January 27, 2016 - pig

Ah, the noble pig - how we have maligned this dedicated creature in our culture.  We begin when children are young helping them associate the pig with less-than-desirable attributes........"eating like a pig," "...your room looks like a pig pen," "...don't hog all of the corn for yourself,""don't wallow like a pig,"

Original pig sketch with Micron .8 black ink on top in preparation for creating transfer sheet.

How did we get to a place where we associate the pig with such negative attributes?  Have you ever really studies a pig pen, for example - it is quite compartmentalized - a place for everything and everything in its place.  A place for the food, a place designated as the bathroom, a place for cooling and personal care, etc.  Check out how chickens (OK, free-range chickens) live, for example.  They eat and poop on the same turf with no attempt to isolate these tasks.  Or, how about the cow - not only do they poop  in proximity to their meal, they proceed to walk around in it and when combining it with straw, find it to be a warm bed.....a pig would never allow this type of environment if there is sufficient space to create compartments.

 Pig transfer sheet, ready to locate on Speedball relief block.

And then there are the contributions the pig has made to benefit man, such as in the field of medicine.  I wonder how many people can thank a pig for sharing a heart valve or artery.  Early attempts at transplanting heart parts published out of the Universities of MN and MICH included references to the use of various pig parts.  The pig helped medicine advance - made many life-saving innovations possible.

And then we can't forget pigs in literature.  Wilbur, in the barnyard, became the star at the county fair thanks to a loyal and savvy spider.  It does seem odd that in an entire community not one person applauded the work of the spider, and instead credited the pig with personified talents!

There is probably no character that has done more to change cultural thinking about the pig than "Miss Piggy."  Thanks to the clever thinking of Jim Henson, the much maligned pig was elevated to diva and developed into the love interest of a frog.  Miss Piggy wears make-up and jewelry, couture knock-offs, and carries a purse (not ever to be confused with a "sow's ear.")  She has done more to elevate the perception of the pig than any other piglet in history! 

Pig sketch transferred to relief block and ready to begin the carving process.

Reminder:  in the carving process, everything that will not pick up ink must be removed so that only those portions of  material in "relief" (or raised up) that remain will catch applied ink and be ready to print to any paper (cloth, glass, etc.) it touches.