In 2012, longtime friend of the Homewood Studios cohort of artists, William Kapel Slack, invited ten artists to come together in a “Fusion Tribe” to learn about and explore his main genre of artistic work – the making of monoprints. After agreeing on a general them – the power and magic of masks – Bill sent us off to do research and to create a plan for the work we would undertake on in individual meetings with him, over the next few weeks, at the Highpoint Center for Printmaking. Eventually, there would be a gallery show at Homewood Studios of all the result work. Since part of my heritage story includes the Welsh people, inveterate lovers of poetry and song, I investigated mask traditions from Wales and fouled the fetching story of “Mari Lwyd”, which means gray mare in Welsh. In this traditional ritual, on the evening of winter solstice, a community member well known for his poetic ability and his singing voice, donned d a horse face mask, a rough robe or co, t and journeyed from pub to pub, challenging those inside to a singing/poetry duel. Back and forth, back and forth went the poems and the songs were flung, often with increasing vigor and volume, and often growing more and more randy and raucous as the duel progressed, until the gray mare was, by common agreement, declared the winner and was invited into the pub for a pint. This moment became known as “breaking the dark,” heralding to swing of the Earth in its orbit back toward the longer, more light filled days of spring. With Bill’s help I prepared a horse face template of cardboard and we met at the center on sunny day for my “lesson.” Bill gave me a quick run through of the steps involved and said, “Okay. Select the colors you want to work with and begin putting them on the template.” And he wandered away. I am a letterpress printer, not a painter, but I plunged in. There were several tubes of paint on the work table before me. I selected a few, tentatively, and began squeezing out dabs of paint, them smearing them around on the template. After a good while, as I was stepping back and assessing my work, Bill was at my side. “Try a dab of red somewhere in the upper corner,” and he strolled away again. Eventually I came to see, and then to appreciate, this “teaching style.” He was asking me to work the way he did, by intuition, by listening to what the work said to me as I engaged with it, to let go of any preconceived ideas and allow the piece to emerge organically. Finally, Bill came back and walked me through the actual printing process – moving the prepared template to the press bed and locking it in place, laying on the large sheet of paper, then the blanket, and finally cranking he big wheel on the press across the bed. What emerged felt like magic. All five runs, including to “ghost prints” for which I did not re-ink the template, gave me a wonderful sense of surprised accomplishment. A few days later, after looking at the five prints for quite a while in my studio, I wrote a possible “script, for the poetry duel that could have occurred if the “masks” I made were work in the Mari Lwyd ritual. The names for each of the prints are brief quotes from that script. In 2012, longtime friend of the Homewood Studios cohort of artists, William Kapel Slack, invited ten artists to come together in a “Fusion Tribe” to learn about and explore his main genre of artistic work – the making of monoprints. After agreeing on a general them – the power and magic of masks – Bill sent us off to do research and to create a plan for the work we would undertake on in individual meetings with him, over the next few weeks, at the Highpoint Center for Printmaking. Eventually, there would be a gallery show at Homewood Studios of all the result work. Since part of my heritage story includes the Welsh people, inveterate lovers of poetry and song, I investigated mask traditions from Wales and fouled the fetching story of “Mari Lwyd”, which means gray mare in Welsh. In this traditional ritual, on the evening of winter solstice, a community member well known for his poetic ability and his singing voice, donned d a horse face mask, a rough robe or co, t and journeyed from pub to pub, challenging those inside to a singing/poetry duel. Back and forth, back and forth went the poems and the songs were flung, often with increasing vigor and volume, and often growing more and more randy and raucous as the duel progressed, until the gray mare was, by common agreement, declared the winner and was invited into the pub for a pint. This moment became known as “breaking the dark,” heralding to swing of the Earth in its orbit back toward the longer, more light filled days of spring. With Bill’s help I prepared a horse face template of cardboard and we met at the center on sunny day for my “lesson.” Bill gave me a quick run through of the steps involved and said, “Okay. Select the colors you want to work with and begin putting them on the template.” And he wandered away. I am a letterpress printer, not a painter, but I plunged in. There were several tubes of paint on the work table before me. I selected a few, tentatively, and began squeezing out dabs of paint, them smearing them around on the template. After a good while, as I was stepping back and assessing my work, Bill was at my side. “Try a dab of red somewhere in the upper corner,” and he strolled away again. Eventually I came to see, and then to appreciate, this “teaching style.” He was asking me to work the way he did, by intuition, by listening to what the work said to me as I engaged with it, to let go of any preconceived ideas and allow the piece to emerge organically. Finally, Bill came back and walked me through the actual printing process – moving the prepared template to the press bed and locking it in place, laying on the large sheet of paper, then the blanket, and finally cranking he big wheel on the press across the bed. What emerged felt like magic. All five runs, including to “ghost prints” for which I did not re-ink the template, gave me a wonderful sense of surprised accomplishment. A few days later, after looking at the five prints for quite a while in my studio, I wrote a possible “script, for the poetry duel that could have occurred if the “masks” I made were work in the Mari Lwyd ritual. The names for each of the prints are brief quotes from that script. In 2012, longtime friend of the Homewood Studios cohort of artists, William Kapel Slack, invited ten artists to come together in a “Fusion Tribe” to learn about and explore his main genre of artistic work – the making of monoprints. After agreeing on a general them – the power and magic of masks – Bill sent us off to do research and to create a plan for the work we would undertake on in individual meetings with him, over the next few weeks, at the Highpoint Center for Printmaking. Eventually, there would be a gallery show at Homewood Studios of all the result work. Since part of my heritage story includes the Welsh people, inveterate lovers of poetry and song, I investigated mask traditions from Wales and fouled the fetching story of “Mari Lwyd”, which means gray mare in Welsh. In this traditional ritual, on the evening of winter solstice, a community member well known for his poetic ability and his singing voice, donned d a horse face mask, a rough robe or co, t and journeyed from pub to pub, challenging those inside to a singing/poetry duel. Back and forth, back and forth went the poems and the songs were flung, often with increasing vigor and volume, and often growing more and more randy and raucous as the duel progressed, until the gray mare was, by common agreement, declared the winner and was invited into the pub for a pint. This moment became known as “breaking the dark,” heralding to swing of the Earth in its orbit back toward the longer, more light filled days of spring. With Bill’s help I prepared a horse face template of cardboard and we met at the center on sunny day for my “lesson.” Bill gave me a quick run through of the steps involved and said, “Okay. Select the colors you want to work with and begin putting them on the template.” And he wandered away. I am a letterpress printer, not a painter, but I plunged in. There were several tubes of paint on the work table before me. I selected a few, tentatively, and began squeezing out dabs of paint, them smearing them around on the template. After a good while, as I was stepping back and assessing my work, Bill was at my side. “Try a dab of red somewhere in the upper corner,” and he strolled away again. Eventually I came to see, and then to appreciate, this “teaching style.” He was asking me to work the way he did, by intuition, by listening to what the work said to me as I engaged with it, to let go of any preconceived ideas and allow the piece to emerge organically. Finally, Bill came back and walked me through the actual printing process – moving the prepared template to the press bed and locking it in place, laying on the large sheet of paper, then the blanket, and finally cranking he big wheel on the press across the bed. What emerged felt like magic. All five runs, including to “ghost prints” for which I did not re-ink the template, gave me a wonderful sense of surprised accomplishment. A few days later, after looking at the five prints for quite a while in my studio, I wrote a possible “script, for the poetry duel that could have occurred if the “masks” I made were work in the Mari Lwyd ritual. The names for each of the prints are brief quotes from that script. In 2012, longtime friend of the Homewood Studios cohort of artists, William Kapel Slack, invited ten artists to come together in a “Fusion Tribe” to learn about and explore his main genre of artistic work – the making of monoprints. After agreeing on a general them – the power and magic of masks – Bill sent us off to do research and to create a plan for the work we would undertake on in individual meetings with him, over the next few weeks, at the Highpoint Center for Printmaking. Eventually, there would be a gallery show at Homewood Studios of all the result work. Since part of my heritage story includes the Welsh people, inveterate lovers of poetry and song, I investigated mask traditions from Wales and fouled the fetching story of “Mari Lwyd”, which means gray mare in Welsh. In this traditional ritual, on the evening of winter solstice, a community member well known for his poetic ability and his singing voice, donned d a horse face mask, a rough robe or co, t and journeyed from pub to pub, challenging those inside to a singing/poetry duel. Back and forth, back and forth went the poems and the songs were flung, often with increasing vigor and volume, and often growing more and more randy and raucous as the duel progressed, until the gray mare was, by common agreement, declared the winner and was invited into the pub for a pint. This moment became known as “breaking the dark,” heralding to swing of the Earth in its orbit back toward the longer, more light filled days of spring. With Bill’s help I prepared a horse face template of cardboard and we met at the center on sunny day for my “lesson.” Bill gave me a quick run through of the steps involved and said, “Okay. Select the colors you want to work with and begin putting them on the template.” And he wandered away. I am a letterpress printer, not a painter, but I plunged in. There were several tubes of paint on the work table before me. I selected a few, tentatively, and began squeezing out dabs of paint, them smearing them around on the template. After a good while, as I was stepping back and assessing my work, Bill was at my side. “Try a dab of red somewhere in the upper corner,” and he strolled away again. Eventually I came to see, and then to appreciate, this “teaching style.” He was asking me to work the way he did, by intuition, by listening to what the work said to me as I engaged with it, to let go of any preconceived ideas and allow the piece to emerge organically. Finally, Bill came back and walked me through the actual printing process – moving the prepared template to the press bed and locking it in place, laying on the large sheet of paper, then the blanket, and finally cranking he big wheel on the press across the bed. What emerged felt like magic. All five runs, including to “ghost prints” for which I did not re-ink the template, gave me a wonderful sense of surprised accomplishment. A few days later, after looking at the five prints for quite a while in my studio, I wrote a possible “script, for the poetry duel that could have occurred if the “masks” I made were work in the Mari Lwyd ritual. The names for each of the prints are brief quotes from that script. In 2012, longtime friend of the Homewood Studios cohort of artists, William Kapel Slack, invited ten artists to come together in a “Fusion Tribe” to learn about and explore his main genre of artistic work – the making of monoprints. After agreeing on a general them – the power and magic of masks – Bill sent us off to do research and to create a plan for the work we would undertake on in individual meetings with him, over the next few weeks, at the Highpoint Center for Printmaking. Eventually, there would be a gallery show at Homewood Studios of all the result work. Since part of my heritage story includes the Welsh people, inveterate lovers of poetry and song, I investigated mask traditions from Wales and fouled the fetching story of “Mari Lwyd”, which means gray mare in Welsh. In this traditional ritual, on the evening of winter solstice, a community member well known for his poetic ability and his singing voice, donned d a horse face mask, a rough robe or co, t and journeyed from pub to pub, challenging those inside to a singing/poetry duel. Back and forth, back and forth went the poems and the songs were flung, often with increasing vigor and volume, and often growing more and more randy and raucous as the duel progressed, until the gray mare was, by common agreement, declared the winner and was invited into the pub for a pint. This moment became known as “breaking the dark,” heralding to swing of the Earth in its orbit back toward the longer, more light filled days of spring. With Bill’s help I prepared a horse face template of cardboard and we met at the center on sunny day for my “lesson.” Bill gave me a quick run through of the steps involved and said, “Okay. Select the colors you want to work with and begin putting them on the template.” And he wandered away. I am a letterpress printer, not a painter, but I plunged in. There were several tubes of paint on the work table before me. I selected a few, tentatively, and began squeezing out dabs of paint, them smearing them around on the template. After a good while, as I was stepping back and assessing my work, Bill was at my side. “Try a dab of red somewhere in the upper corner,” and he strolled away again. Eventually I came to see, and then to appreciate, this “teaching style.” He was asking me to work the way he did, by intuition, by listening to what the work said to me as I engaged with it, to let go of any preconceived ideas and allow the piece to emerge organically. Finally, Bill came back and walked me through the actual printing process – moving the prepared template to the press bed and locking it in place, laying on the large sheet of paper, then the blanket, and finally cranking he big wheel on the press across the bed. What emerged felt like magic. All five runs, including to “ghost prints” for which I did not re-ink the template, gave me a wonderful sense of surprised accomplishment. A few days later, after looking at the five prints for quite a while in my studio, I wrote a possible “script, for the poetry duel that could have occurred if the “masks” I made were work in the Mari Lwyd ritual. The names for each of the prints are brief quotes from that script. In 2012, longtime friend of the Homewood Studios cohort of artists, William Kapel Slack, invited ten artists to come together in a “Fusion Tribe” to learn about and explore his main genre of artistic work – the making of monoprints. After agreeing on a general them – the power and magic of masks – Bill sent us off to do research and to create a plan for the work we would undertake on in individual meetings with him, over the next few weeks, at the Highpoint Center for Printmaking. Eventually, there would be a gallery show at Homewood Studios of all the result work. Since part of my heritage story includes the Welsh people, inveterate lovers of poetry and song, I investigated mask traditions from Wales and fouled the fetching story of “Mari Lwyd”, which means gray mare in Welsh. In this traditional ritual, on the evening of winter solstice, a community member well known for his poetic ability and his singing voice, donned d a horse face mask, a rough robe or co, t and journeyed from pub to pub, challenging those inside to a singing/poetry duel. Back and forth, back and forth went the poems and the songs were flung, often with increasing vigor and volume, and often growing more and more randy and raucous as the duel progressed, until the gray mare was, by common agreement, declared the winner and was invited into the pub for a pint. This moment became known as “breaking the dark,” heralding to swing of the Earth in its orbit back toward the longer, more light filled days of spring. With Bill’s help I prepared a horse face template of cardboard and we met at the center on sunny day for my “lesson.” Bill gave me a quick run through of the steps involved and said, “Okay. Select the colors you want to work with and begin putting them on the template.” And he wandered away. I am a letterpress printer, not a painter, but I plunged in. There were several tubes of paint on the work table before me. I selected a few, tentatively, and began squeezing out dabs of paint, them smearing them around on the template. After a good while, as I was stepping back and assessing my work, Bill was at my side. “Try a dab of red somewhere in the upper corner,” and he strolled away again. Eventually I came to see, and then to appreciate, this “teaching style.” He was asking me to work the way he did, by intuition, by listening to what the work said to me as I engaged with it, to let go of any preconceived ideas and allow the piece to emerge organically. Finally, Bill came back and walked me through the actual printing process – moving the prepared template to the press bed and locking it in place, laying on the large sheet of paper, then the blanket, and finally cranking he big wheel on the press across the bed. What emerged felt like magic. All five runs, including to “ghost prints” for which I did not re-ink the template, gave me a wonderful sense of surprised accomplishment. A few days later, after looking at the five prints for quite a while in my studio, I wrote a possible “script, for the poetry duel that could have occurred if the “masks” I made were work in the Mari Lwyd ritual. The names for each of the prints are brief quotes from that script. In 2012, longtime friend of the Homewood Studios cohort of artists, William Kapel Slack, invited ten artists to come together in a “Fusion Tribe” to learn about and explore his main genre of artistic work – the making of monoprints. After agreeing on a general them – the power and magic of masks – Bill sent us off to do research and to create a plan for the work we would undertake on in individual meetings with him, over the next few weeks, at the Highpoint Center for Printmaking. Eventually, there would be a gallery show at Homewood Studios of all the result work. Since part of my heritage story includes the Welsh people, inveterate lovers of poetry and song, I investigated mask traditions from Wales and fouled the fetching story of “Mari Lwyd”, which means gray mare in Welsh. In this traditional ritual, on the evening of winter solstice, a community member well known for his poetic ability and his singing voice, donned d a horse face mask, a rough robe or co, t and journeyed from pub to pub, challenging those inside to a singing/poetry duel. Back and forth, back and forth went the poems and the songs were flung, often with increasing vigor and volume, and often growing more and more randy and raucous as the duel progressed, until the gray mare was, by common agreement, declared the winner and was invited into the pub for a pint. This moment became known as “breaking the dark,” heralding to swing of the Earth in its orbit back toward the longer, more light filled days of spring. With Bill’s help I prepared a horse face template of cardboard and we met at the center on sunny day for my “lesson.” Bill gave me a quick run through of the steps involved and said, “Okay. Select the colors you want to work with and begin putting them on the template.” And he wandered away. I am a letterpress printer, not a painter, but I plunged in. There were several tubes of paint on the work table before me. I selected a few, tentatively, and began squeezing out dabs of paint, them smearing them around on the template. After a good while, as I was stepping back and assessing my work, Bill was at my side. “Try a dab of red somewhere in the upper corner,” and he strolled away again. Eventually I came to see, and then to appreciate, this “teaching style.” He was asking me to work the way he did, by intuition, by listening to what the work said to me as I engaged with it, to let go of any preconceived ideas and allow the piece to emerge organically. Finally, Bill came back and walked me through the actual printing process – moving the prepared template to the press bed and locking it in place, laying on the large sheet of paper, then the blanket, and finally cranking he big wheel on the press across the bed. What emerged felt like magic. All five runs, including to “ghost prints” for which I did not re-ink the template, gave me a wonderful sense of surprised accomplishment. A few days later, after looking at the five prints for quite a while in my studio, I wrote a possible “script, for the poetry duel that could have occurred if the “masks” I made were work in the Mari Lwyd ritual. The names for each of the prints are brief quotes from that script. In 2012, longtime friend of the Homewood Studios cohort of artists, William Kapel Slack, invited ten artists to come together in a “Fusion Tribe” to learn about and explore his main genre of artistic work – the making of monoprints. After agreeing on a general them – the power and magic of masks – Bill sent us off to do research and to create a plan for the work we would undertake on in individual meetings with him, over the next few weeks, at the Highpoint Center for Printmaking. Eventually, there would be a gallery show at Homewood Studios of all the result work. Since part of my heritage story includes the Welsh people, inveterate lovers of poetry and song, I investigated mask traditions from Wales and fouled the fetching story of “Mari Lwyd”, which means gray mare in Welsh. In this traditional ritual, on the evening of winter solstice, a community member well known for his poetic ability and his singing voice, donned d a horse face mask, a rough robe or co, t and journeyed from pub to pub, challenging those inside to a singing/poetry duel. Back and forth, back and forth went the poems and the songs were flung, often with increasing vigor and volume, and often growing more and more randy and raucous as the duel progressed, until the gray mare was, by common agreement, declared the winner and was invited into the pub for a pint. This moment became known as “breaking the dark,” heralding to swing of the Earth in its orbit back toward the longer, more light filled days of spring. With Bill’s help I prepared a horse face template of cardboard and we met at the center on sunny day for my “lesson.” Bill gave me a quick run through of the steps involved and said, “Okay. Select the colors you want to work with and begin putting them on the template.” And he wandered away. I am a letterpress printer, not a painter, but I plunged in. There were several tubes of paint on the work table before me. I selected a few, tentatively, and began squeezing out dabs of paint, them smearing them around on the template. After a good while, as I was stepping back and assessing my work, Bill was at my side. “Try a dab of red somewhere in the upper corner,” and he strolled away again. Eventually I came to see, and then to appreciate, this “teaching style.” He was asking me to work the way he did, by intuition, by listening to what the work said to me as I engaged with it, to let go of any preconceived ideas and allow the piece to emerge organically. Finally, Bill came back and walked me through the actual printing process – moving the prepared template to the press bed and locking it in place, laying on the large sheet of paper, then the blanket, and finally cranking he big wheel on the press across the bed. What emerged felt like magic. All five runs, including to “ghost prints” for which I did not re-ink the template, gave me a wonderful sense of surprised accomplishment. A few days later, after looking at the five prints for quite a while in my studio, I wrote a possible “script, for the poetry duel that could have occurred if the “masks” I made were work in the Mari Lwyd ritual. The names for each of the prints are brief quotes from that script. In 2012, longtime friend of the Homewood Studios cohort of artists, William Kapel Slack, invited ten artists to come together in a “Fusion Tribe” to learn about and explore his main genre of artistic work – the making of monoprints. After agreeing on a general them – the power and magic of masks – Bill sent us off to do research and to create a plan for the work we would undertake on in individual meetings with him, over the next few weeks, at the Highpoint Center for Printmaking. Eventually, there would be a gallery show at Homewood Studios of all the result work. Since part of my heritage story includes the Welsh people, inveterate lovers of poetry and song, I investigated mask traditions from Wales and fouled the fetching story of “Mari Lwyd”, which means gray mare in Welsh. In this traditional ritual, on the evening of winter solstice, a community member well known for his poetic ability and his singing voice, donned d a horse face mask, a rough robe or co, t and journeyed from pub to pub, challenging those inside to a singing/poetry duel. Back and forth, back and forth went the poems and the songs were flung, often with increasing vigor and volume, and often growing more and more randy and raucous as the duel progressed, until the gray mare was, by common agreement, declared the winner and was invited into the pub for a pint. This moment became known as “breaking the dark,” heralding to swing of the Earth in its orbit back toward the longer, more light filled days of spring. With Bill’s help I prepared a horse face template of cardboard and we met at the center on sunny day for my “lesson.” Bill gave me a quick run through of the steps involved and said, “Okay. Select the colors you want to work with and begin putting them on the template.” And he wandered away. I am a letterpress printer, not a painter, but I plunged in. There were several tubes of paint on the work table before me. I selected a few, tentatively, and began squeezing out dabs of paint, them smearing them around on the template. After a good while, as I was stepping back and assessing my work, Bill was at my side. “Try a dab of red somewhere in the upper corner,” and he strolled away again. Eventually I came to see, and then to appreciate, this “teaching style.” He was asking me to work the way he did, by intuition, by listening to what the work said to me as I engaged with it, to let go of any preconceived ideas and allow the piece to emerge organically. Finally, Bill came back and walked me through the actual printing process – moving the prepared template to the press bed and locking it in place, laying on the large sheet of paper, then the blanket, and finally cranking he big wheel on the press across the bed. What emerged felt like magic. All five runs, including to “ghost prints” for which I did not re-ink the template, gave me a wonderful sense of surprised accomplishment. A few days later, after looking at the five prints for quite a while in my studio, I wrote a possible “script, for the poetry duel that could have occurred if the “masks” I made were work in the Mari Lwyd ritual. The names for each of the prints are brief quotes from that script. In 2012, longtime friend of the Homewood Studios cohort of artists, William Kapel Slack, invited ten artists to come together in a “Fusion Tribe” to learn about and explore his main genre of artistic work – the making of monoprints. After agreeing on a general them – the power and magic of masks – Bill sent us off to do research and to create a plan for the work we would undertake on in individual meetings with him, over the next few weeks, at the Highpoint Center for Printmaking. Eventually, there would be a gallery show at Homewood Studios of all the result work. Since part of my heritage story includes the Welsh people, inveterate lovers of poetry and song, I investigated mask traditions from Wales and fouled the fetching story of “Mari Lwyd”, which means gray mare in Welsh. In this traditional ritual, on the evening of winter solstice, a community member well known for his poetic ability and his singing voice, donned d a horse face mask, a rough robe or co, t and journeyed from pub to pub, challenging those inside to a singing/poetry duel. Back and forth, back and forth went the poems and the songs were flung, often with increasing vigor and volume, and often growing more and more randy and raucous as the duel progressed, until the gray mare was, by common agreement, declared the winner and was invited into the pub for a pint. This moment became known as “breaking the dark,” heralding to swing of the Earth in its orbit back toward the longer, more light filled days of spring. With Bill’s help I prepared a horse face template of cardboard and we met at the center on sunny day for my “lesson.” Bill gave me a quick run through of the steps involved and said, “Okay. Select the colors you want to work with and begin putting them on the template.” And he wandered away. I am a letterpress printer, not a painter, but I plunged in. There were several tubes of paint on the work table before me. I selected a few, tentatively, and began squeezing out dabs of paint, them smearing them around on the template. After a good while, as I was stepping back and assessing my work, Bill was at my side. “Try a dab of red somewhere in the upper corner,” and he strolled away again. Eventually I came to see, and then to appreciate, this “teaching style.” He was asking me to work the way he did, by intuition, by listening to what the work said to me as I engaged with it, to let go of any preconceived ideas and allow the piece to emerge organically. Finally, Bill came back and walked me through the actual printing process – moving the prepared template to the press bed and locking it in place, laying on the large sheet of paper, then the blanket, and finally cranking he big wheel on the press across the bed. What emerged felt like magic. All five runs, including to “ghost prints” for which I did not re-ink the template, gave me a wonderful sense of surprised accomplishment. A few days later, after looking at the five prints for quite a while in my studio, I wrote a possible “script, for the poetry duel that could have occurred if the “masks” I made were work in the Mari Lwyd ritual. The names for each of the prints are brief quotes from that script. In 2012, longtime friend of the Homewood Studios cohort of artists, William Kapel Slack, invited ten artists to come together in a “Fusion Tribe” to learn about and explore his main genre of artistic work – the making of monoprints. After agreeing on a general them – the power and magic of masks – Bill sent us off to do research and to create a plan for the work we would undertake on in individual meetings with him, over the next few weeks, at the Highpoint Center for Printmaking. Eventually, there would be a gallery show at Homewood Studios of all the result work. Since part of my heritage story includes the Welsh people, inveterate lovers of poetry and song, I investigated mask traditions from Wales and fouled the fetching story of “Mari Lwyd”, which means gray mare in Welsh. In this traditional ritual, on the evening of winter solstice, a community member well known for his poetic ability and his singing voice, donned d a horse face mask, a rough robe or co, t and journeyed from pub to pub, challenging those inside to a singing/poetry duel. Back and forth, back and forth went the poems and the songs were flung, often with increasing vigor and volume, and often growing more and more randy and raucous as the duel progressed, until the gray mare was, by common agreement, declared the winner and was invited into the pub for a pint. This moment became known as “breaking the dark,” heralding to swing of the Earth in its orbit back toward the longer, more light filled days of spring. With Bill’s help I prepared a horse face template of cardboard and we met at the center on sunny day for my “lesson.” Bill gave me a quick run through of the steps involved and said, “Okay. Select the colors you want to work with and begin putting them on the template.” And he wandered away. I am a letterpress printer, not a painter, but I plunged in. There were several tubes of paint on the work table before me. I selected a few, tentatively, and began squeezing out dabs of paint, them smearing them around on the template. After a good while, as I was stepping back and assessing my work, Bill was at my side. “Try a dab of red somewhere in the upper corner,” and he strolled away again. Eventually I came to see, and then to appreciate, this “teaching style.” He was asking me to work the way he did, by intuition, by listening to what the work said to me as I engaged with it, to let go of any preconceived ideas and allow the piece to emerge organically. Finally, Bill came back and walked me through the actual printing process – moving the prepared template to the press bed and locking it in place, laying on the large sheet of paper, then the blanket, and finally cranking he big wheel on the press across the bed. What emerged felt like magic. All five runs, including to “ghost prints” for which I did not re-ink the template, gave me a wonderful sense of surprised accomplishment. A few days later, after looking at the five prints for quite a while in my studio, I wrote a possible “script, for the poetry duel that could have occurred if the “masks” I made were work in the Mari Lwyd ritual. The names for each of the prints are brief quotes from that script. In 2012, longtime friend of the Homewood Studios cohort of artists, William Kapel Slack, invited ten artists to come together in a “Fusion Tribe” to learn about and explore his main genre of artistic work – the making of monoprints. After agreeing on a general them – the power and magic of masks – Bill sent us off to do research and to create a plan for the work we would undertake on in individual meetings with him, over the next few weeks, at the Highpoint Center for Printmaking. Eventually, there would be a gallery show at Homewood Studios of all the result work. Since part of my heritage story includes the Welsh people, inveterate lovers of poetry and song, I investigated mask traditions from Wales and fouled the fetching story of “Mari Lwyd”, which means gray mare in Welsh. In this traditional ritual, on the evening of winter solstice, a community member well known for his poetic ability and his singing voice, donned d a horse face mask, a rough robe or co, t and journeyed from pub to pub, challenging those inside to a singing/poetry duel. Back and forth, back and forth went the poems and the songs were flung, often with increasing vigor and volume, and often growing more and more randy and raucous as the duel progressed, until the gray mare was, by common agreement, declared the winner and was invited into the pub for a pint. This moment became known as “breaking the dark,” heralding to swing of the Earth in its orbit back toward the longer, more light filled days of spring. With Bill’s help I prepared a horse face template of cardboard and we met at the center on sunny day for my “lesson.” Bill gave me a quick run through of the steps involved and said, “Okay. Select the colors you want to work with and begin putting them on the template.” And he wandered away. I am a letterpress printer, not a painter, but I plunged in. There were several tubes of paint on the work table before me. I selected a few, tentatively, and began squeezing out dabs of paint, them smearing them around on the template. After a good while, as I was stepping back and assessing my work, Bill was at my side. “Try a dab of red somewhere in the upper corner,” and he strolled away again. Eventually I came to see, and then to appreciate, this “teaching style.” He was asking me to work the way he did, by intuition, by listening to what the work said to me as I engaged with it, to let go of any preconceived ideas and allow the piece to emerge organically. Finally, Bill came back and walked me through the actual printing process – moving the prepared template to the press bed and locking it in place, laying on the large sheet of paper, then the blanket, and finally cranking he big wheel on the press across the bed. What emerged felt like magic. All five runs, including to “ghost prints” for which I did not re-ink the template, gave me a wonderful sense of surprised accomplishment. A few days later, after looking at the five prints for quite a while in my studio, I wrote a possible “script, for the poetry duel that could have occurred if the “masks” I made were work in the Mari Lwyd ritual. The names for each of the prints are brief quotes from that script. In 2012, longtime friend of the Homewood Studios cohort of artists, William Kapel Slack, invited ten artists to come together in a “Fusion Tribe” to learn about and explore his main genre of artistic work – the making of monoprints. After agreeing on a general them – the power and magic of masks – Bill sent us off to do research and to create a plan for the work we would undertake on in individual meetings with him, over the next few weeks, at the Highpoint Center for Printmaking. Eventually, there would be a gallery show at Homewood Studios of all the result work. Since part of my heritage story includes the Welsh people, inveterate lovers of poetry and song, I investigated mask traditions from Wales and fouled the fetching story of “Mari Lwyd”, which means gray mare in Welsh. In this traditional ritual, on the evening of winter solstice, a community member well known for his poetic ability and his singing voice, donned d a horse face mask, a rough robe or co, t and journeyed from pub to pub, challenging those inside to a singing/poetry duel. Back and forth, back and forth went the poems and the songs were flung, often with increasing vigor and volume, and often growing more and more randy and raucous as the duel progressed, until the gray mare was, by common agreement, declared the winner and was invited into the pub for a pint. This moment became known as “breaking the dark,” heralding to swing of the Earth in its orbit back toward the longer, more light filled days of spring. With Bill’s help I prepared a horse face template of cardboard and we met at the center on sunny day for my “lesson.” Bill gave me a quick run through of the steps involved and said, “Okay. Select the colors you want to work with and begin putting them on the template.” And he wandered away. I am a letterpress printer, not a painter, but I plunged in. There were several tubes of paint on the work table before me. I selected a few, tentatively, and began squeezing out dabs of paint, them smearing them around on the template. After a good while, as I was stepping back and assessing my work, Bill was at my side. “Try a dab of red somewhere in the upper corner,” and he strolled away again. Eventually I came to see, and then to appreciate, this “teaching style.” He was asking me to work the way he did, by intuition, by listening to what the work said to me as I engaged with it, to let go of any preconceived ideas and allow the piece to emerge organically. Finally, Bill came back and walked me through the actual printing process – moving the prepared template to the press bed and locking it in place, laying on the large sheet of paper, then the blanket, and finally cranking he big wheel on the press across the bed. What emerged felt like magic. All five runs, including to “ghost prints” for which I did not re-ink the template, gave me a wonderful sense of surprised accomplishment. A few days later, after looking at the five prints for quite a while in my studio, I wrote a possible “script, for the poetry duel that could have occurred if the “masks” I made were work in the Mari Lwyd ritual. The names for each of the prints are brief quotes from that script. In 2012, longtime friend of the Homewood Studios cohort of artists, William Kapel Slack, invited ten artists to come together in a “Fusion Tribe” to learn about and explore his main genre of artistic work – the making of monoprints. After agreeing on a general them – the power and magic of masks – Bill sent us off to do research and to create a plan for the work we would undertake on in individual meetings with him, over the next few weeks, at the Highpoint Center for Printmaking. Eventually, there would be a gallery show at Homewood Studios of all the result work. Since part of my heritage story includes the Welsh people, inveterate lovers of poetry and song, I investigated mask traditions from Wales and fouled the fetching story of “Mari Lwyd”, which means gray mare in Welsh. In this traditional ritual, on the evening of winter solstice, a community member well known for his poetic ability and his singing voice, donned d a horse face mask, a rough robe or co, t and journeyed from pub to pub, challenging those inside to a singing/poetry duel. Back and forth, back and forth went the poems and the songs were flung, often with increasing vigor and volume, and often growing more and more randy and raucous as the duel progressed, until the gray mare was, by common agreement, declared the winner and was invited into the pub for a pint. This moment became known as “breaking the dark,” heralding to swing of the Earth in its orbit back toward the longer, more light filled days of spring. With Bill’s help I prepared a horse face template of cardboard and we met at the center on sunny day for my “lesson.” Bill gave me a quick run through of the steps involved and said, “Okay. Select the colors you want to work with and begin putting them on the template.” And he wandered away. I am a letterpress printer, not a painter, but I plunged in. There were several tubes of paint on the work table before me. I selected a few, tentatively, and began squeezing out dabs of paint, them smearing them around on the template. After a good while, as I was stepping back and assessing my work, Bill was at my side. “Try a dab of red somewhere in the upper corner,” and he strolled away again. Eventually I came to see, and then to appreciate, this “teaching style.” He was asking me to work the way he did, by intuition, by listening to what the work said to me as I engaged with it, to let go of any preconceived ideas and allow the piece to emerge organically. Finally, Bill came back and walked me through the actual printing process – moving the prepared template to the press bed and locking it in place, laying on the large sheet of paper, then the blanket, and finally cranking he big wheel on the press across the bed. What emerged felt like magic. All five runs, including to “ghost prints” for which I did not re-ink the template, gave me a wonderful sense of surprised accomplishment. A few days later, after looking at the five prints for quite a while in my studio, I wrote a possible “script, for the poetry duel that could have occurred if the “masks” I made were work in the Mari Lwyd ritual. The names for each of the prints are brief quotes from that script. In 2012, longtime friend of the Homewood Studios cohort of artists, William Kapel Slack, invited ten artists to come together in a “Fusion Tribe” to learn about and explore his main genre of artistic work – the making of monoprints. After agreeing on a general them – the power and magic of masks – Bill sent us off to do research and to create a plan for the work we would undertake on in individual meetings with him, over the next few weeks, at the Highpoint Center for Printmaking. Eventually, there would be a gallery show at Homewood Studios of all the result work. Since part of my heritage story includes the Welsh people, inveterate lovers of poetry and song, I investigated mask traditions from Wales and fouled the fetching story of “Mari Lwyd”, which means gray mare in Welsh. In this traditional ritual, on the evening of winter solstice, a community member well known for his poetic ability and his singing voice, donned d a horse face mask, a rough robe or co, t and journeyed from pub to pub, challenging those inside to a singing/poetry duel. Back and forth, back and forth went the poems and the songs were flung, often with increasing vigor and volume, and often growing more and more randy and raucous as the duel progressed, until the gray mare was, by common agreement, declared the winner and was invited into the pub for a pint. This moment became known as “breaking the dark,” heralding to swing of the Earth in its orbit back toward the longer, more light filled days of spring. With Bill’s help I prepared a horse face template of cardboard and we met at the center on sunny day for my “lesson.” Bill gave me a quick run through of the steps involved and said, “Okay. Select the colors you want to work with and begin putting them on the template.” And he wandered away. I am a letterpress printer, not a painter, but I plunged in. There were several tubes of paint on the work table before me. I selected a few, tentatively, and began squeezing out dabs of paint, them smearing them around on the template. After a good while, as I was stepping back and assessing my work, Bill was at my side. “Try a dab of red somewhere in the upper corner,” and he strolled away again. Eventually I came to see, and then to appreciate, this “teaching style.” He was asking me to work the way he did, by intuition, by listening to what the work said to me as I engaged with it, to let go of any preconceived ideas and allow the piece to emerge organically. Finally, Bill came back and walked me through the actual printing process – moving the prepared template to the press bed and locking it in place, laying on the large sheet of paper, then the blanket, and finally cranking he big wheel on the press across the bed. What emerged felt like magic. All five runs, including to “ghost prints” for which I did not re-ink the template, gave me a wonderful sense of surprised accomplishment. A few days later, after looking at the five prints for quite a while in my studio, I wrote a possible “script, for the poetry duel that could have occurred if the “masks” I made were work in the Mari Lwyd ritual. The names for each of the prints are brief quotes from that script. In 2012, longtime friend of the Homewood Studios cohort of artists, William Kapel Slack, invited ten artists to come together in a “Fusion Tribe” to learn about and explore his main genre of artistic work – the making of monoprints. After agreeing on a general them – the power and magic of masks – Bill sent us off to do research and to create a plan for the work we would undertake on in individual meetings with him, over the next few weeks, at the Highpoint Center for Printmaking. Eventually, there would be a gallery show at Homewood Studios of all the result work. Since part of my heritage story includes the Welsh people, inveterate lovers of poetry and song, I investigated mask traditions from Wales and fouled the fetching story of “Mari Lwyd”, which means gray mare in Welsh. In this traditional ritual, on the evening of winter solstice, a community member well known for his poetic ability and his singing voice, donned d a horse face mask, a rough robe or co, t and journeyed from pub to pub, challenging those inside to a singing/poetry duel. Back and forth, back and forth went the poems and the songs were flung, often with increasing vigor and volume, and often growing more and more randy and raucous as the duel progressed, until the gray mare was, by common agreement, declared the winner and was invited into the pub for a pint. This moment became known as “breaking the dark,” heralding to swing of the Earth in its orbit back toward the longer, more light filled days of spring. With Bill’s help I prepared a horse face template of cardboard and we met at the center on sunny day for my “lesson.” Bill gave me a quick run through of the steps involved and said, “Okay. Select the colors you want to work with and begin putting them on the template.” And he wandered away. I am a letterpress printer, not a painter, but I plunged in. There were several tubes of paint on the work table before me. I selected a few, tentatively, and began squeezing out dabs of paint, them smearing them around on the template. After a good while, as I was stepping back and assessing my work, Bill was at my side. “Try a dab of red somewhere in the upper corner,” and he strolled away again. Eventually I came to see, and then to appreciate, this “teaching style.” He was asking me to work the way he did, by intuition, by listening to what the work said to me as I engaged with it, to let go of any preconceived ideas and allow the piece to emerge organically. Finally, Bill came back and walked me through the actual printing process – moving the prepared template to the press bed and locking it in place, laying on the large sheet of paper, then the blanket, and finally cranking he big wheel on the press across the bed. What emerged felt like magic. All five runs, including to “ghost prints” for which I did not re-ink the template, gave me a wonderful sense of surprised accomplishment. A few days later, after looking at the five prints for quite a while in my studio, I wrote a possible “script, for the poetry duel that could have occurred if the “masks” I made were work in the Mari Lwyd ritual. The names for each of the prints are brief quotes from that script. In 2012, longtime friend of the Homewood Studios cohort of artists, William Kapel Slack, invited ten artists to come together in a “Fusion Tribe” to learn about and explore his main genre of artistic work – the making of monoprints. After agreeing on a general them – the power and magic of masks – Bill sent us off to do research and to create a plan for the work we would undertake on in individual meetings with him, over the next few weeks, at the Highpoint Center for Printmaking. Eventually, there would be a gallery show at Homewood Studios of all the result work. Since part of my heritage story includes the Welsh people, inveterate lovers of poetry and song, I investigated mask traditions from Wales and fouled the fetching story of “Mari Lwyd”, which means gray mare in Welsh. In this traditional ritual, on the evening of winter solstice, a community member well known for his poetic ability and his singing voice, donned d a horse face mask, a rough robe or co, t and journeyed from pub to pub, challenging those inside to a singing/poetry duel. Back and forth, back and forth went the poems and the songs were flung, often with increasing vigor and volume, and often growing more and more randy and raucous as the duel progressed, until the gray mare was, by common agreement, declared the winner and was invited into the pub for a pint. This moment became known as “breaking the dark,” heralding to swing of the Earth in its orbit back toward the longer, more light filled days of spring. With Bill’s help I prepared a horse face template of cardboard and we met at the center on sunny day for my “lesson.” Bill gave me a quick run through of the steps involved and said, “Okay. Select the colors you want to work with and begin putting them on the template.” And he wandered away. I am a letterpress printer, not a painter, but I plunged in. There were several tubes of paint on the work table before me. I selected a few, tentatively, and began squeezing out dabs of paint, them smearing them around on the template. After a good while, as I was stepping back and assessing my work, Bill was at my side. “Try a dab of red somewhere in the upper corner,” and he strolled away again. Eventually I came to see, and then to appreciate, this “teaching style.” He was asking me to work the way he did, by intuition, by listening to what the work said to me as I engaged with it, to let go of any preconceived ideas and allow the piece to emerge organically. Finally, Bill came back and walked me through the actual printing process – moving the prepared template to the press bed and locking it in place, laying on the large sheet of paper, then the blanket, and finally cranking he big wheel on the press across the bed. What emerged felt like magic. All five runs, including to “ghost prints” for which I did not re-ink the template, gave me a wonderful sense of surprised accomplishment. A few days later, after looking at the five prints for quite a while in my studio, I wrote a possible “script, for the poetry duel that could have occurred if the “masks” I made were work in the Mari Lwyd ritual. The names for each of the prints are brief quotes from that script. In 2012, longtime friend of the Homewood Studios cohort of artists, William Kapel Slack, invited ten artists to come together in a “Fusion Tribe” to learn about and explore his main genre of artistic work – the making of monoprints. After agreeing on a general them – the power and magic of masks – Bill sent us off to do research and to create a plan for the work we would undertake on in individual meetings with him, over the next few weeks, at the Highpoint Center for Printmaking. Eventually, there would be a gallery show at Homewood Studios of all the result work. Since part of my heritage story includes the Welsh people, inveterate lovers of poetry and song, I investigated mask traditions from Wales and fouled the fetching story of “Mari Lwyd”, which means gray mare in Welsh. In this traditional ritual, on the evening of winter solstice, a community member well known for his poetic ability and his singing voice, donned d a horse face mask, a rough robe or co, t and journeyed from pub to pub, challenging those inside to a singing/poetry duel. Back and forth, back and forth went the poems and the songs were flung, often with increasing vigor and volume, and often growing more and more randy and raucous as the duel progressed, until the gray mare was, by common agreement, declared the winner and was invited into the pub for a pint. This moment became known as “breaking the dark,” heralding to swing of the Earth in its orbit back toward the longer, more light filled days of spring. With Bill’s help I prepared a horse face template of cardboard and we met at the center on sunny day for my “lesson.” Bill gave me a quick run through of the steps involved and said, “Okay. Select the colors you want to work with and begin putting them on the template.” And he wandered away. I am a letterpress printer, not a painter, but I plunged in. There were several tubes of paint on the work table before me. I selected a few, tentatively, and began squeezing out dabs of paint, them smearing them around on the template. After a good while, as I was stepping back and assessing my work, Bill was at my side. “Try a dab of red somewhere in the upper corner,” and he strolled away again. Eventually I came to see, and then to appreciate, this “teaching style.” He was asking me to work the way he did, by intuition, by listening to what the work said to me as I engaged with it, to let go of any preconceived ideas and allow the piece to emerge organically. Finally, Bill came back and walked me through the actual printing process – moving the prepared template to the press bed and locking it in place, laying on the large sheet of paper, then the blanket, and finally cranking he big wheel on the press across the bed. What emerged felt like magic. All five runs, including to “ghost prints” for which I did not re-ink the template, gave me a wonderful sense of surprised accomplishment. A few days later, after looking at the five prints for quite a while in my studio, I wrote a possible “script, for the poetry duel that could have occurred if the “masks” I made were work in the Mari Lwyd ritual. The names for each of the prints are brief quotes from that script. In 2012, longtime friend of the Homewood Studios cohort of artists, William Kapel Slack, invited ten artists to come together in a “Fusion Tribe” to learn about and explore his main genre of artistic work – the making of monoprints. After agreeing on a general them – the power and magic of masks – Bill sent us off to do research and to create a plan for the work we would undertake on in individual meetings with him, over the next few weeks, at the Highpoint Center for Printmaking. Eventually, there would be a gallery show at Homewood Studios of all the result work. Since part of my heritage story includes the Welsh people, inveterate lovers of poetry and song, I investigated mask traditions from Wales and fouled the fetching story of “Mari Lwyd”, which means gray mare in Welsh. In this traditional ritual, on the evening of winter solstice, a community member well known for his poetic ability and his singing voice, donned d a horse face mask, a rough robe or co, t and journeyed from pub to pub, challenging those inside to a singing/poetry duel. Back and forth, back and forth went the poems and the songs were flung, often with increasing vigor and volume, and often growing more and more randy and raucous as the duel progressed, until the gray mare was, by common agreement, declared the winner and was invited into the pub for a pint. This moment became known as “breaking the dark,” heralding to swing of the Earth in its orbit back toward the longer, more light filled days of spring. With Bill’s help I prepared a horse face template of cardboard and we met at the center on sunny day for my “lesson.” Bill gave me a quick run through of the steps involved and said, “Okay. Select the colors you want to work with and begin putting them on the template.” And he wandered away. I am a letterpress printer, not a painter, but I plunged in. There were several tubes of paint on the work table before me. I selected a few, tentatively, and began squeezing out dabs of paint, them smearing them around on the template. After a good while, as I was stepping back and assessing my work, Bill was at my side. “Try a dab of red somewhere in the upper corner,” and he strolled away again. Eventually I came to see, and then to appreciate, this “teaching style.” He was asking me to work the way he did, by intuition, by listening to what the work said to me as I engaged with it, to let go of any preconceived ideas and allow the piece to emerge organically. Finally, Bill came back and walked me through the actual printing process – moving the prepared template to the press bed and locking it in place, laying on the large sheet of paper, then the blanket, and finally cranking he big wheel on the press across the bed. What emerged felt like magic. All five runs, including to “ghost prints” for which I did not re-ink the template, gave me a wonderful sense of surprised accomplishment. A few days later, after looking at the five prints for quite a while in my studio, I wrote a possible “script, for the poetry duel that could have occurred if the “masks” I made were work in the Mari Lwyd ritual. The names for each of the prints are brief quotes from that script.