10 days

Yesterday I flew back from a holiday in New Zealand.  As we travelled around Northland in our motorhome, I reflected that not only was I seeing a different country, I had 10 days away from.....

• the ringtone of my mobile phone
• the television and internet, especially emails
• my to-do list obsession
• waking up to deadlines and a daily routine
• knowing what day it is
• my art studio - i had time to reflect rather than do

That's really what a holiday is about, isn't it.  A temporary shelter from the everyday, from having to be focussed and on a rigid timetable.
I returned home yesterday feeling like I'd been away for ages, refreshed and ready to launch into my art....once I finish unpacking and doing the washing that is!

Papers, Pages and Prints

You're all invited to the "Papers, Pages and Prints" exhibition being held at the Pine Rivers Gallery this month.

Its going to be an exciting and stimulating display of artist prints and handmade books, created by artists including Judith Rosenberg, the Pressgang Print Group and Qld Spinners Weavers and Fibre Artists Book and Paper Group (that's the group I'm in).

I'm exhibiting 3 artist books - my monoprint book 'Found' from the 'Lost and Found' series, my altered book 'Gardens in Art', and my collaborative pages journal 'Birds and Butterflies'.

The exhibition is on from Wednesday 7 September to Saturday 1 October, with opening night on Friday 9 September from 6pm. 

There's also a fantastic workshop program, for adults as well as children.

For more information, go to the Exhibitions page  www.moretonbay.qld.gov.au/pinerivers-gallery

Printmaking using the sun...except it was raining!

Yesterday I did a workshop creating printing plates using UV light.  The workshop was run at Impress Printmakers Studio by Belinda Sinclair.

We used specially pre-prepared plates, exposing them to UV light using a light box and dark room at the studio.  Sunlight is another exposure method, but obviously not an option on a rainy day!

Images used in the process ranged from artist sketches, copyright-free images and vintage woodcut prints.

I am really excited by this process as I will be able to use solar prints with my monoprints.  It will enable me to get sharp distinctive imagery that may be difficult to achieve using my monoprinting stencils.

The only downside is the cost of the plates and if during the exposure process you make a mistake, then the plate is wasted.  I had already experienced this when I first played around with solar plates last year, when I accidentally turned the light off in the dark room when exposing a plate.  Needless to say, not a lot happened on my plate!

Below are a couple of my prints from the workshop, using chin colle (ie collaged papers).  I can't wait to do some more, it was heaps of fun and the results were great.

Jelly fish image with text behind.
I used a piece of coloured paper on the
head of the jelly fish.

The dodo! 
I used chin colle on this print,  unfortunately
my cutting technique was a bit off,
hence the 'jaunty' angle!

Its a mystery to me but....

Its amazing what you can find in a second hand shop.  I found this little beauty in a Lifeline shop on Tuesday and been wondering ever since what it is.

Its shaped like a rolling pin with 4 rubber sections that roll independently.  Each section has little rubber suction cups on it.

I thought that perhaps it's a massage tool but after testing it on my partner Craig, we're not too sure (he didn't seem to enjoy it, complaining that it was cold!).

I'm open to ideas, so please make some suggestions, hopefully someone can enlighten me as to what its purpose is. 

Being a typical artist, when I saw it of course I thought 'printmaking'! I'm sure I can make some really interesting organic marks with it...... 

A box worth a thousand words

On Saturday I attended a workshop run by Amanda O'Sullivan at the Impress Printmakers Studio at Camp Hill.  The workshop was to create a Japanese Bone-Clasp box.

As you can see from the images below, I created a box suitable to house my recently completed Altered Book.  The box is covered in a red Thai fern paper and a red mulberry paper lining.

The box was reasonably straight-forward to construct once I painstakingly planned every component, making precise measurements and cuts.  I've made clamshell boxes before, but this one was a bit more complex.  We used 3mm acid-free grey board with mulberry paper hinges which made the box very sturdy.

I'm not fond of being overly accurate and neat (especially when dealing with glue!) but I am very chuffed with the results.  The box and book will be exhibited in the 'Papers Pages and Prints' exhibition at the Pine Rivers Gallery in September. 

The completed box with the bone clasps

The box open showing the inner lid
and mulberry paper lining

My Altered Book "Gardens in Art"


My Altered Book open at one of my favourite pages

Quebec Print Version 2

Well here it is!  One of the prints that I completed for the Quebec exhibition, finally finished and I'm very happy with the result.

The embossing is gone, replaced by another print using rubber bands and a moon stencil.  Very simple but effective print reflecting the 'Water Portraits' theme.

My only problem now (as usual) is documenting the prints digitally.  I've just spent all morning trying to get the colours right; they don't seem to replicate properly using my digital camera.  The photograph above is probably the best likeness that I could get out of the 8 prints, in various colours of purple, lime green and blue.  The lime green is the most difficult to get right, it comes up in the digital image more like mud than a translucent bright green. 

So I have contacted Carl Warner, a very experienced art photographer who is coming next week to photograph all my current prints using his professional camera equipment.  He photographed some 3D work for me last year and I was very pleased with the results.  A great photograph really makes a good print look good (like it should!).  I'll blog some of the photos when I get them in a few weeks so you can see the gorgeous colours of the prints like they are in real life.

Back on track

I do my best thinking in the shower.  But last night I solved my Quebec print dilemma lying awake in bed trying to get some sleep wishing I hadn't succumbed to my caffeine need earlier in the day.

As you know from my blog post 2 days ago ('a step too far') that I had accidentally ruined my finished monoprints that are to be exhibited in Quebec in September.  I'd concluded that all was lost and I needed to start again.

Well, last night I had a revelation!   Why not print OVER the wrinkled embossed area........ and it worked!  The prints aren't dry yet but it seems that I have managed to not only fix the problem but actually improved the finished works.  I like them much better now than they were before. 

Just goes to show NEVER give up.   Yesterday at the Studio it was 4pm before I produced one print that I liked.  Hours and hours of persistence paid off.  And today at the Studio, armed with my late night revelation and heaps of confidence, I was able to sail through the day, fixing the 4 ruined prints and finishing off another 4, just in case the wrinkles come back after the prints dry.

All in all, a very positive experience with some very tough lessons learnt.

I'll post some photos of the finished works in the next couple of days.  Tonight I'm just enjoying the moment.

She loves her arts and crafts a little too much

A friend of mine sent me this U tube video, its a great laugh. 

It reminds me of the moments when I've got a little bit too excited about some wispy bits of grass clippings for monoprinting......but this lady wins first prize for passion about a sponge and a bit of paint!

Look out for the overuse of "Oh my gosh!".

A step too far.....

Ever had the experience of trying to fix something and making it worse?

My previous blog post announced that I had completed a series of prints for a Quebec exhibition.  I had completed 4 good prints that I was happy with.  But then I noticed a few wrinkles in the area in which I embossed, so I thought 'I'll get rid of those wrinkles so the prints look better'.  Great idea, failure in the execution!

I dampened the prints, placed them under weights for a day and ended up with some horrendous creases on top of the wrinkles.  I've tried redampening and pressing and ironing but to no avail.  I can't submit those prints.

So back to the press I go!  Luckily I have 2 days at the studio this week.  The only problem with monoprints is that I can't just simply reprint them from a pre-prepared plate.  I have a very loose formula and process I can follow, but really its just serendipity as to how they turn out..... 

Rubber bands and Cottonwood leaves

For the past couple of months I've been working on some monoprints for a Queensland - Quebec print exchange which opens in Quebec Canada in October this year, then travels back to Brisbane for exhibition in 2012. 

The theme of this exhibition is Water Portraits and my work is drawn from my experiences at Coochiemudlo Island last year.

I printed the first layer of monoprints in early May but have only just revisited them to experiment with a few ideas I've been developing.  I wanted to express the notion of  'out of sight, out of mind'.  Its what we don't see that matters, in this case, what lies beneath the surface of the oceans, bays, rivers.  What damage is there that we ordinary people don't see?  I was pleased recently to hear that biologists were checking on Moreton Bay's dugong population to see how their seagrass beds were affected by the January floods.   But what about the rest of the ecosystems in the bay?  Do most people really care as long as the trawlers bring in the prawns and fish for us to consume?  I spent my childhood fishing in Moreton Bay so I feel a real personal connection to it.

The link to Coochimudlo Island is in the cottonwood leaves that I used.  I love them!  I have also used fishing line which created beautiful curly lines, like the swirling of the tide around mangrove roots.....

In my prints I also have experimented with embossing, something I haven't done a lot of, and required a fair bit of playing with objects and paper to get the right texture and look. 

I initially printed about a dozen prints, and will end up with only about 4 that I consider suitable for exhibition.  I'm really glad that I have given myself plenty of time to meet the submission deadlines, you can never 100% predict a monoprint.

I'll be revisiting my prints in the coming weeks, after having a break from them so I can see what needs to be done, lets hope I am still happy with them and can consider them complete.

one of the prints, in progress

...and yet another use for rubber bands.....embossing!