I'm starting to write this, sitting at the Vancouver airport, waiting for our flight; when I'll have time to finish, and when my daughter, Toni, will be able to post it, is another story.

We just finished a show in Vancouver where all went well. Undoubtedly, the highlight of the show was our neighbours in the adjacent booth, Ron and Jose.

Jose, her proper British accent quite intact, is obviously from England, originally. She tells us that she returns for visits regularly enough to keep her accent intact. She is a lovely and charming lady who hand sews beautiful, colourful garments in, what I would refer to as being, in a distinctively North American Indian flavour. Ron, dressed in a colourful shirt, blue jeans and a hat sporting a single eagle feather, is a soft spoken man of obvious tremendous depth.

I'm not sure who these people are yet, but they are both kind, with a wonderful sense of humour, and I know we'll get along quite well. I discover that this is their first "craft show" - that they usually do traditional "Pow-wows". These are Indian cultural get-togethers.

As we chat, I learn more and more of Ron and Jose. Ron is Jose's partner and teacher for the past 28 years or so. Before I continue, I will mention that I think I now know him well enough to believe that, when I get a few details of his/their past wrong, he will be quick to forgive.

Ron is a highly respected Métis elder from the Cree and Chippewa tribes. He grew up on horse and wagon, in one of the last nomadic Métis communities of Canada. He does not know his exact age; he thinks he is around 75. As he was told, he was born in the year "the men did not come home from the hunt". 

Jose is quick to point out that Ron is a "storyteller". I'm not exactly sure what that means yet, but I intend to find out. And, as we speak (actually, as I listen), it's quite obvious that this is no "mere" storyteller. Later, in our hotel I go on line and find that, as one article describes him, he is an "oral historian" and "a living repository" of his people's languages, culture, myths, legends and stories. The McGill University web site describes him as a "veritable human encyclopaedia of stories, myths and oral history" of his collective peoples. As he reveals more and more of himself to me, I come to appreciate that these descriptions are not overstated - that I'm in the presence of a living Canadian treasure.

I do recall studying the Metis and the Louis Riel rebellion, albeit briefly, in public school. As he speaks, I realize how little we know about the original peoples of our country.

Ron's forefathers were "beaver chiefs". These were tribal leaders who had a deep knowledge of the beaver, and were tribal guardians of this particular gift of nature. They knew how and where to look for beaver, decided when, where and how many beaver could be trapped, and decided which beaver colonies must be let alone, to avoid "hurting them" (damaging the eco system and threatening the overall beaver population). With a quiet undertone of sorrow, Ron tells me that, had history not unleashed itself on his people, that he too would have been a beaver chief.

Aside from English and French, Ron speaks a number of Indian languages, although he admits he is somewhat rusty in a few which he hasn't used for quite some time. As he relates story after story with me, it's obvious he possesses an amazing memory for dates and detail.

Ron has taken on a sacred responsibility to try to pass on his people's stories, culture, history. Many of his stories are hauntingly reminiscent of those of "the Holocaust". Occasionally, tears well up in his eyes; but he manages to remain rather matter-of-factly for the most part. I am unsure of whether this is because he has told them so often, or it is a kind of Indian acceptance of changing realities. 

At the Vancouver show, we find out that Leonard Cohen has just died. Ron is a bit puzzled when Arlene takes the news quite hard. Ron has never heard of Leonard Cohen. I'm more than a bit surprised to find out that this learned elder, although he often lives and lectures in "white" society, his breadth and depth of traditional knowledge, that which has been all but lost to the ages, is in stark contrast with his lack of knowledge of "our" society. At one point, for example, he tells me that he thinks he has heard of the Beatles, he has no idea of what or who they are. He has little or no knowledge of the celebrities, icons, TV shows, or any other accoutrements of our harried world ... things that most of us take for granted. Ron is not someone with whom you'd want to partner, in a game of Trivial Pursuit ...

I won't try to relay any of Ron's stories; I'm not sure I could do them or him justice. However, there is something I feel compelled to pass on - something that, perhaps because of how he told me, will continue to haunt me ...

We "liberal thinkers" have been lead to believe that the main cause of the decline of Indian culture in North America was heavy-handed missionary influence or, perhaps unfair and illegal government intervention, or life on the reservations ...

I am surprised when Ron tells me that it was (as he refers to it as) "the hippy revolution that killed Indian culture"!?! As he explains it, most Indians in Canada lived north of the farming belt. Most lived "traditional" lifestyle, hunting, trapping and trading. Ron specifically mentions the years 1967 and 1968 as the turning point - when furs fell out of fashion, and the fur trade was effectively ended. He recalls the first time he went to a trading post with his father, and both they and their furs were turned away; he thought they were joking at first. Within that year, a traditional lifestyle was totally erased.

The concept of money was a difficult one for many; Ron's father, along with many of the elders at the time, did not adapt well. When trying to make a purchase, Ron's father would often ask him, "How many beaver pelts is that?" There was a tear in his eye when he related this.

Below is a photo of Ron and me; please forgive the poor quality.

Well ... this saved me having to write something for my blog ...
The article below was written for a Vancouver newspaper.

Enjoy, and let me know what you think,
as I haven't had time to read it, myself.

(Thank you, Toni, for posting it for me!)

http://www.jewishindependent.ca/printmaker-comes-to-city/

THE “GICLEE”

In essence, a reproduction is a photo-copy (photographed or scanned) of an existing work. For the purpose of brevity, I’ll limit my comments to the most popular form of reproduction sold today …

“Giclee,” is a term fabricated in the early 90’s to describe a reproduction, printed from a specific large format ink-jet printer called an “Iris”. The term was concocted because, after all, who in his/her right mind would pay big buck$ for a lowly ink-jet print? But a “Giclee” … oooh, aaah … now THAT sounds like $omething $ub$tantial, does it not?

Today, “Giclee” has come to refer to any art reproduction printed off an ink-jet printer. As a matter of fact for the purposes of proof-reading, just prior to posting this entry I printed off a Giclee of it. :)
 
A while back, an artist friend graciously invited me to his studio to see exactly how the process works. After scanning the original, he played with the image on his computer, deftly altering the colours, the intensity and cut and re-pasted a number of different elements into different areas of the composition. When it looked just right to him, he pressed the “print” button…

The entire process, from the start of the scan to having printed out the final product, took a grande total of about 10 minutes – most of that time, due to the fact that his printer was a bit on the slow side.

So, back to the original topic of the reproduction and, specifically, the "Giclee". For those inquiring minds who want to know, here is the bottom line according to every legitimate fine art gallery and museum in the world:

However the image was reproduced, whatever the printing substrate (paper, canvas etc), however nice-looking the final product, and even the ever-so-popular signing and limiting the of the edition DOES NOT ALTER OR ELEVATE THE ESSENCE OF THE REPRODUCTION. Because when all is said and done …
- It is not an original print.
- It is not a piece of art
- It is a (scanned or) photo-copy of a piece of art.
“Caveat emptor,” indeed!

NEXT TIME:
I’ll examine the oft-asked question of which computer program/s I use when creating my work (and that ought to be interesting ;)…
The secrets will soon be revealed!

In the interim, below is a detail of an intricate border in one the pieces, about which I’m often asked the computer program used (to give you an idea of scale, from the centre of the bird's eye to the centre of the leopard's eye is 7 cm or 2.75").

This detail image is from, “Bashert”, by the way, which can be seen in the “Klezmer Kollection” gallery, 7 pieces from the top at http://iankochberg.com/ .

*originally posted on Ian Kochberg's Facebook group page - December 27, 2015

At our shows it seems that, time and time again, many of the same questions keep coming up; I thought I would take advantage of this forum to address some them. Here’s one which comes up at every show we do:

On your sign it says “original print” and “hand-pulled . . .”
What is “hand-pulled”, and how can a print be “original”?

An original print is an original work of art, conceived and executed solely as a print. The image does not pre-exist in any other media. In other words, it is not an image reproduced from an existing work of art; it exists only as a original print. There is no original from which copies are made; each print is an original.

The original print is produced from a single hand-made matrix or, if multi-colour, a series of matrices; it is created entirely by the hand of the artist or, in rare cases these days, that of a master printer. The type of matrix used is, typically, a metal plate, stone, wood block or screen (in my own work, I use multiple screens and metal plates).

In any fine art gallery or museum, an original print is considered to be an original piece of artwork, which exists in a multiple format. Original prints include etchings, engravings, dry point, stone lithography, and serigraphy. 

The original print with which most of us have some familiarity, is the potato print. The matrix used for each colour is a potato or, more accurately, a half of a potato. So, every colour requires a separate “potato” to be prepared. And although I do not use potatoes in my art, it may be easier to understand the original print in terms of the lowly potato print… 

It should be noted that I’ve spent up to 180 hours, working on a single “potato” for a single colour. If the edition is, for example, 100, once the first potato is ready, it is inked and printed 100 times on 100 sheets of prepared paper. The potato is then destroyed, and a new potato is prepared for the second colour. If the piece is to be, for example 12 colours, 12 different potatoes are prepared, printed from, and subsequently destroyed - one potato for each colour. After the colours are complete, I cut, engrave and etch metal plates from which I hand-print the embossing,. When the edition is complete, 100 original potato prints have been produced. The “original” would have been the 12 potatoes along with the metal embossing plates, all of which had been destroyed. The final image only exists as an original potato print.

“Hand-pulled” is a fine art term which means that the artist or master printmaker has literally pulled the paper from each stone or plate etc, by hand. This hand-made quality differentiates it from a mass-produce-able, machine-made reproduction. The process is very labour intensive; you cannot simply push a button on a printer and spit out an original print.
It should be noted (just to confuse matters) that, for every original printmaking method, there exists a corresponding commercial method of reproducing artwork. Next time, we will examine the original print’s nemesis … the “reproduction”. The reproduction is a glorified photo-copy or, more common these days, “scanned-copy”.

*originally posted on Ian Kochberg's Facebook group page - December 22, 2015

My very first blog post:

Arlene and I just got back from a show in Rochester:

The Handbell Musicians of America National Seminar.

In case you didn’t know, this is a handbell:

It happens to be a single, “A2” handbell (manufactured in the US by Malmark), which will set you back $3,450 US (and, no, it’s not their most expensive bell). These are serious, finely-crafted instruments, and a multi-octave set of bells is a serious investment, indeed!

We were a bit concerned as, just a few days before we left for Rochester, over 70 people were arrested at yet another demonstration. But the show, itself, was gr8. And what we saw of the city was clean, safe and very inviting. As a bonus, Arlene and I have always found handbell people, overall, to be wonderfully kind, open and down to earth - very sweet souls!

Arlene managed to snap this photo of me with one of our neighbours (well, “neighbor”, actually) at the show:

Beside me (adorned with my new, scruffy beard), is Mr. Alan Hughs, director of the famous Whitechapel Bell Foundry in London, England. Whitechapel’s most well-known creations include “Big Ben” in London, and the “Liberty Bell” in Philadelphia. His family-owned business has been hand-casting bells since 1570 and, yes, the company is located in, and named after, the same Whitechapel district that Jack-the-Ripper made (in)famous, some 300 years later. Considered to be the “Rolls Royces” of handbells, not surprisingly, they’re far more costly than their American-made counter-parts.

Alan, a very bright and gentle man (as well as a customer of ours), graciously allowed me to hold one of his bells for our photo op. A perceptive man, Alan, he didn’t trust me to hold one of his larger (more expensive) bells.  :)