Magic of Monoprinting at TAA

I've spent the past 3 days at the bi-annual Textile & Art Academy, a residential art event held at St Peters School, Indooroopilly.

I ran a 2 day monoprinting workshop, a busy couple of days where everyone had fun producing some wonderful prints. 

Some photos from the workshop are below.

Inked plates ready for printing

Muffin using the press, with Nat looking on.
For once Thumper (my press) stayed at home and
we used the school press.  Note the condition of
the blanket - it wasn't us!!!

Printing in progress, plenty of enthusiasm and creativity

prints stacked up in the drying rack.
A colourful sandwich!

Muffin getting a birds eye view of her prints

Joy's lovely prints including her fungi series

Fay's vibrant prints,
perhaps a book in the making

One of Muffin's prints, lovely movement
and colour

One of Wendy's prints (i think!),
printed onto tags,
beautiful!

Some of the girls, proudly displaying their prints
at the end of Day 2

Mum and I also enjoyed a market day today in the main hall.  We had a table selling our art wares, but I must admit I spent lots of money on the other stalls, as well as on hot drinks.  I sold out of gelli-arts plates and made many new contacts and renewed a few from workshops past.  Lucky we were inside so the rain didn't matter.  A lovely relaxing day talking to everyone.

Wool bombed car and sheep!

Workshop @ Buderim Craft Cottage

I've just spent a lovely weekend up at Buderim on the Sunshine Coast, running a 2 day Magical Monotypes workshop.

A very fun and creative time was had by all!  Many thanks to the wonderful volunteers (Eliza and Heather particularly) from the Buderim Craft Cottage who managed all the paperwork and served up some delicious lunches and morning teas.

The monoprints produced during this weekend's workshop were of a high standard and reflected the dedication and creativity of the girls who participated.

Margaret admiring one of her lovely colourful prints

Margaret's 3 prints from the same plate.
Some of the leaves used were collected in Blackall during
my residency last week.

Working on a plate, ready to print

A ghost print with added detail - beautiful!

Sue working on a series featuring a starfish stencil

The Buderim girls (and me!) proudly displaying
their favourite prints. Well done girls!

Artist in Residence - wrapping it up

My Artist Residency at Blackall has come to an end, but not before a couple of final exciting days.

On Monday I ran a Coptic Journal workshop for 8 wonderful ladies, all of whom had participated in the gelatine monoprinting workshop over the weekend.

We created small books using left-over prints, cartridge paper, marbled papers, japanese papers and other decorative papers.   I encouraged them to make a book that was tactile and interesting, with different paper textures and sizes.



Some of the beautiful journals

These books will make ideal visual diaries, notebooks, or just something beautiful to hold and feel.

For my final day, I rode out to the cemetery to stroll amongst the decaying gravesites of Blackall pioneers from the 1800's and 1900's.   I did another few laps of town, collecting some more of my favourite leaves to take home with me so I can continue with my printing.

Its ironic but on this last day I discovered the beauty of the Kurrajong leaf.  The tree, common around the Blackall township, is known as the Broad-Leaved BottleTree.  Quite a few leaves found their way into my suitcase!

Robyn and Helen dropped in to have a go
at gelatine printing, you can tell how much fun
they were having!

My flight back to Brisbane via Longreach was smooth and uneventful, disappointly cloud prevented me seeing a lot of the landscape.

I wish to extend my sincere thanks to the Blackall Cultural Association and Flying Arts for the wonderful AIR opportunity, I'd particularly like to thank Sally and Ros, Robyn and Terry and Helen, and to all the ladies who dropped in at my studio or who came to my workshops.  The Barcaldine girls get a special mention, I hope to see them with their new etching press sometime soon.  Claudia the mosaic artist was a great companion during the week at the Living Arts Centre, thanks for the tips on running children's workshops!  My AIR was a very exciting and fulfilling experience which will impact on my art practice for a long time and, as a city girl, I learnt a lot about living in a remote community.  Next time I'll remember to BYO my own decaf coffee!

Artist in Residence - sharing with the community

I'm now in workshop mode at my Art Residency at Blackall.  Part of my community contribution is to run workshops in printmaking and artist books for children and adults.

On Friday I had a visit by Distance Education children and their mothers.  They had some fun printing onto tags, book pages and envelopes using gelatine plates that I had made.  An hour of chaos but they all seemed pleased with their results.  And I'm sure the Mums were glad to find another inexpensive school holiday activity!

For the past 2 days, I've been running a monoprinting and concertina book workshop for 12 lovely ladies.  I had made a lot of gelatine plates in the past week - the cool room in the kitchen was full of them!

Gelatine plates in the cool room. 
Cool rooms are common out here, I would have had
trouble fitting them all into the fridge.

We used both gelatine plates and my permanent gelli-arts plates.   It was interesting to see how both types of plates performed.  The temperature was around 27% with about 50% humidity, a little too hot for the gelatine plates which started to fall apart by early afternoon under the pressure of usage.
But even the permanent plates suffered a little dryness as well, the gelatine overall performed better in the dry air as they held plenty of moisture.  It was interesting to find some preferred the permanent plates, others liked the gelatine.

Busy printing



Sally and I reviewed her monoprints, easier
to see all laid out together.  We were planning
which ones to include in her concertina book



Working hard and making lots of mess,
lucky the space was big enough!

Ros working on her book using her lovely prints

A selection of completed books,
filled with dozens of colourful prints

Tomorrow we've got the Coptic Bound Journal workshop, there's sure to be lots more creative action, lovely morning tea goodies (everyone bakes around here, no cakes from Woolies!) and a great opportunity to use up those monoprints that didn't quite work - nothing is ever wasted....