Signing Off!

Wow, can't believe how busy this month has been! No time for blogging at all till now.... Chasing up a lot of items for Myrtle Street Studio (which is almost at lock-up stage - check it out here!), trying to organise my own work (materials + images etc..), finalising the Impress Print Auction for 2009 (which was held last week), completing a commission for 70 hand-screenprinted teatowels in 5 different colours (really lovely clients and thanks to my wonderful partner for his valuable assistance) and keeping on top of the 'day job'. I am so ready to put my feet up!!

Seems like this year everyone is trying to cram in as much as possible before the break instead of the usual slowing down prior to summer holidays. I've completely managed to avoid the consumer circus at the shopping centres this year thanks to the internet yet again and am looking forward to some last minute op-shopping instead for gifts I know will be appreciated. So that is all sorted too!

Speaking of Xmas, what is your favourite part? For me it is waking up in the morning and not hearing any traffic on the roads - it is so quiet and peaceful. Reminds me of how wonderfully quiet it was growing up on a farm and makes me smile in the knowledge that for most, right then and there they have made the time to be with their families...

Speaking of home, thought I'd add this as a parting Xmas gift for the year! As the climate talks in Copenhagen wind down (and it appears, going not as well as intended unfortunately), thought I'd add a little bit of hope for us all in the fact that animals (including ourselves) are surprisingly adaptable creatures - lets hope too that governments see that we can still adapt our energy technologies quickly enough to keep little fella's like these ones in the oceans!

Must thank Ash for directing me to this article (in case you'd like to find out more) and this blog which I stumbled across after reading about it.

Have a great holiday and will be back on-line in late January 2010!

Two Plate Intaglio Trial...

Thought I'd share with you my weekend of two plate intaglio printmaking at Impress just gone... I've actually done multi-plate printing before during a workshop with Sara Amos at Firestation Studio in 2008. But it was with collagraphs so I thought I'd try this course to see if there was another way to register prints - it ended up being the same method but despite this I still had a good two days worth of printing, trying to work up an image on copper with two plates (the image is 'the cod hole' from the Coastliners series I am working on):

This was the first copper plate, with hard ground linework and rouletting (which I had not tried before) and bitten with ferric chloride....

And the second plate was a soft ground with pencil (the first time I have ever had a copper plate work with a soft ground!!) and also bitten in the ferric chloride.

Then the two plates were inked separately - plate 1 in black and plate 2 in ultramarine blue. Then, printed in registration one at a time to overlap. And this is where I realised that my rouletting was not in the right spot for the clouds!!

So, both plates were aquatinted, spit bite was added to both plates, aquatinted again and spit bite again (have tried spit biting once before on aluminium but was a lot of fun on the copper). Then printed together once more, this time starting to think about the kinds of colours I wanted to use (although the paper is cool white and I prefer warm white).

Second colour way which I did not like at all!!

Chine-colleing a piece of yellowish Japanese paper on the back of this one to create more of the colour affect I was after (excuse the really bad cutting out of the chine-colle! It was just an experiment). Not particularly happy with this print (although the colours are starting to work in this last one) and will probably start over again but it was good to play around with the image and do the spit biting and rouletting. For those of you who don't printmake, at least it gives you an idea of the amount of process involved in the evolution of a print (and this is by no means a complex print!).

Salt Printing

Everything has been really hectic this last week with not a moment to slow down!!! Myrtle Street Studio is starting to really hum along now and every afternoon when I run downstairs to see how the builders have fared I am increasingly amazed to see how quickly walls and windows are going up! If you'd like to see more on MSS then just click here.

On the weekend I managed to get down to Gold Street Studios again for another alternative photographic processing course, this time I learned how to make Salt Prints! Have attached some images to the post above and below showing some of my efforts. I think this is my favourite learned process so far in the way of photographic prints...

Also, a few more interesting links based on finds from my recent USA trip:

Onishi Yasuaki

Ellie Honl

Eric Gill

Jonelle Johnson

Sara Tabbert

Pratt Fine Arts Centre

The Bone Room

Enjoy! :)

And Back Again!

Back home from the work/break trip this week and getting back into the daily flow at the moment. The trip itself was amazing and I really enjoyed my time both in the North West (around Seattle) and the week I had in San Francisco.

Some highlights of the time away included:

Finding this book at one of my favourite bookshops - read more about Mary Randlett here!

Getting to see this exhibition at the Seattle Art Museum (Alexander Calder is one of my favourite artists)

Seeing all the wildlife around Whidbey and San Juan Island - especially this guy, not 15ms from our hotel window!

Getting to meet this lovely lady in San Francisco!!

This exhibition at SFMOMA,

A day at the Monterey Bay Acquarium...

And finally, the amazing Crown Point Press and the San Francisco Centre for the Book!

It was a great holiday which would not have been half as fun if it weren't for the great tips on places to go that two friends (one in Oz and one in the USA) where so willing to share - thanks you two, it was a wonderful trip :)

And finally, there has been quite a bit happening on Myrtle Street Studio while I was away.... all good! If you'd like to see how it is coming along then just go here. Hope you've been having a great couple of weeks too and looking forward to catching up on everyone else's blogs!

Abroad...

Hi there! Just a very quick post to pop by and provide a link to my holiday photos. On San Juan Island at the moment and heading down to San Francisco tomorrow. I just found out that San Juan was apparently Jacques Cousteau's second favourite diving destination! I am not surprised as there is so much sea life up this way. Will keep updating the photo's as I can.

Weekend Letterpress and Storm Season!

Last week I travelled down to Melbourne for a two day letterpress workshop with Carolyn Fraser of Idlewild Press. Carolyn's studio is located in the Nicholas Building on the corner of Swanston Street and Flinders Lane and is a place I have long wanted to visit since first meeting her in 2007 at an Artist Book forum in Noosa. The course ran over Saturday and Sunday and included all the basics of how to set type, operate the presses (a vandercook and platen press) as well as how to tell if your images and text were finished correctly or not and how to deepen or lighten embossing etc.. It was a thorough course and Carolyn's huge selection of notes that came with it will be invaluable for future reference. Letterpress is a relief form of printing and I enjoyed getting the chance to try my hand at a printing process which is not often available for people to learn through institutions, especially in Australia. The whole weekend was immensely satisfying and I came back with some wonderful images and samples from the other students who took part also (sorry, no sneak peaks at what I did as these are Xmas presents!). Below, however, are some images from the weekend in the studio:

Great range of type to play with!

Helen on the Vandercook

The Platen Press

Carolyn setting type and adding furniture prior to printing

Monday was a slightly nerve wracking day as we had the painter out fixing our window frames and undercoating them in preparation for our windows which have been taken away for restoring (they are the original ones from the workers cottage). This was not the nerve wracking part - what was worrying was that we were (and did eventually get) expecting a thunderstorm to come through that afternoon and all the windows were completely open with no way of closing them up except for reboarding them up!! The painters were not quite able to finish the job before it became apparent that we would need to close shop but at least the windows were safely closed up again before the storm swept through. If you'd like to read more about how Myrtle Street Studio fared on Monday evening then just click to the blog here.

At the moment I've just got my brand new Adobe Photoshop Suite installed and am starting to play around with the drawings I have from Cape Hillsborough - learning how to create patterns with them. This is the next stage in the development of the 'Coastliners' series as I begin to create patterns from the natural forms found while at the coast. To me, the process of doing this is like domesticating nature - it is a metaphor for me to do with how I feel when I get back from being in a wild place, like I too am being domesticated back into suburban living - slowly loosing my connections to nature. In some ways it also references the connections associated with domination and control of nature as exemplified in the formal French gardens of the 17th and 18th centuries - somewhat applied to myself also. These highly patterned gardens were used to literally tame wilderness areas and make them appear less fearsome and unwelcoming - in the end demonstrating power and domination over the landscape as opposed to harmonising with it. I'm concentrating on this area of the prints at the moment as I want this layer to sit subliminally and sometimes overtly into the final prints as layers. Will try to get some examples online before the end of the week!

Not much time left though as after Saturday I will be away for two weeks overseas. Not sure if I'll have much access to the internet while I am away but if I do I will try and post some of my adventures while over there!

Processing

I've been doing a bit of personal processing this last week while continuing to work on the linocuts which form part of the imagery in 'Coastliners', my latest series. I really enjoy this part of the process where you have finally established the direction you are heading with the work at hand and have made forward and convincing progress to the point where you are really excited about what will eventually be the finished works. At this point it can also be very frustrating if you are delayed or can't for some reason work on these pieces as by now I am in the groove (to use a sailing term).

While I've been creating the linocuts, I've been considering where this work is taking me. I travel a lot and in the back of my head is a visual map of all the places and experiences I have garnered along the way. I have a friend who's practice partially revolves around the 'found objects' she picks up off the streets. I am slowly realising that my 'found objects' are not objects, they are instead those experiences of place and time - which much like my friend, I gather up and store in my head for later analysis and interpretation. Much like that stamp box from my childhood, each image can be used at will in different combinations to create a story. I am drawn more to the natural environment than the man-made, I search out little bits of green and delight in seeing plants where they 'should not be'... In turn, my background as a designer in the construction industry gives me a great appreciation for well-designed space. I like to compare how these spaces evolved from or were influenced by the environment around them. What they reflect of that larger space. I enjoy in my travels the places where man has intervened in or left nature alone and what reasons there are for this - beauty is a big winner here fortunately. I like seeing the connection we still have with our environment... I think this might just be where my current art fits in.

Two interesting things from this last week. A discussion with creative friends on the weekend about the pros and cons of keeping sketch books. I war with myself occasionally over this one. I tend not to keep a 'sketchbook' as such mainly because I don't think one book is sufficient to cover what I want to do each day. I like using different papers and some of the materials I dabble with need something far stronger than what your average sketchbook could handle. Instead, I have a reporters moleskin which keeps my written thoughts, an A4 slip folder for all the bits and pieces I collect and photograph, and a larger A3 folder which I pop my sketches into. I date the slips as I put the work in so I have an inventory and can lay all three out together at a date and see what I was up too. I do this by project as opposed to a linear timeline. Occasionally I wonder if this is a lazy approach - I've heard and read many people's opinions on the virtues of daily drawing but to be honest, most of my sketching occurs during or just after a trip or if I am inspired by something and must get it down on paper. Or, when I am trying to figure out how to make a piece 'work' and a quick sketch often does the trick to process this. I'd love to know other artist's thoughts on this, especially printmakers!

The second interesting conversation from the weekend, about ritual, stemming partially from my feeling a severe lack of it at the moment!! As it so happens, Myrtle Street Studio is back in motion, and I'm really happy on one hand as it means we are moving forward again with this. But on the other hand it has interrupted my work flow and morning/afternoon rituals that help make me most productive during a day. Feeling on one hand elated at the space moving forward and disgruntled as my days are punctuated with noise, dust and inability to print at will. Don't get me wrong, I know it will be well worth it and very necessary but I am discovering that I truly am a creature of habit :)

The photo's show a little bit more of what I have been up to when I could get to the press. Slightly washed out as we have no windows at the moment (they are boarded up) turning our usually airy home into a dark cavern. I still haven't got to the etchings yet (made a last minute change to how I want to approach them and require more copper) but hope you enjoy the linocuts I've been working on (shown in this post) in the meantime.