joseph engraver
Elite Cafe Member
The beautiful point, I am one of the luckiest men there are. The pursuit of an artistic career is a most difficult one. God has blessed me many times over, with talent, desire, determination, guts and grit. All these things helped. I don’t know many artists who were or are good managers, certainly not me; the greatest gift in my life is my wife Franca. Without her devoted support, no doubt I would have failed. She has not one artistic bone in her body, and seldom looked at my finished work. But she stood with me, forced me to get brochures printed, insisted that I answer correspondence, made me file taxes and kept my books. She made sure I presented my best image in public, and counseled me when I was desperately struggling to establish myself. If not for her my book never would have seen the light of day. I would not be living these last years here in this beautiful place we call home. Which brings me to the point. Alone is tough but with a partner that believes and trusts you, the journey is beautiful, even if they don’t understand what it is that drives you and there are rocks in the path.
From the book A Gifted Man. I discovered a print in and old book about the civil war. It had a scene of eighteen Negroes with picks, rakes, hammers, shovels and other tools over their shoulders, one was smoking a pipe, a boy carried water buckets. They were walking along the railway tracks, hands waving about leisurely while a white overseer sat astride his splendid horse, gloved hand raised in command. I could not resist the challenge.
Could I translate that complex drawing down to a space of four and one half square inches? I began the work by doing a carefully detailed COPY on Mylar plastic, every line, shape and shadow. Then reduced it with the local office supply Xerox to the size of the side plate. I redrew the reduced copy on Mylar. Prepared the plate for drawing and transferred the reduction to the side-plate without the details this time. I drew in the spaces between the figures rather than trying to draw each individual worker. Once I had the correct negative spaces, then, I started the engraving.
It was so intricate that I was sure I would become confused while working under the magnification of a loupe. I decided to draw directly from the original print, all those faces, hands, feet, shoes, clothes, tools and expressions rendered in steel. I had already started the cutting when I came to the realization that it was actually less confusing for me if I worked from the original print turned upside down. As the scene progressed, the details of the figures became so precise that I was making the cuts between heartbeats.
One day as I was working intently, Franca came to my studio door. “Excuse me for disturbing you, but I have an emergency in the kitchen.†I looked up from my master piece and asked what the problem was. Her answer was, “I need you to peel potatoes.â€
I sold that gun to a man who never paid me. He in turn falsified its origin with letters on museum stationary and then sold it to a collector for 125.000$. Then declared in court that he was a gambling addict and lost aalll that money. I fell in line behind a long list of others that were also defrauded. We sued; he went to rehabilitation and prison for one year and now reimburses me at the rate of 25.00 interest free dollars every other month. Man that really stung.
The collector came to Cody to research and authenticates his new prize. I had signed and dated the piece under the lever where he never bothered to look. What soothed my frustration was my wife’s one and only comment, “I told you, you should not have trusted that creep.â€
From the book A Gifted Man. I discovered a print in and old book about the civil war. It had a scene of eighteen Negroes with picks, rakes, hammers, shovels and other tools over their shoulders, one was smoking a pipe, a boy carried water buckets. They were walking along the railway tracks, hands waving about leisurely while a white overseer sat astride his splendid horse, gloved hand raised in command. I could not resist the challenge.
Could I translate that complex drawing down to a space of four and one half square inches? I began the work by doing a carefully detailed COPY on Mylar plastic, every line, shape and shadow. Then reduced it with the local office supply Xerox to the size of the side plate. I redrew the reduced copy on Mylar. Prepared the plate for drawing and transferred the reduction to the side-plate without the details this time. I drew in the spaces between the figures rather than trying to draw each individual worker. Once I had the correct negative spaces, then, I started the engraving.
It was so intricate that I was sure I would become confused while working under the magnification of a loupe. I decided to draw directly from the original print, all those faces, hands, feet, shoes, clothes, tools and expressions rendered in steel. I had already started the cutting when I came to the realization that it was actually less confusing for me if I worked from the original print turned upside down. As the scene progressed, the details of the figures became so precise that I was making the cuts between heartbeats.
One day as I was working intently, Franca came to my studio door. “Excuse me for disturbing you, but I have an emergency in the kitchen.†I looked up from my master piece and asked what the problem was. Her answer was, “I need you to peel potatoes.â€
I sold that gun to a man who never paid me. He in turn falsified its origin with letters on museum stationary and then sold it to a collector for 125.000$. Then declared in court that he was a gambling addict and lost aalll that money. I fell in line behind a long list of others that were also defrauded. We sued; he went to rehabilitation and prison for one year and now reimburses me at the rate of 25.00 interest free dollars every other month. Man that really stung.
The collector came to Cody to research and authenticates his new prize. I had signed and dated the piece under the lever where he never bothered to look. What soothed my frustration was my wife’s one and only comment, “I told you, you should not have trusted that creep.â€
