Month: September 2018

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‘What You Have To Do’ 2. contd…. again.

Hands tired, fingers sore from cutting collagraphs …. I venture onto moodle to read the Print Workshop ‘handout’. It includes many interesting examples from across a wide range of artists using various print making techniques. Here are the ones that catch my eye. I’m not always entirely sure why they do but, I know that I need to be more self-aware like that and more importantly, be able to talk/write about those responses – so that is what I am going to try to do.

1. Fraser Taylor. 2. Bryan Wynter. 3. Charles Shearer. 4.Schmidt-Rotluff. 5. Adrien Wiszniewski. 6. Felix Vallaton.

The Taylor examples (monoprint and mixed media sculpture) interest me because of their scale and the visual impact of the black and white. In ‘Intimacy’ – body forms and experiences of space and place seem to be evoked and I like the way these are echoed in the forms that occur in ‘Materiality’ that engage us with sensations about things in the material world – a sort of separateness between self and world, but also the connectivity that comes from sensing the world subjectively.

Wynter‘s example challenges me to consider the making process – over laying colours in monotype and the rhythmic mark making – drawing us down the ‘Path Through (the) Wood’

4, 5, and 6 are reminiscient (because of the contrasting b&w) of the scraper board work I used to enjoy doing so much at school! It is challenging to think of whole pictures in counterpoint … imagining when you carve, cut or scrape, the effect it will have in the positive image you finally produce. This has been very much at the fore-front of my visual thinking while cutting the collagraph boards for my portraits.

The Hawkstone Park website says ‘… there’s a magical world to discover’ when you visit and explore the site. There are grottoes and gothic arches among the follies in the landscape and I think the Shearer collagraph speaks of this ‘magical’ world. I love the fluidity of the mark making (and as I have learned …. curves are quite difficult to control on collagraph plates!), also the balance between the foreground (dark/cut-away) and the background (light/more intact board). I am really intrigued by the colouring and layering of this example in the handout…. I wonder, having studied it carefully, whether it isn’t actually the plate rather than a print from it. (?????????)

Beyond the above examples that ‘caught my eye’ there are my favourites… they are these.

1. Nash. 2. Bronwen Sleigh. 3. More Sleigh. 4. A collection of connections in my mind.

First was the Nash example in the handout simply because I am quite familiar with his work having studied war art fairly extensively for putting together schemes of work when I was teaching. Looking through the handout though, it was the two works by Bronwen Sleigh that I felt drawn to, so much so, that I extended my research and looked her up on the internet. From this further exploration I found other works (3) that really fascinated me. I love the architectural/engineering drawing feel that they have. While I was looking at them, a sense of something familiar began hovering in the back of my mind – possibly triggered by the Nash associations conceptually(?) and I began to make some visual associations (4) with the Wilkinson/Wadsworth– War art & Vorticism unit of work I wrote when I was teaching. Perhaps the images the pupils made when they used the IWM razzle app to dazzle their own photos was the visual link in my mind?

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Workshop: Print Making 27th-28th September contd.

Yesterday, the discovery of collagraph printing – wow. Today, continuing to carve plates at home – portraits to include in my ars moriendi book I hope.

I have selected a group of photographs to work from. My paternal grandmother, my maternal grandparents, my father, husband and daughter. (The loved ones who will feature in my book.) It has been interesting to note the different poses and photographic intentions across the pictures. My maternal grand-mother’s is very formal but beautiful, taken in the mid 1920s (possibly for her 21st?) My Father is extremely formally posed in his air-force uniform c. 1948 and most certainly reflected, with gravitas, through the poignant lens of the regimental photographer – that uncomfortable feeling that this may be the last photo to be taken ….. the one that remains…! My grand-parents pose stiffly but, smiling proudly in their best dress, being photographed at my parents’ wedding in the mid-50s but it is not as disciplined as the previous two. Finally, and contrasting by way of not being professionally shot, a lovely, relaxed, smiling picture of my husband an informal pose in the sense that I called to him and said ‘smile’ and a gorgeous ‘snap’ entirely un-posed, of my daughter enjoying the hilarity of watching her girlfriend trying to learn how to spin plates (in a breeze) at a music festival. My intention, in using this range of pictures, is to reflect ‘passage of time’ and ‘moments captured’ on a genealogical time line that echoes (in human terms) the passage of time in the landscape and biologically, – referenced by the old deeds I am using and the elder tree (I grew and planted) that is a theme for my poem.

The process of cutting the plates is slow but extremely enjoyable – I like the clean, meticulous, methodical activity of it just as a complete contrast to (the equally enjoyable and delightfully messy) freer work we did the other day with mono prints. The plates are things of beauty in themselves. It’s almost a shame to ink them.

Chris and Martha-Louise.
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Workshop: Print Making 27th -28th September.

Day One. What joy! Find myself in my element. I am quite confident about printmaking and have previous experience of quite a few formal techniques: mono-print, lino, silk-screen, dry-point, Indian wood blocks, and less formal ones like using found surfaces and self made ‘blocks’ … then also, of course, watching Dad (much in mind again!) doing his ‘Bewick’ inspired work in box wood and copper etching and using the letter press. But, today was splendid mainly for the chance to try some new techniques like Japanese wood block. However, more of that later…

First, I began with photocopying and scanning the old deeds for my place – thinking I may overprint on them by way of developing ideas for my ‘Scrap That’ book. These are gorgeous artefacts dating back to 1746 in the reign of George II ? detailing title exchanges and indentures relating to the land which is now my allotment, garden, bit of river, woods and field, until its entry onto the land registry in 1988 as ‘land opposite (my house)’. The use they would have been putting it too of course, would have been prospecting in the mineral seams. I love to imagine the people present at the time the documents were being agreed and the sound of the quills on the parchment as the signatures were being done. The seals and stamps are intriguing. The archaic language is delicious and so are the details like ‘deed being made between such and such, clogger and the aforementioned other such and such miner of lead ore…..’. The way they give me a touch of this history is enchanting and it seems appropriate to use them somehow in my ‘legacy’ book.

Deeds of land dating back to 1746.

(Below) I was a bit disappointed in the way the photocopies came out (1.) Far too saturated for my liking and the glossy print quality didn’t take the ink very well. However, printing off the scanned images (2.) produced better results – more akin to the original documents and interesting results produced with mono- printing and mono-type experiments (3.) using words from my poem for the book ( as far as I’ve got it ….) and drawing elder flower/berry motifs.

Mono-print and mono-type experiments of printed deeds.
Experimenting with different papers. Monos and ghosts.
Fabric mono-type experiments.

What a glorious (messy) morning. Then, the p.m. was about Japanese wood block. It took an age to cut the lettering of the poem verse but, no injuries and only one letter that I forgot to reverse … an ‘a’ right in the centre of the block too – (how annoying).

Japanese Woodblock.
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‘What You Have To Do’ 1 contd……

Moving into the third week of the project – time for some further mind-mapping. Ideas are beginning to fall into place in terms of narrowing in on a focus for the scrap that book.

I have been considering my nearest and dearest – whether alive or dead: what are my special memories of them? What are my particular connections with them? To what do I owe them that I regard as ‘essentially me’? What would I say to them in terms of parting words or future greetings on ‘the other side’? Alongside these thoughts are considerations of home burial and my relationship with ‘the land’. I have found the old land deeds pertaining to where I live and may use them for printing on (photocopies of them that is! Some of the documents are 300 years old!!!!) I am thinking about printing the poem that is emerging out of these considerations and perhaps, developing a set of portraits in this week’s print workshop.