On the Flat No one has asked me a particular and obvious question. Why do most painters paint on an easel and I don’t? Perhaps they think they know the answer, that I am influenced by Pollock, a dripper-wanna-be. Or, the rejection of the easel could be a statement or choice. Maybe I do it because it’s different. No. The simple truth doesn’t go back to when I was three and painted with bare hands on the front porch floor with forest green oil paint, the better part of a gallon, too. It was because I have always worked on flat horizontal surfaces. If a large enough table was available that would be where I would draw or paint, otherwise the floor would do. Most kids have floors and tables. Everyone works that way or begins working on the flat. In art school you are expected to use an easel, unless you are focused on printmaking. Guess what? Etching, lithography, woodblock, and screenprinting were my media. All print forms are done on the flat. So, it is quite obvious t...

    There’s a reason it’s called rag paper.   For centuries, ragpickers supplied the papermaking industry with cotton and linen. Discarded clothing scraps were the aluminum cans of the past. They provided a livelihood to the unskilled. At the dawn of the Industrial Age, everything changed. A rising bourgeoisie and the success of education lead to increasing demand for printed material. The impact upon paper and the rag   supply chain was unanticipated. Consumption of traditional cotton and linen scraps outstripped supply.   The price of rags rose. When demand for papermaking material exceeded supply, alternate sources were sought.    One long forgotten trove of very, very old rags was rediscovered in the 1800s: linen wrapped Egyptian mummies. A Maine papermill owner imported a boatload of them and removed the linen wrappings. The linen was then converted into pulp with the end product being butcher wrap.   Production of the brown   ...