Changes ??

 Just got an email through from Culture Inside which is just another one of those 'artists communities' websites that I was invited to join ages ago -  maybe 2 or 3 years ago.  As a matter of fact I did enter a competition that they organised for a project called Utopia/ Dystopia about a year ago, and had my work selected for inclusion in the exhibition in Luxembourg. 

"Why they so Shout?"     Igor Vaganov

Their current project, with the title "Changes"  was no doubt prompted by the uprisings taking place in the middle east and Africa.  Co incidentally I had decided to watch a Panorama report  on BBC1 television, about Syria.  "Syria: Inside the Secret Revolution - Panorama"

Reporter Jane Corbin with her team  (  scary profession war reporters !!! )  reported on the popular uprising in Syria, where for months people have been fighting back against President Assad's regime. Panorama's cameras went inside the country to tell the full story of those struggling against the dictator and the truth about his brutal crackdown against his own people.

And my god,  the people there are being completely brutalised and murdered by their so called leader Assad, excluding his cronies of course.

How can he stand the sight of his despicable self........  he has to maintain power at any cost.  That is not power that is utter repression and I hope the international criminal court in the Hague get hold of him and his henchman.    How can his wife ' Asma' known as "Emma" to her pals in London (she  was born and grew up in Acton, a bus ride away,  from where I used to live in London,  bear to have anything to do with this monster.  I wonder what she will say to Hafez, Zein and Karim about their daddy.  Here's a quote from her "All three monolithic religions teach us about the dignity of the human being, respect for others, openness and the value of human life".   Like me, she went to a christian school. and is a university of London graduate - mind you she did go into banking as a career so.............

cartoon by Ali Ferzat

If only it was this easy

Getting back to the Panorama reporter Jane Corbin, she set up an interview with a soldier who had defected and  he spoke of  colleagues being shot in the back if they were not cooperating by shooting the civilians - that 's why he felt,  he just had to  get out of the country and across the border.   Apparently he had requested that his face be concealed when the interview was broadcast.  He also relayed how the government hired thugs and civilians to pose as armed terrorists in siege situations ( video footage was shown of these 'poser' thugs )  and the soldiers would be told not to shoot at them as they were on the 'same side' as the soldiers - so the command was - "just shoot the civilians".   I am wondering what hole these vermin crawled out of  - perhaps they didn't like the salary being offered for mercenaries by Gadaffi or maybe there wasn't any more work available there.

There was mention made of a high up soldier in the army, Colonel Riad al-Asaad,  who had defected and is based in a bordering country and who is now obviously a wanted man by the Syrian regime.  He is recruiting defecting soldiers and others to form the "Free Syria Army",  in a bid to overthrow the Syrian regime.  He said that gradually an increasing number of soldiers WERE defecting.  However about 90% of the soldiers in the army are of the same tribal origin as Assad so that doesn't bode well unless their consciences  take the higher ground.   I fear its going to be a long and bloody struggle my heart goes out to them.

References:

Igor Vaganov:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Igor_Vaganov 

CultureInside:    http://www.cultureinside.com/homeen.aspx

BBC1 Panorama:    http://news.bbc.co.uk/panorama/

You Tube Syria videos :   http://youtu.be/mGW-V3t-waE

No Ideal place to Start

It's been months and months since I have truly been blogging and I do feel the loss of it.  Speaking of loss - last Friday my dearest fluffy 'furbee' friend Mister Toby passed away.

He has gone to Cat Heaven.  He was such a character and I was so SOH fond of him.  It's hard not to be reminded of him as he spent most of his time in this house.  Nearly everywhere I look,  I am reminded of him poor sweetie.  If I look out the front room window - I am reminded of  seeing him crossing the road from his folks house,  to come  back over to us.     If I look at the 'perches' in the kitchen ( a bit like cat feeding stations) I am reminded of him.   It is sad to think I will never see him again.
The photo here was taken in August 2010 just over a year ago where he looks reasonably healthy.  I loved how he'd actually kind of look at you.  Not all cats do that.   Towards the end he was looking terrible and had lost his 'pep'.  It's an awkward situation when you have a cat practically living in your house except he isn't actually your cat.    I had previously mentioned to D and H. our neighbours ( his owners)  that we were concerned and felt that things were not right with him.  I think it was only then that we became aware that he was already 16 years old - we hadn't realised he was that age.

Its such a dilemma where animals are concerned in that,  if they are still eating (which he was) we tend to think they are kind of OK, but he wasn't.  All the while there was a tumour growing  in his liver.

That's what D. our neighbour, said the vet told him.  He had taken Toby to the vets on the  previous Friday and they had kept him in,  over the weekend and then sent him home with a months worth of medication.  But from the time Toby came home, after that weekend of veterinary treatment in their hospital - he was still not himself.     I gave him a final pat on the head as he sat at the foot of the stairs in D.'s (my neighbour) house.   By then Toby was just existing his spirit had moved out of him - away into the ether.   I was surprised that he had survived even that far.  I had thought that he might have passed away over the weekend.  Must have been horrible for D. having taken him back up to the vets on that Friday because he 'd obviously got a lot worse.  It was then  that the vets along with D.  came to the conclusion that it'd be for the  best,  to put him out of his misery and D. left the building empty handed.
That's the obverse of loving - losing - but we had so many sweet treasured times together..................love you dear little Toby - I was blessed to have you as my little companion for these past 4 years.

Artists Books

Outside of this event - the last six months or so I have been working on making an edition of artists books for the BookArtObject project.   The first bound books I ever made.   I am still in the process of sending them out to my fellow participants and so have not  shown them online so as not to spoil the surprise.
I have been documenting the process somewhat taking the odd photo with my digital SLR  and have set up a blog especially for my bookart.  I will gradually build that up with additional info about previous bookart projects.  Previous works have mainly been accordion format apart from one that had papier mache shoes and a scroll.

  There were so many trials and tribulations that I had to go through in order to make these works.  Although I am aware that my craft skills in book making still have much room for improvement despite immense effort on my part
I was none the less quite pleased with the final 15 books.  So far, I have received  four of the other participants books......................I can not say that much more for now.  Our project is going to be on exhibition at Impact 7, the printmakers conference being held on this occasion in Melbourne Australia - if you happen to be in the neighbourhood pop in and if you go along to see thta exhibition - there are loads of them on their program - take a photo and email it to me.

References:

BookArtObject Website :        http://bookartobject.blogspot.com/


Impact 7, International Printmaking Conference:  http://impact7.org.au/exhibitions/index.html

The lost Hour (Wood intaglio)

I made this print towards the end of last year for a print exchange at Dundee Contemporary Art Print Studio, I spent ages trying to find out about doing this technique but quite honestly there isn't wasn't much available on the Internet never mind in any of the fairly extensive  collection of technical books i have on printmaking techniques.  I already had this piece of wood cut in a circle shape and it had the same image - although I changed it somewhat on the reverse side.  This I had printed as a relief print.  I have a few proofs of it somewhere and will add it into this post, when I come across it.  I have been prompted to post this image in response to a conversation that's currently going on in the Baren forum at the moment.

A course being offered by Hiromi paper is advertised as "drypoint wood block printmaking" and this piqued someones curiosity - well I think myself that it's going a bit far saying that you can do a drypoint using wood as your matrix.  I mean the burr and so on ??!!!   For the print shown here, I used a small scraper  tool (with a triangular shaft) to incise the main lines .  I also used a scalpel for the finer lines.  To achieve the various tones I used Lascaux acrylic hard ground, diluted to about 3 strengths.  I seem to remember the diameter of this circle is 17cm.

I tried to 'relate' to a paper Robot but it was an awful struggle !!

Well what I mean is ......... the participating artists, which included me, were all sent a package by M.U.B.E..  This is  the Museum  of Sculpture in Sao Paulo,  Brazil, where I have previously exhibited.

The idea or should I say 'brief' for this project  was that we would somehow 'transform' it by means of our own interventions with ideas / art materials and so on,  and so forth.

When it arrived in the post and I looked at it I remember tossing it aside and thinking oh my gawd I can't work with that horror !!

I considered not bothering to do it at all as I had so many things on my plate ( for a change!!) but then thought no - I have made a professional commitment and I should at the very least have a go at it.  If I then find that I really can't find a way to work with it - then I will withdraw.

Eventually managed to find instructions online and my clever friend Tatiana, who dropped round with her 5 year old son ( who loves all robot related matter)  put it together for me in no time.
So there it stood on my work surface  as a 3d cardboard robot and unfortunately I just didn't like the thing.  I imagine if I had - I might have given it a name.  So for now  it was just the "thing".

Eventually I decided that I could only work with it very much on my own terms as in I would take it apart lay it flat and then see if I could somehow make it into a collagraph plate of sorts.  The image above shows my initial  experiments with the lay-out of the pieces.   I thought  it  had the look of  South American iconography and textile designs so I started looking into that.  I came across some nice bits and pieces during the course of this research.

As I was doing this in a hurry I didn't take too much note of the sources and information regarding the little creatures that caught my eye.  Often they were just small details in a rug or a featured image on a piece of ceramic.  Made me remember a little figure I had used in my paintings when I was doing my bachelors degree and how I had found that quite liberating.  I had seen it on a billboard  poster, during the course of my long bus journey in North London up to the campus.  How wonderful it would have been to have access to the internet, at the time,  instead of 'lugging' huge piles of usually large heavy art books around in my shoulder bag which of course didn't do my back any good.

So I settled on a layout of sorts and stuck the pieces down onto some mill board.  I varnished it, back and front, and then proofed it but realized much to my annoyance (with myself) that of course the pieces were too raised up from the base plate.    It was a big plate and had taken me quite a while,  to ink up - so I thought "oh what the heck  - it's a unique piece of work I can just keep working on it 'as is' ".

Loved this little image with the jaguar warrior suit,  I came across too.    I seem to remember that these were the items that were placed in the burial site with the Aztec warriors and Lords.  A bit similar to the way the Ancient Egyptians "packed for the journey".     Mind you the Chinese did it in even more of a 'big way' as in,  when you consider the guy who had the Terracotta army created to accompany him to the afterlife - to ensure nobody tried to push him around.   Talk about being paranoid .......or maybe just O.T.T.

So that's what I did - I collaged it a little and also worked onto it using my trusty Carbothello pastel pencils (water soluble).  I got there in the end using five of the pieces from the pack.  I specifically wanted it to be a 'fold-out' print too so that it was like some map or thing that would be put into a pocket.  Hence the folds.

References:

Museu Brasileiro da Escultura   M.U.B.E.


Betty Esperanza's short Video made as part of making her  Troyart piece.

There were about 300 pieces in total in this exhibition and I just could not select  just one or two
pieces to include in this post - best to have a look at the project blog.

Troyart Blog     http://toymube.blogspot.com/

Gelatin monoprint with drypoint + Engraving on Foiled Card

Made this fairly recently- first the gelatin monoprint which I still have not really got to grips with.  I used the recipe as given by Linda Germain and had trouble getting the gelatin plate out of the flat container.  After about 3 attempts I finally got hold of a pink plastic tray from my good friend Tatiana and that worked.

The other problem I had, was with getting the water based speedball inks,  to roll onto the surface of the gelatin -  it just would not cooperate.
I then sent off for a rubber brayer - unfortunately I could only afford a small speedball one.  I have not tried it out yet as I have been otherwise engaged with making a whole heap of 'background plates'.  

These are on steel - that's after trying to do some aquatint sprays and etches on aluminium but they just didn't really 'take' and I got a horrible  straight line (with a blurred edge)  of unwanted tone ( a characteristic of the aluminium grain itself - I think)  so I have decided that, that's a wrap, at least where those plates  are concerned.  These were 'large-ish' plates by the way............. well 50 x 50 cm.  I tend to think that alumium is fine for medium to small size  plates but NOT good for large plates especially where the desired  areas of tonal etch are not interlinked.

Getting back to the gelatin monoprints.  Those that I did manage to do which were very much trials, were using water-colour paint and water based 'Caran D'ache' crayons.  I was working on a surface the size of approximately 30 x 45 cm so it was taking me a while to 'splodge up' enough colour from the little water colour pans and that was when I decided to refer back to Linda Germain's blog to look again at the materials she uses.  Speedball water based printing inks - so I ordered those.

The figure on the left was made using old "printers plates" originally used for commercial  lithographic printing.     I have had these plates for years  - I used to have those for when I taught monoprint classes but I  can no longer do these , because of my disability.

So as they are quite thin and lightweight (they are aluminium) I am easily able to cut them up, just using  a pair of scissors.  I had to paint this one with a couple of coats of acrylic hard ground (Lascaux) and then I scribed into it , which gave me the 'ink holding' lines.

It is very feint - this proof -  but I like how this integrates with the watery background.

The goat like figure on the right is made by scribing into 'foil-card'  such as you get with certain items of food packaging .  I can not remember which item of food it was - anyway it worked and what was good was that it didn't need varnishing.  It's a bit fragile though so it  had to be carefully cleaned by pouring veg oil onto a soft cloth and then quickly rubbing away the remaining etching ink. As opposed to drizzling oil onto it and then rubbing that with a cloth.  I have learned from experience that when cleaning collagraph plates which are on cardboard that its best to put a small amount of oil onto a soft cloth and then  quickly wipe away the remaining ink as if I am too generous with the oil it might seep into the lines in the print plate and basically ruin the plate for further use.  I did varnish the back of the plate for  protection easy cleaning and to add to its rigidity.