A miscellany of colour woodcuts (before 1930)

Walter J. Phillips (1884-1963) was my introduction to colour woodcuts, encountered at the Bow Museum in Calgary. He had moved to Canada from Scotland, and was able to make a living through his art even during the Depression. See his oeuvre at sharecom.ca/phillips/ and read his "The technique of the colour woodcut" (1926) here.

Karlukwees (1926) by Walter J Phillips - "the snow was artistic licence" (via)

New to me in this technical niche is George Scott Ingles, encountered serendipitously online at the excellent "Modern Printmakers" blog (from which most of these images are borrowed). He too came from Scotland, graduating from the Royal College (in London) in 1900. A teacher, mostly at the Leicester School of Art, he started making woodcuts in his 50s, exhibiting them 1927-30. His output is not huge.

Some more prolific woodcut makers, encountered while hopping from link to link for this post - John Platt (1886-1967), Kenneth Broad, Ethel Kirkpatrick (1869-1966), Ida Kirkpatrick (1867-1950), Allen Seaby (1867-1953), Edward Loxton Knight (1905-1993), Mabel Royds (1874-1941), Meryl Watts (1910 - 1992) ... there are a plethora, and this little listing is the tip of the iceberg. Choosing a few images from the many now available on the internet is a bit random, but might whet the appetite to see more....

"The Coach" by Kenneth Broad is based on a wooden model he owned (via)

Mabel Royds based some of her woodcuts on her travels in India and Tibet

John Platt taught at the Blackheath School of Art (from 1929) and started making woodcuts in 1916. "The Giant Stride" is seminal (via)

As well as London, Ethel Kirkpatrick made woodcuts of St Ives, Venice, Switzerland...

Often with these artists, no one seems to know when they learned to make colour woodcuts, but they certainly seem to be linked through art schools attended or taught at.

Frank Morley Fletcher (1866-1949) had a successful teaching career based on practical knowledge of woodblock printing in the Japanese manner. He published a handbook, Woodblock Printing, in 1916. His followers became known as "the Anglo-Japanese".

Fletcher's  Flood-gates was published in 1898 (via)

The Colour Woodcut Society had its first exhibition in 1920 and eighth in 1927 - some exhibitors: John Platt, Allen Seaby, Yoshihjiro Urushibara, Lizzie Austen Brown, Geraldine Maunsell, Mary Creighton McDowall, Phillip Needell, Arthur Rigden Read, Arabella Rankin, Ethel Kirkpatrick. The secessionist Society of Graver-Printers in Colour (more than just woodcuts, colour intaglio also) was having its 14th annual exhibition in 1929

William Nicholson saw some woodblocks in a bookshop in the very early 1890s, the story goes, "planed down a surface of a piece of wood, and set about altering the course of European printmaking with a penknife and a nail." Woodblocks had been used for printing chapbooks - cheap literature; "Nicholson adapted the chapbook style with inventiveness and panache."

Although British interest in colour woodcuts originated in the late 19th century Japonism movement and ukiyo-e woodcuts, this interest - and the technique -  wasn't confined to the UK, but affected artists in Europe and the USA.

Campbell Grant studied under Fletcher at Santa Barbara in 1930 and went on
 to work as an animator for Walt Disney

Some German practitioners: Paul Leschhorn (1876-1951), Hans Neumann (1873 - 1957), Oscar Droege (1898 - 1982), Emil Orlik (1870-1932)

Orlik's Gossiping Women, 1896

"A unique sense of varying light and atmosphere" in Leschhorn's woodcuts

A few exhibitions to see in London

Boro, Somerset House, 2-26 April

Confiscation Cabinets, Museum of Childhood, till 1 June

British Drawings 1600 to the present, V&A, till 13 April

Momentum at the Curve, Barbican, till 1 June

Asia House Fair, New Cavendish Street W1, 28-30 March

Ceramic Art London, Royal College of Art, 4-6 April

Martin Creed, Hayward Gallery, till 5 May

Renaissance Impressions, Royal Academy, till June 8

Hiding work (and self) away

The title of this post could be "Can anyone create in a vacuum?" - or, "Does anyone appreciate my work?"

(via)

It's about how important it is to have your work seen by other eyes (or heard by other ears); how important it is to "get it out there" in some way, and to have the benefit of having it looked at, acknowledged, recognised, validated. Not necessarily to show it in a proper exhibition ... and certainly not having it "critiqued".

This being-seen probably requires being part of a group, or having friends with similar interests (which friends usually do). Friends are likely to be kind and non-judgmental, but showing to groups can be more difficult. Why do people hang back? "My work's not good enough to show to people" is a fear we all have; "they'll criticise it, they'll think bad things about me, I won't be able to face them again." (Really? Is everyone so judgmental and/or rude?)

What's more likely to happen, especially in interest groups that have been set up for camaraderie and support, is that people will find something to like about the work, and will comment on that aspect. They know about "do as you would be done by", after all. Having the work seen, and hearing a comment or two, will acknowledge our efforts and feed our motivation to continue making.

I think everyone needs that acknowledgment: even the obsessed artist who seems to thrive as a loner  doesn't want to be overlooked.

These thoughts arise from something heard in the excellent "Essay" series on Radio 3. Sarah Walker was talking about the composer John White (bbc.co.uk/programmes/b03y3bx0), and about the importance of composers' "buddy system".

The disparate elements in White's work are held together by his enthusiasm, she said; he's
"part of a community of composers who operate on an ethos of mutual support: 'I'll play your piece, you play mine.' I believe that this is a key factor in his creative success. John and his composing colleagues ... have a sort of buddy system: it's not to do with feedback, it's to do with listening. As John once said to me, "when a friend speaks to me, I don't criticise their conversation, I listen." So every new work has at least one pair of ears that are longing to hear it, just as a friend longs to catch up with your news. I've come to suspect that the buddy system is a crucial one in every art form. Every piece of work needs a non-judgmental recipient to complete the circuit, and the idea of non-judgmental is very important. I once read a fascinating bit of research where it was discovered that young children, and chimpanzees, who were given paints and paper would create balanced bands of colour in a state of blissful concentration - but when a reward was offered for the work, everything changed: the painter would now produce only the bare minimum that would satisfy the rewarder. The state of intense passion would die away, and greater rewards - or punishments - would have to be offered for the now boring activity to continue."

It's a colour thing

Passing the dishes on the drainboard, I enjoyed how the colours were working together - the blues and "greys" of glass and metal, with a highlight of red, and not to overlook the xhite. Possibly the dish-shapes - curvy, rounded - reinforce this. And the dots and lines. But mostly it's a colour thing.

Crockery and cutlery in and out of the sink can be one of those sources of small daily pleasure. And every piece has a story - finding the three swedish triangular bowls in a charity shop in Morden, for instance, one wintery evening when I was "writing the lines" ... or buying the ridged glasses in a sale at Heals. The intensely experienced, well remembered - and yet, untold - aspects of those stories colour colour the perception.

The story of "museum-maze" finishes a chapter

They do say: Read the rules carefully! - which I hadn't done ... so it's no surprise that, on revisiting them, I noticed the emphasis on "inspired by the V&A's collections" - and the need for an item number that the submitted work was inspired by.

Some panicky online search found this - museum no. A.3-2010 -

a mosaic panel by Jesse Rust, made most probably as a trade sample by the owner of the London Vitreous mosaic company, sometime between 1860 and 1890. It shows the kind of motifs that were used in the mosaic floors - and in the tiled floors as well.

Jesse - might that have been a woman? Mosaics were considered "a suitable job for a woman" - and it was a woman who founded a paving-stone company ... or invented a non-slip material ... in the 19th century ... which unfortunately I can't find details of, but remember this factoid from years ago. No, Jesse is male, and the company was located in Battersea.

Undaunted, I carried on - printing the eight pages of photos on the laser printer and waxing them carefully ... but too much of the toner came off and the pages look splodgy.

Tried printing on our inkjet, but it has "issues" and left white lines

... so splodgy it will have to be, for now, and if this gets accepted for the show, I'll have time to print, wax, and stitch again. The stitching is a simple line along the bottom of the pictures - of course when the book is folded up, the stitching appears and disappears in various directions.

Attempt at a photo setup -

too gloomy! It needs to be light ... and what should come to hand but an offcut of perspex, which fit perfectly into the bottom of a picture frame and could be propped up with a stick -

Now the filling in of the form... "Tell us why you chose this piece and how it inspired you":

The motifs in the panel are related to the mosaic floors of the museum, which have an interesting history - many of the mosaic floors were made by women in prison and brought to the museum in sections.

Visitors walk over the floors without really noticing them, concentrating on the displays or on finding their way through the maze of rooms, their destination often the shop or cafe ("a museum is more than its collections").

"Walking the Museum Maze" brings together the floors of the V&A and their current users, linking them to their designers and makers and the many people who have walked through the museum throughout the years.

The book is a complex leporello format, needing turning in the hand when read page by page, just as a museum visitor's path will twist through rooms and along corridors. Photographs were digitally printed and the paper then waxed; the transparency of the book (and its perspex shelf) evokes the way that floors, however decorative, quickly go unnoticed. The thread path acts like a map to orient the reader/viewer.

This work is one of a series of books and animations set in London museums, examining movement in or between them.

200 words exactly - the submission form makes sure you can't write any more than that.

Three photos - this and two detail shots- are attached, carefully avoiding showing the splodgy bits.

And off it went - a day before the deadline!

Alas, dear readers, this isn't entirely the end of the story ... to quote myself: "This work is one of a series of books and animations set in London museums, examining movement in or between them." It's a plan for the work for the rest of the course.

On coming across this image (by Palestinian artist Khaled Hourani, from here)

I reconsidered whether the "maze" could be represented in 2D, on a flat sheet. As I now have time on my hands - and  there were leftover printouts - I patched them together ("magic" sellotape on the back) and used the dressmaker's wheel to draw in the "path".

Not worth the effort! ... still, it's nice to be able to act on an idea instantly.

Moving on to something else now. [Sighs of relief all round.]

Poetry Thursday - London, "grey to pearl and pearl to gold"

the view of "Eldorado" from high up on Highgate Hill (via)

As I came down the Highgate Hill,
The Highgate Hill, the Highgate Hill,
As I came down the Highgate Hill
I met the sun’s bravado,
And saw below me, fold on fold,
Grey to pearl and pearl to gold,
This London like a land of old,
The land of Eldorado.

Henry Howarth Bashford, ‘Romances’ (via)

Highgate Hill is within walking distance of my own eyrie, so these lines really resonate with me. But who was Henry Howarth Bashford? He is now most remembered as "Augustus Carp", but was a physian in his other life - the non-writerly life, that is; he was King George VI's doctor, and one of the pioneers of industrial medicine, mining the records held by the Post Office Medical Service, for which he worked until 1943. 

His dates are 1880-1961, and we learn from his obituary that he was the grandson of a naval officer wounded at Trafalgar, and there were at least two bishops in his mother's side of the family. When he was 7 years old, one of his teachers said he lacked ambition (what did he know? things seem to have turned out very different for Henry). At the age of 15 he went to the snow-covered prairies of Canada to work as a farm labourer, and back in London qualified as a doctor in 1904. He "always" took three months holiday, cycling all over England and Scotland, and sometimes working as a farmhand again.

Sir Henry was knighted in 1938. He had been chief medical officer to the Post Office (1933-43), the Treasury medical advisor 1943-4,5 and was the honorary physician to King George VI, 1941-44. He retired to Easton Royal, Wiltshire, where there is a blue plaque to him.

Sequencing the museum-maze photos

With over 50 photos chosen, and the file organised in photo-number order rather than in any way corresponding to the museum itself ... where to start?

At the entrance - that page was easy enough to put together, but it quickly became apparent that some sort of system was needed. The photos needed to be grouped by type of floor so that they could make some sort of sense, should anyone actually "read" the book.

First I tried putting them on the Desktop, in order to be able to move them around manually - but found they were too small to see! -

Next bright idea: put them in a folder, fiddle around with icon size to make it all fit on the screen, hit the PrtSc key, go into Photoshop to put the screengrab into a new file, and print out, with the photo numbers underneath. 

Fitted onto one page,  again it was too small to work from -

More fiddling around with screen size to get the icons large enough, and then printed out on four sheets of paper -

The missing file numbers added manually ... the sheets cut up ... the images already used taken out, and those left arranged by type of floor -

 ...then put into sequence for each page, and the images numbered by page and position, and these numbers written onto the page of thumbnails -

... and as a check, each page was given a colour and the thumbnails colour-coded. I got to use my neglected Prismacolour pencils (love their waxiness) -

Next step: moving the correct photos onto the right page, in the right orientation.

It quickly becomes apparent that instead of cropping the photos to 1600 pixels by 800 pixels, I should have cropped them to the measurements of the boxes on the InDesign page 160mm x 80mm. Duh. This could have saved a lot of resizing!

But then I discovered that you can use a previous version of the "filled" template [remember to save it with a new file name first!] and Ctl+D to "place" each new photo. Clicking on where you want the photo, then "placing" it, magically makes it the right size and orientation!

With the colour-coded sheet of thumbnails, finding the right photos and putting them onto the page is going quickly.

"Automatic" editing in the museum-maze

With dozens of photos to manipulate - call it enhancement, perhaps? - you get into an automatic routine. Here's my process.

Copy the chosen photos to a separate folder. Choosing them is somewhat intuitive - "I'll have this one, but not that". I'm trying to get all the floor types (mosaic, tile, parquet, marble, stone, linoleum) and a range of size and positions of legs/feet.

With the photos safely in their folder, I open groups of 8 or 10 at once into Photoshop, then follow the routine:

1. Image -Mode - Grayscale (click)

2. "automatic crop" - just under the blue PS icon at top left is the crop symbol, and to the right of it are the little white boxes where you set the dimensions; here they are 1600 pixels wide by 800 pixels high, at a resolution of 250 pixels per inch (for printing) -

The file started out quite large, so even if my crop is of less than the width of the photo, there will be enough pixels to keep a clear image. Using the fixed dimensions means you can change the crop quickly by moving one corner, or try it in different parts of the image (when satisfied: click)

3. Ctl+L brings up the Levels box, for adjusting dark/light -

If you look closely at the Levels box (click on the photo to enlarge), you'll see that the white slider on the right has been moved to the left, to where the "dark bit" of the histogram starts - this lightens the entire image. 

4. Save a copy of the image - the keystrokes (on the PC) are Alt+Ctl+S - they soon become automatic!

Making this screengrab, I noticed for the first time that you can simply tick the "save as copy" box near the bottom ... this adds "copy" to the filename shown - much quicker! I've been renaming the file by adding an "a" after its original filename. (Click, then close the file - the keystroke is Ctrl+W.)

The advantage of doing each photo individually [there is such a thing as Batch Mode] is not only that each needs a different kind of adjustment - but as you're doing the actions, you're noticing things, almost subconsciously. The cropping puts the legs in a certain place, includes a certain amount of distance and of, eg, walls of corridors - the subconscious is keeping a tally (eg, too many legs on the left; not enough of this kind of floor yet). 

Even though I dreaded the prospect of choosing the "right" photos, it's starting to happen ... it's not about choosing the "perfect" photos, it's just a matter of making these as good as they can be in themselves and in combination with the others. 

The next challenge is to decide how many images are needed - how much can be taken out ... and which ones don't add to the desired outcome.

Book fair, Hadleigh

A pleasant day - with pleasant people at a pleasant venue. I had Sewing Companions, Binders Keepers, and the clay books.

Views from where I stood -- in the morning -

and in the afternoon ... sunlight streaming in all day, and a steady stream of visitors -

The main attraction at my table was the clay books (and clay pages), with Binders Keepers in the little cabinet, and Sewing Companions and needle books in the bigger one. And a few bits on the wall behind, including another outing for "The Journey to the Studio" -

Lots of books everywhere, and somehow I didn't take many photos, but you can see more on the artbookart facebook page and website.

sketchbooks by Karen Apps

Self Assembly Mumbai Dwelling by Gwen Simpson

Chelmsford Library by Gwen Simpson

surpisingly strong eggshells (papier mache) by Chris Ruston

It was good to have a chance to chat with the other exhibitors, especially Susan Allen to one side of my table and Cherry Hall on the other.

(Linked to Off the Wall Fridays, a resource for sharing textile art.)

Fun with letters

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that when there is an upcoming deadline, it is important to distract oneself with something totally unrelated to the deadline task. 

Thus, after a conversation with Hilary about the sad lack of contributions of "letters" for the Contemporary Quilt banner, which she will be sewing together, I resolved to make some, and had a happy hour using up scraps already backed with fusible web, making a crazy-patchwork sort of cloth -

out of which some letters were cut (most shapes derived via typefaces available in InDesign, very much enlarged) -

These were put onto black cloth (size could be anything from 3" to 7" in either direction) -

and satin stitched from the selection of delicious colours in my tidied-up thread box -

It was quick and fun, but there's a sad side to the story....

The idea behind the banner, and the simple, quick task of making a letter (your choice of A, C, E, I, L, M, N, O, P, Q, R, T, U, Y - the letters in the name of the group) - was that anyone and everyone in the group could easily contribute.  It was a chance for as many members as possible to be included. But there have been contributions from only a tiny proportion of the 700 members. Perhaps like me they forgot about the cut-off date; perhaps the wide-open nature of the project (any technique, the range of possible size) made it daunting - too much choice! Or is the task too simple to bother with - is it not enough of a challenge? Was it that the contributions were anonymous, makers not given credit?

In any case, the poor turnout is a real disappointment - this "group" project doesn't have "group" participation, and is not representative of the membership. Last time letters for a banner were needed, people were given the fabric and a pattern, and supplied enough for four banners - and that design has been used for various CQ websites -

If the letters I'm sending aren't used, no matter. Perhaps after making the needed banner, Hilary will pass the project on to someone else to continue, and there'll be another call - and more response.

What's happening with "museum maze"?

Only a few days to go before the submission deadline for "Inspired by the V&A" ... and I've been letting myself be distracted. Reminder to self: Focus. Focus! 

But a little wandering can be helpful. Chillida has popped into view, and has a bearing on this project. 

The images are from his book Aromas ("a guide to walking through the uncertain path of creation") - looking like floorplans or perhaps mental maps, or even some sort of archeology. Something to keep in mind for later development of this project.

This phase is still about walking on the various floors of the museum. The "ghost legs" book is meant for stitching into, which I'll do next.

My search for the dressmaker's wheel (to prick a line of holes) led to all kinds of discoveries - and finally to the wheel itself. Not that it was essential, but I had convinced myself that it was. As soon as it was found ... its importance diminished. Reality took over.

It's not that I don't have a zillion photos to work with, to choose from - I've been happily snapping feet on floors -

Unfortunately those were taken at Tate Britain (outside the coffee shop). Again, that graphic floor is something for "later"...

These are from the V&A, the entrance hall - 

My favourite set is taken where a swing double door leads to the loos - there's a lot of traffic, and people are walking at speed, indeed they almost disappear from the photo -

Let's see what these look like in monochrome -

Is it possible to keep the legs/people in colour? The lower right pic had a wonderful orange bag.