 Vilnius  And just as much as one needs to learn to cut a multi-purpose-point on a pencil in order to have it make lines - thicker, and thinner, softer as in grey-ish, and harder as in black-ish - as in a natural flow from the movement of one's hand on the drift of one's thoughts, one should learn to work a press - evenly and un-evenly, with and without extra pressure on one special spot or other. A professional only knows where and what. If one thing, an artist should not be something of a useless idiot shouting in an unfathomable darkness. An artist should be an professional with all the materials on hand in order to have a mind free to wonder and go about the emotional powers in the actual work of the artist: the thing this professional is adding to his 'best' doing - is to 'create'. The creative power is free from technique only when the technique is easy as 'all in a day's work'. In all academies, academies around Europe I should add, relief print (and even more editioning relief print) is considered the lowest grade in artistic printing. As a result of this, new artistic developements in the technique as such, and (and that is worse) in an artistic sense - core business if you like - is scarce; or indeed 'not heard of'. The 'not heard of' is not so much because the individual artists here and there would not care for it, or would not know about it, but because galleries are not interested as prices do not make them happy. Hard-luck! one would think, but hard-luck on galleries hits on many artists, so there you are; even I can see that point - though I have never seen that point being related in any sense with the appreciation for Japanese wood-cut. Again I see some funny thing regarding 'this Japan thing'; somehow people in Japan have managed to create (and export) a general respect to ageing trades as wood-cut and paper-making. Craftsmen in this trade are considered 'national heritage'. There is an important lesson to be learned from the Japanes approache of such matters: The love one has for, or one can develope from a well-cared-for trade can generally add great value to the trade and the knowledge of the crafts in that trade. One of the carillons is in Klaipeda, the other in Kaunas. Wikipedia: Kaunas 35 bell carillon (range from as1 to as4) in the tower of Vytautas the Great War Museum was completed in Belgium in 1935. The bell music from the tower started to ring in 1937. Regular carillon concerts began in 1956. The first carillonists of Kaunas carillon were Lithuanian composers Viktoras Kuprevi?ius and his son Giedrius Kuprevi?ius. Kaunas carillon was restored by a bell foundry Royal Eijsbouts, located in in Asten, Netherlands in 2005-2006. After the restoration, Kaunas carillon has 49 bells and new keyboard. Everyday the Lithuanian melody "Oi, neverk motu??le" is being played automatically in the middle of the day.) The grand room where the presentation is held is, well to my surprise, generously filled with an eager audience. The place as such is one of the older and certainly finer places in the building, old cloister rooms, that once were part of the outer city-wall. On-line internet is asking a bit much though. Again I find that when making pages for my internet site - eventhough I do really consider the possible circumstances in other places than the Netherlands - one can never do that simple enough, any extra is most possibly never going to make it to those in the great wide world that you might have made it for in the first place.  INDEX of the Joseph Joh'n' Pages |