Ian J. Welch

#booksky

Taught a successful and sold out printmaking workshop at the Morris Center for Lowcountry Heritage this afternoon!

Sometimes you just need to follow your cat’s lead and disassociate.

New slaps.

Spent last weekend attending ArtFields in Lake City where my piece “…Unless” is featured at the TRAXvac. In addition to the show I also taught a Gelli-plate printmaking make-and-take workshop for the ArtMakers program through ArtFields where I worked with over 100 kids over a couple of hours!

Slaps and tags around Miami’s Wynwood District, including a few of my own.

Spent yesterday walking around Wynwood in Miami, looking for inspiration and hope.

A bright yellow poster with red and blue text that says ‘free the books: read. listen. engage!’ The text has a hint of flames in it.

Bringing back our Free the Books campaign to help printers use their skills to fight book bans (& now library defunding). Taking pre-orders for this reprint. More details about getting involved are here:

https://www.starshaped.com/free-the-books

#letterpress

New sticker slap drawing.

Taught a watercolor workshop today at The Morris Center for Lowcountry Heritage in Ridgeland. I’m proud to collaborate with them as an instructor as well as serve on their Advisory Board.

I’ve started a unit with my 6th graders on making their own DIY sticker slaps, so I felt obliged to make my own. The prompt is about building a collection of images around a theme, so mine was about finding hope in spite of negativity because (gestures broadly).

Excited to begin restoring this little press I acquired from Martin Lang at Columbia University. A lot of surface rust, but the drum and rollers turn, and I’m confident I can get a bed fabricated soon. This press will hopefully be my traveling press I can take out to teach workshops.

I don’t want to feel hopeless. I don’t want to feel angry all the time. I want to believe in people. I want to believe in radical change.

How do fellow teachers keep their heads up at times like this? My kids need me to be who I am, but I feel myself slipping.

Between throwing my back out last week, getting the flu and the collapse of the government, I’m kinda over things at this point.

I love buying physical media, partly because when you own it, YOU OWN IT.

Ask me how I feel when I have to move said physical media in about three months, but still…

Another 20ish minute sketch with a limited palette of controlled burns. Been thinking a lot about the state of our government in comparison to how these spaces are being pruned back and how the folks in charge of these burns are losing their jobs.

A Short and Incomplete Guide For New Activists or: how to get started by getting started

margaretkilljoy.substack.com/p/a-short-an...

A guide to new activists as we move forward. We have more power and possibilities than we realize.

Good advice ⬇️

Controlled burns outside of Bluffton, SC.

it may not always feel like it, but this was true yesterday, today, and it will be tomorrow. we are going to each do our parts, and we will win. we will build a government that is representative of and responsive to the needs of regular working people, not billionaires.

Thank you Black Creek Arts in Hartsville, SC for hosting my solo exhibition “Land Rites” and the wonderful reception last night. It was a night of good conversations, new friendships and discussions of finding hope in dark times.

This is exactly why I’m currently teaching my 6th grade art classes about propaganda and using art for advocacy. Teaching in the Deep South with a bunch of evangelicals means I need to tread lightly, but giving them the ability to see propaganda for what it is matters

20 minute lunch sketch of something else burning besides our democracy.

As an art teacher working in a rural district at a Title 1 school, this terrifies me. SC’s state superintendent isn’t even a former teacher, just a “concerned” parent- so why would I want control of the education money back to the state? So they can push private schools with zero accountability?

Print therapy with Octavia Butler.
#letterpress #parableofthesower

Reflecting on some images I snapped yesterday driving back from Lake City.

all the MAGA folks who were like "he's playing 4d chess" didn't really stop to think about what type of piece they are on that board

5 ways to celebrate #BlackHistoryMonth (cause the fed govt doesn’t run your house)

1. Find out what Sojourner Truth REALLY said
2. Buy a Black horror, scifi or fantasy book
3. Listen to “Naima” by John Coltrane
4. Send the victims of the LA fires in Altadena a few coins
5. Get a library card

I’ve started sketching with a limited palette using Posca markers during my lunch break at school. I’ve been enjoying the challenge of completing a finished drawing in 20 minutes and my students seem to enjoy watching me work.