Wow, this is why I love blogging! It is fascinating hearing from people around the world, that I’d never meet otherwise, whether they send an email through this blog or post a comment directly. And I’m particularly excited to meet some more printmaker-bloggers, and so soon after the last finds!

Yesterday I received this great email from Julio Rodriguez (hyperlinks mine):

Hello Marja-Leena, enjoyed your blog page very much, specially looking at the Veils Suite series, the images are very appealling, congratulations on all your work. I am a member on a printmaking discussion group called Baren and we just opened up our own blog BarenForum Group Weblog for printmaking. Our group concentrates on woodblock/relief but anyone is welcome to participate and comment. I have made it possible so that all our members (300+ !!!) can author on the blog so we will be using it as a group blog…already many are uploading their latest print work…I welcome your feedback…thanks…Julio

And here’s more after I wrote back for a bit more information about Baren:

This is our 7th year and we have over 300+ members across the net….there are no dues or fees for membership, we hold quarterly exchanges (which can be viewed online) with alternating theme/open cirteria and have an online encyclopedia of how-to printmaking books available for browsing (or free downloads). The group was founded by printmaker David Bull ( English born, raised in Canada but working out of his studio in Tokyo for the last 20 years doing traditional style Japanese printmaking.). Baren is an international community of printmakers and has held many group exhibitions including galleries in Japan, USA,  Ireland, Israel, Canada, Bulgaria and Uganda.  

The group has remained a nice mix of newbies, amateurs and professionals working together to promote woodblock/relief printmaking. This link will take you to a map I did  two years ago which shows where our members come from….it’s not up to date but you can click on the little people and get some background info on each artist.

The blog has several artists already posting interesting works and information. Note the links to several printmakers’ own blogs as well as the forum pages which have a great deal of reading – I will be busy!

Thank you, Julio, for writing and a very warm welcome to you and all the BarenForum bloggers! Happy printing and happy blogging!