Caterpillar is to butterfly as book is to ? or Writing an Artist Statement

This week I thought I’d write about the process of developing an artist statement. Instead, you are getting a super-short post as I continue to wrestle with the statement that has to accompany these photos. Together they will soon be off to East Gippsland Art Gallery to be considered for selection for “Books Beyond Words – Books Evolving”.

I wasn’t planning to suggest that I am expert in these matters, although I think I probably face the task with less dread than some artists I know.

The artist statement is crucial if you want to send your work, well, anywhere really. You will be asked for one in any gallery context, and as it will be representing you in your absence, it needs to be good!

So I will definitely put together some information on exactly what an artist statement is, what to include, what not to include and the process I use to write mine. I also have some references on the subject to share.

In the mean time, you could pop along to this site, which has been developed to help the struggling artist to generate their own Critical Response to the Art Product (or CRAP). I was delighted with this pearl which I hope to include somehow!

I'm troubled by how the reductive quality of the sexual signifier notates a participation in the critical dialogue of the 90s.

 

Hmm, maybe not!

6 Ways to Feed Creativity

All artists need to take certain steps at times to “pump up” their creativity.

Some people refer to “the muse” and while I’m not totally comfortable with this term myself (it seems rather disempowering to me) at least it acknowledges the elusive quality of inspiration and the important work we need to do to foster our creativity.

Even the most experienced artists (or perhaps especially them) have things they do that help them to “get into the flow”.

These are the things that help me:

1. meditating – slowing down, being in the present and practising mindfulness. These all clear the mind and open some space for creative thoughts.
2. allowing time – while great ideas often strike in a flash, they seem to require lots of open space around them and no/low expectations. It’s hard to be creative when your life is jam-packed with doing. It’s fine to take half an hour here and there when you’re in the flow on a project that’s going well, but I definitely need to spend some gentle days, going for long slow walks, pottering in the studio or the garden to develop a sense of spaciousness.
3. art-gazing – with the internet it’s easy to look at great work often and getting out to real exhibitions when I can is even better.
4. going back through my visual journals, looking at all the ideas I’ve generated in the past that I never had time to complete (or start!)
5. play – trying out new materials or just doing something crafty. Often these things feed into future projects, but just as often they don’t. It’s really just about the importance of play.

I found an entertaining talk on creativity on TED.com by Tim Brown. He’s the CEO of a large design firm, IDEO, so he’s talking about stimulating creativity in collaborative teams (more collaboration!) but I found much of his talk useful. I especially like the way he talks about the way creativity thrives in a safe, secure environment. This, I think is key. I think its why we can be so creative as students and then when we get into the real world, we suddenly freeze up. So my final point is:

        6.   let yourself feel safe to fail – create time and space to have all those playful, crazy ideas, including quite a few that plain don’t work. They are an important part of the process.

If you feel like delving more deeply into this final point, I’ve posted the TED talk below or you can go to the talk on TED where there is a script if you prefer reading to listening.

 

AND HAPPY CREATING!

More thoughts on collaborating in the book arts

 

When I last wrote about collaboration in the book arts here, the subject seemed to interest quite a few of you. Since then, I’ve thought a little more on the subject and I’ve put together two related posts.

In the first (which you are reading now) I’ll (very) briefly talk about the history of collaboration, both in art in general and specifically in the book arts. Then I have an recent example to show you, as well as highlighting the potential benefits of collaborating with others.

The second post appears on Book*Art*Object and follows on from this post by suggesting some ways that the artists in that group might like to organise to collaborate on books in the future.

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Collaboration in the 20th Century

It’s rather arbitrary where you start with the art history of collaboration. Certainly major artists had assistants and employees, and it’s likely some of these may have collaborated in some sense of the word. However, early in the 20th century, artists associated with Dada and the Avant-Garde worked together with the specific aim of exploring collaboration.

The 1960s and ‘70s saw collaboration in art extend from movements like Fluxus and Art & Language to long-term duos like Gilbert & George and Christo & Jeanne-Claude. Today it’s an accepted, though not prevalent way of working.

Collaboration in the Book Arts

I think its interesting that collaboration was a part of the book arts from very early. In part this is due to the central role that artists books played in the art movements named above, already strongly incorporating collaboration.

Traditionally there are probably three pairings that are often seen in the production of artists books. These are:

• artist and master printmaker
• writer and visual artist
• artist and bookbinder

Additionally, there are collaborations between artists and publishers, where the aim is to move beyond the handmade to achieve increased distribution of the artists book.

Exquisite Corpse

Recently a lovely book was published which based its concept on a variant of the Surrealist game of Exquisite Corpse. There are a number of variants of the game, but in the one I’m most familiar with one person starts by drawing the top part of a person, then folds the paper so that only the end of the drawing is visible. The paper is passed to the next person, who adds the next section before folding the paper again and passing it on. The third person completes the drawing which is then unfolded to be seen in its entirety.

The recent book is called “The Exquisite Book” and it has 100 artists who collaborated to create 10 fold-out double-sided accordions within the one book. Each accordion has a theme along the lines of “In the clouds”, “in the jungle”, “in the city” etc. and within each accordion there is a continuous horizon line. During making, the artists saw only the work that preceded theirs, but no others.

Here are a couple of photos of spreads from my copy of the book. Please excuse the rubbish photography (still grappling with a new camera).

Above: L-R Jen Corace, Pablo Amargo, Mel Kadel

Below:: L-R Sophia Martineck, Joseph Hart

I love this book and have spent more time than I’m prepared to admit admiring it and delighting in the detail and beauty of so many of the drawings it contains. I think the book is an excellent example of why collaboration is so worthwhile.

Benefits of Collaboration

These are numerous, and to an extent personal. Each person will have a slightly different take on the experience, and benefits will also differ according to the way the collaboration is organised. Some of the major points for me are:

1. The whole is greater than the sum: or the work created will be something quite unique and different from the creations of the individuals.
2. Collaboration enables more complex works than an individual could manage.
3. A number of artists will possess a greater variety of skills and approaches which can be used to create the work.
4. Learning from others – need I say more? I love learning.
5. For artists concerned by issues like “self” vs. “the collective”, collaborating with other artists can be a solution.

Book*Art*Object

BAO is already a collaborative project in some ways. When its time to choose our source material, every member is encouraged to make suggestions. The group selects the texts to be used as inspiration by voting. We make our books or objects individually, although the process is blogged – the level of detail is up to the individual artist. Finally, the works come together as a group when they are exhibited and so the final impression on the viewer is cumulative.

There are many other forms and directions that collaboration within BAO could explore. I have some thoughts, which I’ve offered up over on the BAO blog. I’m sure other group members will have ideas of their own. If you’re interested in following the discussion, you will find it here.

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What’s your experience collaborating?

Before I finish, I’m wondering how many of you have experience collaborating with others on an art project? I would say that I only have a little myself, including my recent experience with Monica Oppen, which I wrote about in the previous post about collaborating. I would be very interested to hear how collaborating worked for you. What were the benefits? Are there any pitfalls? Would you try it again?

And what about group exhibitions? Aren’t they collaborations too? I think in a loose sort of way they are, more so if there is a theme and the works undergo selection. In this case, it’s up to the curator/s to make sure the show has unity, and I would argue that by the lack of interaction between participants while they are working, a lot of the benefit of collaboration is lost. But definitely not all in terms of the cumulative impact of different works by a variety of artists, which have the potential to play off one another for the viewer.

Still, my point is that collaboration is about regular interaction, and a dedication to communicating with your co-collaborators is the best way to ensure success.

Drypoint: Using cardboard and perspex plates

 

Last week I showed you how I made the covers for the altered book I’m working on for “Books…Beyond Words”. This week I’d like to show you how the next stage is coming. I’ve been doing tests with drypoint using both card and Perspex (acrylic) for the plate.

For the book I need an image of a cocoon. I think I’ve mentioned (just a few times!) how much I want to learn etching, but the trouble is I have a few projects on-the-go, and a personal (exciting!) deadline of mid-May (more later!!!). I can foresee that a number of attempts might be needed before I can etch to my satisfaction!

Then this article from Nontoxic Print.com arrived in my inbox, showing me the way. I made the decision to try drypoint, also an intaglio print method, but a direct one, and therefore rather more straight forward than etching.

In the article Jenny Robinson discusses how she makes her large (e.g. 38” x 23”) drypoint monoprints using illustration board as her plate. She applies a thin coat of wood varnish and then treats the plate as she would any other drypoint.

With the high (and increasing) cost of copper and zinc, I thought this was definitely worth a try. As Robinson notes, cheaper materials provide the artist with more freedom to experiment, because you feel as if you can throw away something that hasn’t worked – and artistic freedom is always good, in my book!

Another cheap material that is often used for drypoint plates is plastic. I’ve heard of people trying virtually any type. Actually my kitchen chopping mat has some interesting lines appearing on it, and I’m thinking of swiping it and inking it up, but first I need to buy a replacement for the kitchen. More common choices are mylar and perspex, so I decided to give perspex a try too.

Tools, ink, paper 

Apart from ink and paper, this photo shows everything I used. For paper I used two different Japanese papers in buff, one a medium kozo and the other with a little more texture.

I compared two inks, an oil-based etching ink from Graphic Chemical and a water-based one from Akua. The second ink was self-mixed using transparent intaglio base and the Akua Kolors, rather than the pre-mixed intaglio inks that are available. It really needed the addition of some thickener, which I didn’t have (but now do).

Tests & Results

1) Initially I began testing with tools that I had on hand – an etching needle (above – yellow handle) which I had used before for this my only previous drypoint (plate: perspex).

I knew I would want some tone as well as line in this print. I don’t own a roulette, the tool often used for achieving tone. In the article, Jenny Robinson talked about using carborundum, but the art store was out of stock. Initially, I decided to test some dry pumice (in the Matisse jar above) applied with acrylic gel.

The result wasn’t bad, but the tone is more in the style of a collagraph, and that isn’t the look I am after.

2) Next I inked the plate with my self-mixed Akua. The ink was much softer and the textural effect of the pumice is lessened (pardon the shadow that’s come through on the scan).

I wasn’t happy with the tone alone, and tried sketching in some detail in pencil.

3) I decided to add more line detail to the plate using an engraving attachment on the Dremel. I also tried wiping more lightly, so that more ink would remain on the plate.

I did quite like this result, but I felt the image now had a “man-made/machine” look to it. It’s an interesting effect, but I wasn’t sure it was what I wanted for the book.

Here’s the plate (on the right) and the print again, this time using Akua ink. You can see I started experimenting with the Dremel’s mark-making abilities.

4) I wanted to test the Dremel further and decided to use line to achieve tone, a traditional drypoint/engraving technique. The plate here is perspex for the first time.

The result was a very controlled and neat image, almost illustrative.

5) At this stage I made another trip to the art store and decided to splash out on a “proper” drypoint tool (you can see it in the photo under Tools). I was pining for that special soft line that you can achieve when your tool lifts a burr from the plate. It is this that holds the ink and gives the drypoint its characteristic “look”.

And there it is over on the right side. All those lovely lines! I’ve finally worked it out!

Still no carborundum at the art store, so I bought some Golden fine pumice gel, which you can see holds the ink quite beautifully. There are also tests with three different grades of sandpaper (150, 280 and 400 – reversed).

6) So finally I tried with my new scribe on a cardboard plate with the oil-based ink. I’m still working on my wiping technique, but this print is the best result so far.

Working with Wax: An Altered Book

 

After last weeks post about a safe studio set-up for working with wax/encaustic, I thought I would show you some of the ways I’ve used wax in my work over the past few years. I also have my favourite encaustic references for you and a step-by-step look at my most recent use of wax in a book art project.

Early Work

As I mentioned last week, I am completely self-taught when it comes to wax and I haven’t really scratched the surface of what I’d like to try! Here’s a few things from around 2007 when I spent some time trying out the possibilities.

Above: Testing the effect of embedding myself in wax.

Above: This was to be part of an artists book – still a work-in-progress!

Above: testing out ways of working with wax in 3-D

If you’re interested there’s a little more of my work with wax to be seen here.

 

New Work

For “Books…Beyond Words” this year, the theme is books evolving and this has given me the chance to work on an idea I’ve had since I was doing my Masters.

“Cocoon” as a place of transformation was one of the concepts that I hoped to explore as part of my masters thesis on change and process. Time ran out on me before I got to make any “cocoon” works, despite have a number of ideas developing. “Cocoon” seems to me to work into the theme of books evolving quite nicely, and so I am working on my first altered book work, assisting it in its “evolution”.

The first part of the book to change will be the cover, which will be made from paperbark. This will be a type of return to the tree from which the paper came, in order to “evolve” via the process within the cocoon.

In my local area the Council has planted hundreds of paperbark trees (Melaleucas). There is one out the front of my place and at the end of the street is Riding Road, with its beautiful avenue of paperbarks.

I love trees with weeping foliage and the paperbark is a favourite of mine. For a few years now I’ve picked up the bark when it falls off and stored it away, thinking I would somehow incorporate it into something. This new book is my first attempt working with it.

Step-By-Step

1. I gently peeled away layers of the bark using my fingers until I have the desired thickness, selecting pieces of bark with attractive patterns and colours.

2. I laid out my pieces of bark as you would any collage. You can see my final arrangement below.

3. Once I was satisfied with the arrangement, I made a 50:50 mixture of wheat paste and acid-free PVA. I painted this onto a sheet of Japanese bookbinding tissue and then onto the back of each piece of bark, gently pressing the tissue to the bark to ensure good adhesion.

4. After a few minutes, I placed the whole thing between some sheets of cushioning paper, then boards of marine ply and left it overnight to dry completely. I didn’t add any further weights, although if you were after a very flat effect I think you could place weights very gently on the board.

5. The next day the paperbark was ready to be coated with wax. My aim with this was to stabilize the surface of the bark so it could be handled without small pieces coming away.

You can see the beeswax melting into the baking tray which is on the hot plate you saw here.  At this point, I should explain that for this project I am using beeswax only, which is different from encaustic medium. Encaustic medium is beeswax with one or more additives, most usually damar resin, but other waxes such as microcrystalline or carnuba wax may be used. The purpose of the additives is to alter the characteristics of the wax, such as melting point, brittleness vs pliability, hardness of the finished surface. I am just beginning to explore how these work, so I have stayed with the straight beeswax, with which I am most familiar.

6. Once there was enough wax in the tray, the process was very simple and as you can see, not even particularly gentle! I simply placed the sheet of paperbark into the wax. To ensure good wax coverage I used a traditional Japanese printmaking baren which was coated with alfoil.

 7. The final step is fusing the wax. Fusing is done by lightly re-melting the wax, just to the point where a sheen appears using a heat gun. This allows the different layers of wax to bond and improves the structural integrity of the surface.

This final series of photos shows how the wax looks before fusing, immediately after turning off the heat gun and 5 minutes later.

 

My Favourite Encaustic Resources

Bear in mind, these are just my own favourites. There are numerous others out there. Just take a look on Amazon or on the R&F Handmade Paints website.

1. Joanne Mattera: The Art of Encaustic Painting (Contemporary Expression in the Ancient Medium of Pigmented Wax) 2001

The original contemporary guide to encaustic painting. Includes history, a survey of artists working with encaustic, and a thorough introduction to materials. Focuses on painting primarily.

2. Lissa Rankin: Encaustic Art - The Complete guide to Creating Fine Art with Wax, 2010.

New on the market last year, this is the book I was waiting for! Its focus is fine art plus a great “how to” guide to many different techniques. There have been other “how to” books out there, but they were more project-based.

Both books 1 & 2 can be checked out via the “Search Inside” feature of Amazon. The links above will take you there. 

3. Paula Roland: Encaustic Monotypes – Painterly Prints With Heat and Wax (DVD)

For something different, this is great if you’re a visual learner, but it does only cover monotypes i.e. using your hot plate as a printing plate with encaustic paints. This was something I was interested in and before Lissa Rankin’s book came out, it was impossible to find any information on it online. The DVD definitely contains more detail on this technique specifically than Rankin’s book.

4. R&F Handmade Paints – Forum 

A great online resource which you can search, and pose all your questions to staff from R&F and others, who in my experience are both extremely knowledgeable and helpful.

September catch-up

Apologies for ignoring you this past couple of weeks. I wish I could blame it all on Google, but the truth is I’ve had a couple of infections and have been struggling with extreme lethargy!

In an effort to keep my spirits up, any energy was quickly channelled into something creative.

It’s pretty hard to work on anything new requiring inspiration or courage to push the limits, but I have done a bit of “scribbling” as planned.

Below are a few examples which I think may hold some potential.

 

Ink, graphite.

 

Ink, aquarelle. This one is just a study really, but I like the idea of the ink marks floating over a hazy “moon”.

 

Ink, aquarelle

 

While I’ve been enjoying playing with these drawing materials, I’ve found the lack of a fully satisfying finished product was becoming frustrating. I’m doing these drawings primarily in the very first journal I made, the one at the bottom of the picture below, which you can also see here. It’s the very last empty journal I have, so I decided it was time to put some of the papers I’ve collected to use, and to get my binding skills back in practice.

The red journal below is the result. It’s filled with acid free cartridge paper and has a combined Celtic/Coptic binding. The two centre threads in the Celtic weaves pass through the same hole, which was an experiment, but I think it has worked well.

I find it’s a good to combine working on something with a nice concrete outcome (like a journal) while doing something exploratory and with results that are less tangible, so far.

Embracing my duality

This week I’ve been in a very dozy state of mind. I don’t often talk about the cognitive effects of cfs on this blog, and more dramatic symptoms like migraines or physical weakness are better known by the general public. However, what is generally described as “brain fog” is a major part of the syndrome.

I used to have a fantastic memory. And I used to be very organized and capable of thinking things through in a highly analytical way. Sadly, this isn’t the case any more.

It’s easy to believe that the issues I’m trying to resolve are just more complex and abstract than the problems I had to deal with at uni, and of course my brain is aging too. And I know lots of my friends do show similar albeit milder memory problems, but that is with families, careers and generally really busy lives to manage.

I’m talking about the days when you stare at the clothes in your wardrobe for ten minutes, trying to decide what to wear, and you aren’t even planning to leave the house that day. And eventually you walk away, still in your pjs. The only decision you’ve made is to try again in an hours time. It seems to me that there’s little doubt that your decision-making skills are “affected”.

The interesting thing about one set of skills diminishing is that it can lead you to enhance another set. As a teenager taking maths, chemistry, physics and so on, I focussed on being  rational, thorough and logical. All good, you might say, and generally I agree. Although…does that mean I can never be spontaneous, intuitive and passionate? I hope not.

I recently read Eric Maisel’s book “Coaching the Artist Within” and in it he discusses duality. He argues that it is easy to set up dualities such as logical and intuitive, disciplined and flexible, doing and being, and then opt for one side of the duality, taking it as your own. His point is that the creative process demands all these things at different times, and to declare that you are logical and disciplined (as I have in the past) and apply it rigidly, is to install limits that can only hinder the process.

I started off talking about the cognitive effects of cfs, and I’m not suggesting they aren’t limiting, or that they aren’t serious (obviously they are very serious as they are caused by insufficient blood flow to the appropriate areas of the brain).

However, what I am saying is that on those days when my physical energy is okay, but the brain fog has rolled in, I am forced to work in an intuitive, responsive, visceral way, and this has been a valuable lesson.

I’ve been working this way this week, using a trial version of Adobe Lightroom  (more soon) and Photoshop to process some of the photos I took on my recent beach holiday. I find processing photos is one thing I am able to do when my energy is very low. I tried to print some out and quickly found I was not up to the problem-solving required to make my printer behave, so for now these images remain screen-bound. I hope to have prints available soon and also to experiment with them a little further with some mixed media.

Trouble finishing?

There’s something I find excruciating about bringing a complex or long-term project to completion. I don’t think this is one of the many cognitive effects of CFS, but perhaps it does get extended by the additional fatigue. Even when there is a specific deadline, once the light appears at the end of the tunnel, each step seems so much more challenging than the last. Without a deadline, it is even worse.
I suspect I make this challenge even greater for myself by choosing to go about things in a way that is fairly involved, rather than taking the simple option (not sure I even see there is one).
Of course I am referring to the work I am preparing for the Book*Art*Object project, Learning Absences, which you can read more about here and on the associated blog here.
Although I first started working on ideas for this in July(!) and had certainly settled on the final direction in September, I am still struggling valiantly to actually produce the books. All the pages are printed and believe it or not, the hold up now is trimming them to size for binding. This seems to be taking me ages!
I am resisting the urge to allow myself to start any of the new ideas that dance enticingly across my imagination, but I am starting to notice a pattern in my behaviour. I recall writing a similar post while trying to battle through the final stages of making my flag book, Like Weather. Back then, nearly 3 years ago, Azirca wrote in the comments:
“Creativity takes time you know, you can't rush these things ;)”
Her wise words were very helpful back then, and did make me stop and appreciate what I was doing. I’m sharing them now as much to remind myself as for anyone else’s benefit.
Nevertheless, I am going to look at my ways of working and see if I can’t simplify things a bit. You know, work smarter, not harder. If I can refine my projects perhaps I’ll be able to produce a bit more. I can’t help feeling that looking back over a 12 month period and being able to see a number of finished works would be more satisfying than one larger work. Of course, I may be wrong or may not be able to work in any other way – it may be that I need complex work to communicate what I need to say.
Another consideration is the release you feel when you finish a work. When a project stretches on for months, I find it easy to turn it into a bit of a burden, a commitment, rather than being fun and being able to be flexible. If you’ve read this blog for a while, you’ll know that I love experimenting, and a long project does tend to demand that I remain focused and put spontaneity aside.
Just a few of the thoughts running through my mind as I wield my art knife and steel rule.

Gocco prints on acetate

I had a lovely time on Friday afternoon printing these using a screen made with my gocco machine and taking photos of the process to show you all. I didn't realize that it was all a waste because of the ink I was using...but I'll explain that later.

For those of you unfamiliar with a gocco, this is what one looks like. It's a Japanese crafters tool which allows you to create screens for printing, in a process closely related to silk screen printmaking.

I bought my machine probably 18 months ago, enticed by the fact that you can print both on paper and on clay (using different inks). I only recently got around to testing it out, and this page for "Judy and the Jacarandah" is my first use of the gocco for a project.

The pages are wet media acetate, and herein lies some of the issues I've been experiencing. The printing process required a bit of refinement and a move to "off-contact" printing. If you've done screen printing, you'll know that this means that when you pull the ink across the screen, the screen doesn't actually lie on your paper or whatever substrate you are printing on, it sits above it, and then snaps back up into place after the squeegee passes over. Working with acetate also requires this, because otherwise when you lift the screen off the acetate, the screen pulls up most of the ink that you have just applied.

The gocco site in Australia, http://nehoc.com.au has loads of information and I soon worked out what the problem was and set up a printing "station" as suggested. Below you can see the white foam core guide I've glued to some strawboard for the acetate and the blue non-slip mat to stop the screen from moving. I also used some double sided tape to hold the acetate down and stop it sticking to the screen.

Below is the screen in place over the acetate. You can see it is sitting about 5mm off the surface. I've taped a border of foam core around the frame to achieve this height.

Here you can see the ink I used and the gocco squeegee. I mixed the brown using my new Akua Kolor inks and the Akua intaglio transparent base to achieve the desired consistency. I decided to use this ink because it is non-toxic and clears up in water, but stays open for ages and wouldn't clog the screen. I was really happy with the way it printed, and if this project had been on paper, there would have been no problems.

I finished about half the print run on Friday and was feeling pretty pleased with the result. Then I re-read the Akua ink user guide and saw this:

"Akua Intaglio ink does not contain dryers. These inks dry by absorption unlike other inks which dry by evaporation....Glossy or coated papers are not recommended for use with this ink."

So now I am concerned that these pages may never dry!! Certainly they haven't had much hope these past 3 days with the rain pouring down and the humidity through the roof. Ah well, I guess I can consider it printing practice. If anyone has any suggestions or knows whether these prints will dry, please drop me a line.

Postscript Wed March 10th

Thought I should add that I emailed Susan Rostrow who developed the Akua inks to see what she thought about using the inks on acetate. She answered very quickly and confirmed my fears. She offered a few suggestions and I thought I would share them with you. I've cut and pasted her thoughts below:

Akua inks are formulated not to dry on plastic so printmakers have endless time for creating the image on the plate. I don't think a fixative would actually dry the inks. I have 3 suggestions:

1. You could try several coats of an acrylic spray. It would form a skin on top of the ink. You would still need to handle the print on acetate very carefully.
2. Apply a light sprinkle of baby powder or corn starch to dry the ink on the acetate. However, the white powder would sit on top of the ink and change the color. You would still need to handle the print on acetate very carefully.
3. Sandwich another acetate sheet on the side where the ink lies. This would offer protection from rubbing off.

The "sandwich" works well, but I'm still deciding between this and re-doing the print with some other inks, seeing this is to go in an artists book and will therefore be handled. I should finish this post by saying that the Akua worked beautifully with the gocco screen, and if you are printing on paper, it's an excellent non-toxic choice.

A Productive Afternoon, But At A Price

Last Friday I booked another afternoon at Impress studio to make some prints from my solarplates. Above you can see the fruits of my labour. I don't know how this rates for productivity - but I can tell you, some thing's got to give. I haven't been as tired as I was after that session in a long time. Not good. The next day I paid with a headache and I am still not fully recovered.

The etching press I used wasn't the new whizz-bang one. Since it is enormous and new (read very expensive) and I am inexperienced with presses, I decided to use a smaller one. This operates via a handle which turns numerous wheels. In order to achieve the embossed effect I was after, the pressure required is tremendous, and the physical effort too! Maybe someone used to printmaking can tell me: is a press with a fly wheel less physically demanding to operate? I know there are geared presses available, but they are AU$4000+. Maybe it will be back to the pasta machine after all!

Anyway, back to the prints. There are 4 in the series at this stage, but I'm not happy with the composition of the fourth one, so it may be dropped. My original plan for these plates is to use them in series to create a variable edition, which will be folded to form a small concertina book. I wasn't sure how the plates would look together - whether they should be spaced out or flush with one another, and I won't make a final decision until these ones are folded.

There is another layer of imagery to be added, figures, as I alluded in an earlier post. I've been testing out a couple of ways of adding the figures but I can't photograph my results very effectively and there's a problem with the scanner, so you'll just have to be patient, I'm afraid.

Monoprinting skies

Writing about your work is such a valuable tool. I wonder whether most of us use it often enough? I am sure that I don't. Writing my last post really helped me to clarify in my own mind what I was doing (obvious really, if I am going to explain it to you!) and this helped me see where I was getting caught up.

I've been a little too anxious to use the solarplate technique for everything, just because I wanted to use it. It's far better to look at the creative problem that you have and then decide the best possible methodology that you have at your disposal, and this definitely includes the media. This was always clear to me with ceramics, which was my first media. It's simply not good enough to say you are making such-and-such from clay, because that is what you do. The choice you make is so much more important to the work than that.

So, I realized there were other, more effective ways to depict the sky in the way that I am looking for, and I have started to test them out. Monoprinting is a very free way of working that really appeals to me, despite the fact that I don't have a background in painting, as many monoprinters do.



I used the new Golden Open acrylics on paper and perspex for these. Some of the perspex ones have added acrylic and drawing. Some of these look more like water than the sky, but that's all right. They were great fun to make, and lead me in a variety of directions, as well as coming much closer to solving my original problem.

Solarplate advice: Start Simple

I’ve been fuddling about in the studio lately, and don’t really have anything much to show for it. I’ve spent a reasonable amount of time on art, but it has all been very experimental and not really terribly successful. Of course they do say that you only learn from mistakes, and I guess that means that I am slowly working out what not to do! That said, it doesn’t leave me very motivated to post about my “discoveries”, as I suspect they are the type of discoveries that a beginner needs to make, but that seem pretty obvious unless you are in the position of trying these things out for the very first time.

You might remember from this post that I was quite hopeful about the potential of these images. The de-bossed figure really appealed to me, and is something that could work nicely both on paper and on porcelain. So since then I’ve been working on the imagery in Photoshop, and then testing it by exposing small strips of solar plate and printing them.

I’ve run up against my usual problem which is being overly ambitious before I've developed the technical skills and know-how required. In the test above, the de-bossing is achieved by making a relief plate and running it through an etching press. This is a step beyond making an ordinary relief print, and I managed to confuse myself for a while, although I did eventually work out what was happening.

In addition, I think I was trying to get too much happening at once, with not enough general printmaking experience and very little solarplate experience. This makes it difficult for me to visualize exactly how things on a plate will appear when printed. Below is the image I 've been working on, hoping to achieve the clouds popping out from the page, the figure de-bossed into the page and the sky floating somewhere in between these two.

To achieve this type of tonal range you need to use a double exposure, which I had learnt at the workshop I wrote about before. First, you expose an aquatint screen, followed by the image. I am exposing using sunlight, but even in winter here we reach a UV level of 4 most days, so there hasn't been any problem with UV intensity. I tested 3 different exposures before I was satisfied that I had developed sufficient detail.

And below is the result:

Left: printed with Charbonnel soft black etching ink

Right: printed with block ink made from Georgian block printing medium and alkyd paint

You can imagine that this is not the effect I am after, as it is pretty muddy and uninspiring. However, I think the test plate has been successfully exposed, the result just doesn't look how I had visualized it would. This comes from my general lack of printmaking experience, I believe. I think I will achieve a result more to my liking by separating the backgound (sky) from the foreground (figure and clouds). So it's back to the drawing board and I'll be putting up a sign to remind myself of my new motto: Start Simple! And if any printmakers are reading this, please feel free to comment!

Overcoming Inertia

If any of you are also on Facebook you may have seen that I set myself a challenge last Tuesday - that I would post on this blog within 48 hours. Well, so much for that! But I wrote that to help myself overcome what I call "inertia".

It's something I never experienced before I had CFS, but just at the moment I'm having it a lot. It's not the same as lacking motivation or procrastinating, although from the "outside" it could look much the same. And it's not the same as being too tired.

It occurs on the way up from being really tired, and also on the way down. You have enough energy to have ideas, and even to know exactly how you want to start, but that's as far as it goes. It's an uncomfortable mental space, because you really want to get going with whatever the idea is, but you just can't.

To be honest, there is no sure fire way of overcoming inertia, because it really is about not having the energy to get organised and kick off. I think the best thing to do is to make sure everything you need is ready, and also to try to have lots of free time. This works both to let you rest, so you can build up energy, and also means that when your energy finally does reach the required level, you are free and available and able to capitalize, not having scheduled "low energy time fillers" in your frustration and boredom.

I've been seeing it as rather like those days at the beach, when the swell is small and you must wait patiently for a decent wave to arrive so you can jump up on your board and enjoy the ride.

Exploring text as image

Life's been full and as ever, challenging since my last post. I attended an orientation to the facilities at Impress Printmaker's Studio and am now eligible to book time there to use the equipment. It's the same studio I mentioned in previous posts, and they have a UV box for exposing solarplates and a number of presses. I'm quite excited about the possibilities this opens up for me, and the convenience of the studio, being only 10 minutes away from my home is wonderful. I've heard on the grapevine that they are thinking of re-locating to larger premises, which would be good for them but I hope it doesn't happen too soon.

In preparation for my first session at Impress, I am working on images to expose for a book. I've been using Photoshop to experiment with ordering and layout - ah, what a wonderful tool PS can be! Here's a peek at two possible pages - it's just a rough "sketch" .




As well as pages based on imagery, I've been exploring some text-based pages. I love constructivist, dada and futurist art with their use of typography as a graphic element, and of course artists in these movements were the first in the 20th century to produce artists books. This is one of my favourite examples of this type of work.

Ruth Laxson is a book artist who is a great source of inspiration to me. She began her press, Press 63 Plus, at age 63 and established herself as much respected in the field. Her books expressed a real playfulness with text and are reminiscent of concrete poetry.

Playing around with text in Photoshop (which, by the way, makes exploring that kind of artwork so much easier) I have decided that I really want to develop my own style with text. The beauty of the constructivists is that their artwork looks deceptively simple, but that is the way of all good design. Of course, it never is that simple to achieve the dynamism and perfect composition required. Like Ruth Laxson, I hope to make the visual impression of the text echo the sense of the words. I came up with a number of alternatives - the one below is the one I find most satisfying.

Testing the limitations of the pasta machine as etching press

Despite spending most of this week trying to recover from the stress of the past few weeks, I did manage one afternoon in the studio.

Following on from last week's post about solarplate etching, I decided to run the test plates from the workshop through my pasta machine press. To anyone who has missed earlier posts where I've mentioned this little beauty, it is exactly what it says - a pasta making machine which I use for intaglio printmaking. I learned about this in an online printmaking course I took a couple of years ago.

To pass the test plates, which are only small strips approx 10cm x 3cm through the press, I decided to place the plate on some perspex. The dampened paper goes does next and then I experimented with the "felts". For the pasta press I use half sheets of the felt that you buy from craft shops. Depending on type of plate you are using and therefore how thick it is, I have used up to 3 layers of felt to give the desired pressure. In this case, with the perspex backing sheet, 1 layer of felt was all that would fit through between the rollers. And the results are below:



I have to confess that the umber speckles on the person are old sepia ink from the workshop that I hadn't cleaned off properly. They make the clouds look more like land masses I think, and could be useful in certain circumstances. I am pretty happy with how these tests turned out, and plan to continue developing this imagery. I think the pasta press has shown that it is definitely up to doing test runs, and if the imagery is not as finely detailed as the clouds on the left, it can even be used for the final print, especially where embossing is a feature.



Next I thought I would try my zinc etching plate through the pasta press, just to see how that worked. Almost straight away I discovered a problem:

Photo: kschmic, photobucket

Unless your plate is shorter than the distance from the rollers to the base plate, it needs to be flexible, so you can pull it forward as you wind the plate through. Previously I've used perspex, mylar and mat board for the plate, so flexibility has never been an issue, but with the zinc plate being 20cm long and obviously inflexible, it couldn't pass through the press. Oh well! maybe I'm the only person crazy enough to think of putting a zinc plate through a pasta machine anyway!

I do have a couple of prints of the etching I did on zinc to show you. It's not completely finished but the term of classes I was doing at Studio West End has come to an end, so this is as far as I can take the etching for now. I apologize for the quality of the images, but the prints are a bit large for my scanner so I have photographed them, and it's getting a bit dark.

This first attempt (below) is just the line etch with plate tone in sepia. I quite liked it, but I thought more atmosphere could be created by working with the light.

For this version (below), we added a number of aquatints, progressively darkening the plate. I think we've maybe gone a bit far, but it is possible to burnish back some areas to lighten them. I was about to try this when I discovered the pasta press couldn't be used to print the result.

Soon I will have access to an etching press through the community printmaking studio Impress Printmakers, so I'll be able to keep working on this plate then.









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