Book du jour - leaf printing

A diversion perhaps. Waiting for the train, I noticed some bramble leaves riddled with holes and had the urge to print them. On getting home I squeezed some ink onto a sheet of plastic, ran a brayer over it, laid the leaf on tissue paper (on top of a newspaper), and rolled ink over it, then turned the leaf over and rolled a clean (smaller) roller over that.

The holes show up well when the leaf itself is printed but have to be quite big to show up in the negative print. Interestingly, the marks of the veins that get transferred to the roller are printed if you keep rolling.

"Women's work"

Women's Work (paper on cloth; photo from here)

Tom Phillips' quilt, shown at the RA Summer Exhibition in 1997, produced an ironic comment from art critic Brian Sewell: he singled it out in the Evening Standard as an object more appropriate to a women's institute than an art gallery, "thereby giving it some credentials of success," says the artist (read the rest of his statement on the work here).

the silkscreen version (photo from here)

The historical connection between seamstresses and prostitutes informs the work - as does the moment in time when he formed his collection of these "calling cards". In the 1980s and 90s the phone booths abounded with these colourful scraps. The cards, as well as the phone booths themselves, seem to have more or less disappeared - or have the phone booths just got rarer and the cards more colourful?

glossy cards sprang up in the mid-nineties (photo from here)

Philips said in his 1999 essay on "tart art":  "As a result of a typically British act of backfiring censorship, a busy folk art arose with its own chapbook-like style of design and typography and its own verbal code."


"The drive for good studio economics" (and the stealth bomber's "irony of aesthetics") led to the cards that weren't used in Women's Work being used in Manpower:

Quote and questions

photo found by searching "useful beautiful need"

“Only the useless is truly beautiful. Everything useful is ugly since it is the expression of a need, and a man’s needs are, like his pitiful, infirm nature, ignoble and disgusting. The most useful place in the house is the latrine.”  

Theopile Gautier wrote this in 1835. Was he right? How does it fit in with William Morris's "Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful” - written half a century later? Does it apply today, does it apply to art? Can / should art be useful? Can / should art be beautiful?

Is the expression of a need necessarily ugly?

Undiscovered territory

My new toy is a pedometer. This is the sort of number of steps I'm aiming to reach at the end of each day, but it's all too easy to rack up 600 (or less) on a day spent mainly in kitchen and studio.

So I'm exploring the neighbourhood - walking to nearby charity shops. Currently the favourite route is to Muswell Hill, where there are several charity shops - and friends to meet for coffee.

7 minutes to drive, 45 minutes to walk

On the way back down the hill, I like to go through the mysterious leafiness of Queens Wood, and through the suburban back streets, collecting house-numbers-on-gates:

These walks have led to various mapping ideas, which could be part of the "everyday journeys" project, but I'm trying to resist that impulse; trying to keep focused on the "memory loss/language loss" everyday-journey of ageing.

Unfortunately one of the charity shops I pass had a box of old maps in the window - irresistible -

they make an excellent  accompaniment to breakfast

Curious to see the layout of the back streets I'd been following, I not only went online but opened the A-Z and traced a map of the area on which to record future wanderings -

the little tracing is "a walk around the block"

And while the white pen was handy ... how would it look with the type ...

inappropriate for the subject matter, but ...

This is how ideas and projects morph - and why much "research" falls by the wayside (or should). During the walk is a good time to think about what is worth developing - you think in a different way while you're on the move.

Reading Chillida

Eduardo Chillida is one of my favourite sculptors and I was pleased to find this book of his writings in the college library (though it's hard to photograph the printed-acetate cover) - 

One section has facsimiles of manuscript pages, translated -

"Beyond and behind knowledge there is a language", he wrote, and also:

Each work a step between the known and the neglected.

I know the work before I make it, but I do not know what it will be like, nor do I want to. I know its aroma.

The work dies when it is finished because until then it has had a continuous life and has been in a process of transformation.

If you believe you are done, you run the risk of eluding a process.

Almost everything can be resolved by taking away.

   As you do not subtract

   you are finished

   As you do not erase

   you are finished

Book du jour - editioning "Seepage"

After laying out and collating the pages of Seepage, I found they made 10 copies of 9 pages each, and hung them up so the ink could get really dry -

The spare pages are of varying quality - indeed, some of the pages in the books are less good than I would have liked. Perhaps the edition will end up smaller than 10. Perhaps I'll be sloppy and leave those pages in - you know how it is when you're fed up with a project, you just want it done -

So far, I've learnt a lot in producing this book - about systematic tidiness (so the ink doesn't transfer to somewhere it's not wanted); about inking up (to get nice dark prints); about proofing till it's perfect; about getting lines of type to behave (not always possible if you're printing their underneath); about being careful and patient and letting the ink dry (too many pages had the interleaved newsprint stuck to them because they were forgotten overnight, squished in my bag). Primarily, I've learnt not to use tracing paper again!

Next steps, next week (after reconsidering edition size):  stack the pages, carefully aligned;  trim;  stitch (a line of machine stitch on the left).

And then - make the sleeve. It will need some further typesetting and printing. Ideally it will be tracing paper - beautifully printed! - but there is the problem that glue will make the paper buckle, and tape will be visible -- and I don't want to use stitch on the sleeve.  Or ...? Whether to use stitch might be worth reconsidering ...

Local news

 

Book du jour - roadmap

Turn the page and you see that the Irish Sea off Wales has chunks missing

Just a bit of fun with a road atlas - taking the route numbers off the roads, to make the map less useful for drivers. The "touristy bits" - names of historic houses etc - were removed too. (Theoretical link: Tim Ingold's "Lines" book - he talks about nomadic mapping being about wandering over a recognisable area, whereas maps in industrialised societies are about having directions for getting from place to place.)

This map is meant to become less useful, indeed less interesting, with each level of removal. Taking out the names of towns and villages is the next logical step, but apart from the indications of settlement would there be anything left? Even the roads would be cut through. (Try it on a less populated area...)

Perhaps what needs removing next is the names of towns that would be on signposts on the major roads. Which sets me thinking about those lovely old signposts with lovely old village names...

I chose that page in the old road atlas (1980s?) because it's the area covered by WG Sebald's "Rings of Saturn". Coming at that book from the literature end of things, this blogger has plotted the area with googlemaps -

That's obviously a very different project than my dabblings with the scalpel - a much more interesting project.

Wilson's Road show and crit

Camberwell MA printmakers and book arts - this "interim" show is on till 21 June, 1-5 pm weekdays. It takes place on two floors, along the corridors, with some work in vitrines or on tables. These photos, a selection of the work, were taken during the setting-up - some show the temporary labels and work still not unwrapped ...

My "Memory Overload" is at the very end of the lower floor corridor, facing the doors. It amused me to find that the glass case was missing the glass on that side. It takes a while to realise this (we get used to editing out the reflections when looking at work behind glass) - but makes it possible to pull out an inky book for handling. It also made it possible for someone to leave their cup of tea in there while putting their piece up on the wall; fortunately the cup didn't leave a ring...

The private view passed in a haze. In the afternoon, Paul Coldwell had been round with small groups to do crits - this was the highlight of the whole experience for me. It was so interesting to hear what people had to say about their own work, and what aspects he focused on. One strategy he mentioned was for printmakers to exchange plates and ink up someone else's plate, so that you can see whether "it" is there in your plate - a way to get clear about what you want in your work. Another is to get together with other people interested in the same theme - the interchange will lead to a kind of competitiveness that raises the standard for everyone. And another strategy: to do lots of drawings (of the same subject) as a warm-up - this develops a muscle memory - and the drawing to choose to work from is the one that doesn't work as it is...

Also from my notes:
- keep it open and don't get too aesthetic
-wondering DOING seeing
-being minimal = when everything in the work is crucial
-setting out to do something and being clear what that is
-engage with the whole picture - understand why the central image is important

Importantly: thinking about how something will be presented from the outset; then everything is fixed when you come to the conclusion of making of the work. (And you'll know it's really finished - and be able to "take it to the end" rather than abandonning it.)

As for my own piece - right up until I started speaking, I wasn't sure what to say about it, and was so distracted I couldn't focus on making sure I said "the one thing I want people to know about it" - nor can I remember what I said, and what they said!

Now that the dust has settled a bit, I think that what I want the piece to "say" or show is the tension between our memories filling up with the things we need to know or want to remember and the kind of "cultural memory" that is (or was) carried in books. With digital information sources, there's so much "information" - of all levels of "importance" - that we no longer need to keep it in our memory ... it's immediately burnt away. So the little books are a reduction of the possibilities of individual memory, as well as the negation of (previously) important knowledge. The bound-together pages make them separate and individual; their tumbled arrangement is a reflection of chaos at any level you like...

That idea of cultural memory vs individual experience/memory doesn't really fit in with The MA Project - I have to keep reminding myself of The Project, the need to focus on the theme - "everyday journeys; everyone's everyday journey of ageing, especially memory loss" - and the Memory Overload piece did start with the idea of erasure of specific facts/information - especially words, language. It simply evolved into something a bit different. What it now "says" isn't particularly clear, I agree - it's not minimal enough, too many variables are at work, leading to too many possible "meanings". Sure, the viewer takes what they want - they make their own meaning - I think the ideal is when the viewer can make a meaning but then starts to question that, so that their interpretation of the work evolves. Which leads us to the question - what will keep the viewer looking and thinking?

Book du jour - leaf printing

End-stage language failure: obscured and obliterated

The Seepage project has been printed - despite problems with getting the turned-over type to print as "words" rather than as "letters" (ie, separated - as above). The type isn't standing square on its feet, the way it would be if those were the letters being printed. But this will have to do!

Rather than breaking up the type and putting it away, and moving on to something else already in progress, I used a spare hour to print on the undersides of a couple of dozen leaves collected on the way in to college, slipping them under the paper to leave a kind of stencil shape.

Printing with the actual leaves simply didn't work, despite height adjustments of typebed and roller. Anyway, leaf prints are rather predictable, and have been done more easily (and with an end result in mind) in other ways.

I have absolutely no idea what to do with these printed leaves and printed pages - but the leaves are being pressed under a heavy weight, and the pages - on tracing paper - are spread out to dry.

I simply printed them because I could...

Balls of words

The cone of one-ply wool, £1 at a charity shop, gives me something to do while watching tv at the weekend - finger crocheting, and winding it into a ball. It's the red thread of connectivity - can it connect words, thoughts?

And once you have words buried in the net of threads, isn't that like having them trapped in your brain, unable to retrieve them? What other materials can be used for the net -- and what should the words be, long uncommon ones, or the short ones that glue sentences and meaning together?

 I used the standfirsts and pull-quotes from the newspaper (larger type!) and cut them into single words and short phrases. The intransigent ball of lively fishing line is hard to keep from unravelling, throwing out a shower of short words as it leaps from your hand.

The long words are tied up with old rayon thread, from spools that are dusty and dull on the outside but become ever more gleaming on unwinding, parts that have been protected over the years and are finally seeing light of day -

only to be hidden again among the words that they are keeping hidden.

Displaying small textile pieces

Way back in April, at the Contemporary Quilt annual meeting, Marion showed one of her journal quilts on this handsome stand, made by her nephew (stuartmckinvenfurniture.com) - perfect for a changing display of those little quilts that many of us have piled up in the cupboard. He'll make the stands in various sizes and can be contacted here.

Book du jour - mostly numbers

"Getting Back to Sleep" is about the time spent lying awake in the middle of the night - yet another of the inflictions of advancing age. It's written on ledger paper, a sort of account book. This wasted time is literally spent, used up, gone forever - and to no purpose.

Rather than counting sheep, this method of getting to sleep is about counting backwards in 3s, 4s, even 7s - slightly boring but requiring enough attention that the crazy stuff that goes round&round as you lie there in the dark is crowded out. Numbers are numbing.

I used a random number table to select the starting point and the number to count back in multiples of. Each new "night" is marked with a date stamp, and the pencil (6B or 9B) starts out nice and sharp and gets blunter and more blurred, especially when the starting point is in the 900s and the counting is in 3s!

A few mistakes crept in, but I'm not saying where.

*Quick update - people have been sharing their own favourite ways of getting to sleep, or back to sleep. These include listening to music on their ipod
listening to classical music
side-effects of medication for other health issues
meditation - being careful not to use a "daytime" variation
telling themselves another chapter of an ongoing story
listing cities and town alphabetically
6 oz India Pale Ale

Emergency bag

Confetti = wedding. A lovely day - and only the fourth wedding I've been to (including my own). We baby-boomer hippy-generation folk aren't in the wedding habit.

On the morning of the day I realised I didn't have an appropriate handbag - or any pockets - and just about two hours for making one. The brocade is someone else's "scrap"; I added wadding and quilting - the quilting makes all the difference but took rather longer than expected. The handle is a narrow strip of industrial felt (of all things!), wrapped with thread to tone with the brocade and sewn hastily to the sides of the bag on the short train ride to the venue. Simple and effective, I thought; no time to dither or agonise on decisions like size. There's enough room for the essentials - camera, travel pass, purse, hanky, phone - and it isn't heavy, which makes a change.

A compendium of scrolls

My "book" output contains, on review, several scrolls - or potential scrolls. The  pieced-paper one is currently on hold. Last year's "sky birds" piece contains a scroll -

This acrylic example resurfaced recently; it's part of my "research" on "line as text" -

This screenprinted scroll of chinese paper could turn into "something", some day -

Which takes us to Chinese scrolls...

The scroll David Hockney is looking at is not "A day on the Grand Canal with the Emperor"!

Years ago the film of David Hockney looking at a Chinese scroll (subtitle: Surface is illusion but so is depth) made a deep impression, and recently a stunning work by by Tang Mingxiu seems to have brought scrolls into my subconscious. 

New kid on the block

The latest is based on colour catchers (ie, it's been through the wash!) which I've doused with ink. Strips of daily newspaper, and the weekend Review section, are attached with running stitch. Once the little pointy edges, where the paper strips turn back on themselves, suddenly revealed themselves, I was good to go with this project. Using the fixed size of the colour catchers was the other decisive factor. In an hour I can stitch about 5cm, and before it can meet the world it needs to be at least 3m long (=60 hours!) - currently I'm listening to radio quite a lot -

 Its working title is "The Journey to the Studio"; below is a possible idea for display (if used at all) -

Yesyes, it looks like one of those woven rag rugs. The thinking behind it is multi-faceted [ie, not yet too clear to me!] -
(1) The various materials it uses each have a history, just as we carry our own histories with us as we travel through life. The prewashed fabric, the pre-read newspapers, even the threads, which  once belonged to someone who had learned calligraphy from Edward Johnston -

(2) As it grows, the journey becomes longer, but the path gets easier. 

(3) Front and back - recto and verso - are the same, but individual. 

(4) The folded newspaper is hiding much more than it reveals - quite apart from it being taken out out context [this relates to my "journey of memory" thread]. 

(5) ? 

(6) ??

Chicane points - where the "road" turns back on itself

The starting point for this piece was a discussion of how difficult it is to actually get into the studio, especially if "the studio" is a room in your home. There's always laundry or something that you "should" be doing. I think of this piece as being something I can use to "settle myself" into being in the studio - leave it out the night before, or have it in a box ready to pull out and work on while thinking about the other things to be working on later. Having a nice cup of coffee and jotting notes or writing a list, in little breaks from stitching, for that first hour. Getting into a mindset. Well, that's the fantasy...!

Printed matter

Fun to make ... but how to use them? Appropriate text would be a good start...

Art I like - Fred Williams

Bush fire in Northern Territory (source)

Burnt landscape  (source)   

The burnt landscape exudes desolation just as Paul Nash's Totes Meer does.  

Fred Williams evolved a visual shorthand to represent the vulnerability of the vegetation. Is it that he's so economical with his brush strokes? Not really - it's more that he lets the negative space become an important element; something invisible is happening in that negative space. 

See many, many more of his wonderful Australian landscapes here, both paintings and prints. He's an artist I keep going back to.