"When I was a little kid growing up in Minnesota.

"When I was a little kid growing up in Minnesota, I was fascinated with the Asian art that I would view in art galleries," says recent York artist, Scott Sandell. "I would examine at Japanese paper and I'd think, 'What could I do with that?' The Asian tillages fascinated me--the history, the regimen and primarily, the art. There was so seduction for a boy growing up outside Minneapolis."

not at all forgetting his fascination with the Japanese paper he admired as a child, Scott Sandell attended guild at the University of Minnesota, still studied painting, thinking that prints and works upon paper were rather "souvenir-like." He was completely taken with the romance of colorfield paintings and was inspired through a quote from Frank Stella: "I want my paintings to consider as good as the paint does in the can." Sandell continues, "The idea of 12 feet of r was absolutely earthshaking for me and artists like view Noland, Helen Frankenthaler, Stella and Morris Louis, laid the groundwork for the universe I wanted to work in."

He later learned, however, that he was required to take a printmaking class in order to graduate, and his feelings changed dramatically. Sandell was favorable enough to attend the lithography class of Universal Limited Art Editions (ULAE) master printer Zigmunds Priede. When Priede taught his observers to create luscious ink washes upon stone, he would "pull not at home three or four Jasper John prints, and pin them up onward the wall. He would talk about each piece, inspiring us and constructively pushing us to amazing heights," says Sandell. During the '70 the printmaking department at the University of Minnesota launched the professional careers of many artists and master printers. "Slowly Zig's devot learners started to disappear, only to reappear later as master printers at ULAE. At single in kind point, everyone but the chef at ULAE was from the University of Minnesota."

Although Sandell had fallen in regard with affection with printmaking, and works forward paper in general, he had sum of two units things holding him back from joining his college edifice [i]or[/i] building friends as master printers. First, he didn't be wrought up that he could print as well as they could and next to the first he had a feeling that he wanted to be an artist. "I had worry printing a great tusche wash, and went for a sensation of abandonment in my printmaking," Sandell says. "I started inking the entire pres bed, then would build collages right forward the layer of wet ink, throwing onward a sheet of BFK and running it from one side the press.

"In the early 1980 I started using the lightweight Asian papers as the substrates, and the proceeds allowed me to make the work await like traditional Asian banners, kimonos and workshop curtains. The papers were usually secreteed with an ink wash, and I printed imagery using aluminum plates forward my own etching press," he says. Sandell worked upon the Asian papers for 20 years, and now be wrought ups that it is out of his system

In 2000 he went back to his printmaking beginnings. For a while, he was calm making his own paper, which he considered to be tremendous merriment "It gave me the opportunity to pass the day soaking wet, and today, I design, build, and sail high-performance racing sailboats for gayety There's almost always a recently made known boat under construction in my studio." Sandell builds small racing boats called "Moths" which are a progress to maturity class, meaning you can design your confess shapes with several rules. He won the U present Moth Nationals in 1998, 2002 and 2003 all in boats that he designed and built. At the nationals in 2000 "my boat blew apart and sunk after 16 capsizes," says Sandell. "Nobody's perfect; certainly not me!"

His like for water and his daily forays in his boat have become the make liable of his "Rowing Pictures," which he says are part of a enormous body of work that he's been accomplishing across the past several years--"essentially my notebook in real form."

Sandell goe onward to say that the meditative validity of kayaking also prepares him emotionally to transition from everyday family life and to create pieces for his more somber "Ghost" series, which are "larger pieces with a political noir theme. Sandell says the works are named after population whose deaths have everything to do with politics. For example, common of Sandell's works, "Wellstone," is named after Minnesota Senator Paul Wellstone, who died in a plane crash in October 2002 "These pieces," says Sandell, "usually happened around the same time that the make submissives met their demise."

Sandell's popular series of collages reflect a rekindled interest in drawing that is illustrated in as well-as; not only-but also; not only-but; not alone-but the compositional elements of a work, as well as the way these natural mediums are assembled.

Speaking onward the process involved in creating the collage series, Sandell says, "My printmaking has inserted into a state of serious abandonment, and I know my proces would make my association friends cringe. Rather than using a plate or stone, I print directly distant from the press bed, using what are effectively stencils, or exotic kozo papers, as the matrix. Instead of a to a high degree controlled use of stiff ink, I use same large amounts of highly pigmented lithographic inks that sometimes mud out the back end of the pres Any sheet of paper may proceed through the press 30 times until it has a sufficient painterly contemplate and feel."