one of two rooms chock a block with computers, each connected to a large format printer and two enormous, stand-alone printers.  There’s a library and this afternoon, we discovered another hive of activity when we went to dry our prints in the lab – a large room where a group of youngsters were mixing chemicals for some photographic process or other.  Everywhere is clean, exceptionally well equipped and managed – I am very impressed indeed.

We enjoyed lunch in the sunshine on a corner of Bryant Park, mulling over what we’ve learned so far.  Was it what we’d expected?  Well, yes and no.  Were we having fun?  You bet.

After a short walk through the park – in search of ice cream! – we returned to the Studio to prepare our images for the afternoon’s first project.  Into the computer room then, where the sheep were separated from the goats – all the computers were Macs and I’m a PC girl.  Uh-oh.  Fortunately, help was on hand and with a little encouragement and a bit of a workaround, my image was moved to the right place and was printed out along with the others.

The next transfer was more complex, involving DASS “Super Sauce” and stone paper. 

The jury’s out on this one so far, because of the glossy, plasticky surface.  But tomorrow, we have plans for taking it back a little and who knows whether it will be a triumph or a train-wreck afterwards?  Watch this space!!  (The image is a door lock in the museum, Cochin, btw)

The last part of the afternoon was spent preparing some substrates for tomorrow – a gel base which will eventually end up covering a 3D object and a more textured surface which will be more of a fresco in character.

After such a day, a super gourmet dinner was in store – or?  Actually, a quick run up to Michaels to take advantage of an unusually generous money off voucher, followed by a pizza and pudding in WholeFoods next door. As we sat making plans for tomorrow, the heavens opened and we realised we were trapped, far from home with neither raincoat nor umbrellas.  Jordi ran for her subway station as I ran for the bus shelter.

Now, all I have to do is to select some images to use tomorrow.  I’m going to need a good strongly coloured one to print on some aluminium sheeting, and a couple of others to keep on hand for whatever else Mary might pull out of the bag.  This is really such fun and, what’s more, so far we’ve done nothing that couldn’t be done at home.  The possibilities are endless…

Yoohoo!

Well, I was waving as we flew over our own little patch of countryside but I suspect my hero was already busy getting on with his long list of things to do whilst he’s home alone.  Though I scrambled to the nearest window to take a quick photo, in no time we were away and out over the Atlantic and we settled into that no mans' land of eat-snooze-read-listen.  Only in the last minutes of the flight did a conversation with the woman sitting in “my hero’s seat” reveal that she too inhabits that little green patch in the photo above.  From the next village in fact.

Once in the city, a quick shower was in order – I’d have preferred it to have been just the bathroom kind but the heavens opened and right on time, a slightly damp-around-the-edges Jordi appeared from the deluge outside.  We made our way by hot and sticky subway to the Canal St station and, for the first time, noted the artwork – NYC stations are great places to see public art and though “The Gathering” gave me the creeps (I have a real thing about birds), I thought it clever.

No two birds were the same, they were grouped in realistic poses and I was keen to move right along!

Anyway, Purl was calling and with the rain still tipping down outside, we were glad to take refuge in this haven of colour and texture.

Such fun to see the real life samples from the website.  Purl is such an inspiring place.  Interesting too, to see that they are promoting rather more traditional needlework techniques of late – I suppose everything that goes around comes around, eventually.

Did we buy?

By now I was feeling peckish and it was time to find the other reason for heading down to this part of town.

My NYC Moleskine “bible” has a new addition – the Cubana Cafe on Thompson Street,  not only delivered food which hit the spot but also delicious mojitos.  Well, it was Happy Hour, wasn’t it?

The work starts tomorrow!

Got everything?

• cool, cotton clothes  - yes
• comfortable shoes – yes
• chargers and adapters – yes
• crayons – yes
• builders scrim…?

Yes, of course I’ve got the builders scrim.

I’m off to New York this morning for my digital printing class.  See you later!

Friday supper, 2011 style

We’ve always been pretty hot on eating meals at the table.  None of those tray-top takeaways here, where places to takeaway are just too far to…well…bring it home hot.  Now there are just two of us at home, however, we have developed a bad habit of watching TV as we eat our evening meal, in particular.  Often it’s the first chance to catch up on the news, other times it’s simply that there’s a programme we’d like to catch, which was the case this evening, when Simon Hopkinson was on TV.

Simon has long been a favourite.  We are fans of the small, simple “roast chicken”  paperbacks and frequently refer to his “Week In Week Out” as well.  Bibendum has provided some of our most memorable meals (hasn’t it, Mary?) and as a result, as we enjoyed our supper this evening, we were also enjoying the preparation of Fish Pilaf.

But this is the 21st century, isn’t it?  And surely, no-one would be surprised that an iphone was on hand, complete with QR reader app, ready and waiting for when the dish was complete?

And being “that” kind of household, that a digital camera was also nearby, to be able to record that moment when the iphone was held to the screen, to capture the 2D barcode in an instant?

Resulting in the recipe being there, ready in the twinkling of an eye; so quickly it even took my hero’s breath away.

There.  You didn’t really think he was so easily impressed, did you?

However, one of us is an old hand when it comes to 2D barcodes and is secretly rather thrilled that the rest of the world is finally catching up.  Except I’ve moved on to this

Details here.  Download the free Microsoft tag reader for your smartphone and hover over the colourful square above.

How clever is that?