Printmaking, December 08 - January 09

Shall we begin with the Knight bird and infant (working title) the one with the bubbles mentioned in yesterdays post. I would have liked to enter it for a competition but couldn't with it being in that state and , at that point in time thought it was irrepairable (sp?) although I have not finished the amendments to it so I can not say conclusively .....we shall see ! Can you see the BUBBLES !!??

This is a real life behind the scene affair because of what I am going to say i.e., the working title for the next print is " Meat Tray Experiment"!! It all goes back to Christmas when I decided to buy a ready made roast beef joint for us to enjoy. It came in a sturdy high walled metallic tray, probably thick aluminium foil. I cut the base out and thought it might come in useful to try to do some print stuff with.

I wrote on it with a 'biro' and then inked it up as per intaglio and to my surprise it worked. I placed various other collagraph plates and a hard ground copper plate there too. The string to tie it all together. I rubbed and rubbed the string in tissue paper so that it wouldn't be too soggy with ink, because I know from experience that this can be a problem. It was 'borderline' but I think it's just about OK. I made more of an effort with wiping the individual little elements as it was a monotone piece, using "q-tips" and soft tissue paper hankies.

Next the saline etch text plate, the writing on it was inscribed through a traditional hard ground, as so far, it's the best thing to work, I have found, for the process. (Far too many commas!!..... oh well). Saline etch is something I want to go back to - to experiment with more. I used offset of tinfoil and 'chine-colle inkjet' and the little 'crittur' is hard ground etched copper. And of course the red string offset - oh I do love my string !........ I just have a thing for it...cotton string. Just the thing in itself makes me happy.

Ta dah !! this Stitches print work is currently on exhibition in SYMMETRY an exhibition being presented at the Original Print Gallery in Dublin, Ireland It is additionally ( had to make another one!) on exhibition in a gallery in Leipzig, Germany. I say "tah dah" because it's one of the pieces that I have had a strong connection with out of the pieces I have made over the past few months. I made a smaller version of it which I submitted to the 7th British International Miniprint (full sordid details on my print studio blog ).

It was also made into an edition of prints on china paper for the inkteraction portfolio exchange that Melanie Yazzie invited me to participate in. Those prints had the red stitching too. I received the invite cards to the opening which is being held at the London Print Studio Gallery soon. I notice that Beauvais Lyon has his prints in an exhibition currently showing there which is linked to Darwin. It being his anniversary at the moment. I liked his works that were in our exhibition in Dalarnas in Falun Sweden also. (Grafic Biennial) They are seemingly real creatures although on further inspection are of a hybrid nature. Beauvais was in the book "Printmaking at the Edge" along with me and 43 other artists from around the World. Although a lot of them were from the USA.

The final print shown here is Rainbow House which I actually made to submit to the Wrexham Print International but it wasnt the one they selected - typical !!! and after all my trouble BUT ...it doesn't matter a bit because I really like it. In actual fact it got selected in any event for the No Toxico exhibition in Mexico There doesn't seem to be any images of the other artists in this exhibition which is so disapointing (sp?) !! in the age of the internet as we can't all 'make it' to Monterrey in Neuvo Leon, down Mexico way.!! Never mind there will be a catalog and hopefully I should be able to scan some images from that and show some of the pieces by the other selected participating artists. I really like to see what other people have done. They also selected Rainbow House in the Leipzig exhibition so I had to make a second version of that. It wasn't quite as lovely as the first one but I did my best. I also didnt really want to have 2 exactly the same.

Actually talking of scans and catalogs - I made a few scans from the excellent catalog that I am in through being selected for the Guanlan International Print exhibition and I MUST make a post about that. Such beautiful and excellent work I am honored to be amongst them.