The Buzz of Bees - a new Artist Book

I'm continuing on my pledge to reduce my stash of reject prints (as seen in my previous posts).

My latest artist book was inspired by my love of pollinators and native bees.  A couple of years ago during experiments with polyester plate lithography, I created a bee drawing using crayon onto a litho plate.  I wasn't real happy with the image, so I printed off a few test prints and never used them.  Hence they ended up in my stash.

Recently I was re-introduced to a Winged Book structure.  I remembered that a few years ago I had made a model based on instructions from Alisa Golden's wonderful book 'Making Handmade Books'.  

So began the idea of my 'The Buzz of Bees' artist book.  As well as prints, the book features a short piece of my writing 'The buzz of bees is the melody of the garden'.  I wanted a positive message in my book, perhaps to offset all the negativity of recent world events.  I used traditional letraset, the action of rubbing on the text is a cathartic experience as well as justifying my growing stash of letraset templates....!

Below are some photographs of the completed book and a discussion of my thought processes.  Enjoy!

The model book I had made.  Very useful
to refer to when making my artist books.

'The Buzz of Bees' closed
with slip-band

The book open.
There are 2 panels of bee prints and the
hexagon patterns were made using
hexagon stencils and gelatine monoprinting.
Simple repetitive printing, and I used a paper mask so I didn't
print over the bee images.

I think that the 3D geometric structure of the concertina with the 'wings'
describes the movement of the bee in and out of the hive.
You can almost here the buzz in the air as the bees go about
their daily routines.

The concertina is made up of square papers, joined at
the 'wings'.  The difference between the model and my book is
that I didn't fold down the top  of each square. The bottom
is folded up, with the reverse side showing, that's where the text is.

Fading to Grey - Solo Exhibition

I've been super busy, hence no blog posts yet for this month!  Well, its not quite the end of June yet, so here is my June post......

A week ago, I opened my solo exhibition 'Fading to Grey' at Gympie Regional Gallery.  Its a beautiful exhibition (no bias of course) in a historic building converted to a gallery space.

‘Fading to Grey’ is an exhibition of printmaking, works on paper, installations and artist books that comments on human-initiated transformations of the landscape around us – urbanisation, agricultural monocultures, invasive species, and fragmentation of wildlife habitats.  The title of the exhibition references the change in the natural landscape when it is disturbed and developed by humans - the green softness 'fades' to monochromatic grey hard surfaces - brick, cement and bitumen.   I'm really passionate about the impacts of urbanisation on wildlife, particularly on insect pollinators and birds. 

This exhibition features a few works exhibited previously as part of a partnered solo with Barcaldine artist Jo Taylor, though most of the works have been added to or modified since then.

Having a solo exhibition is a chance to get all those crazy ideas up into a professional gallery space and make a statement about something you're passionate about.  Sharing my message is what drives my art practice.

The hero piece of my exhibition is 'Interconnection' - a wall installation of about 300 paper cutouts in the shape of hexagons, illustrating the diversity contained within natural habitats and the importance of pollinators for biodiversity.    The pattern on the wall reflects the spiral pattern of the native stingless bee hive.  The paper cutouts are made from monotypes, etchings, flight maps, book text, atlas papers and the centre piece is bees wax.  The work also features entomological pins, used for pinning insects in museum collections.  Great fun to create, sifting through ten years of discarded prints and my stash of papers.  Not so much fun to install, as I have to make sure I set up the spiral shape from the first hexagon.  :-)   Photos below.

Over the coming weeks/months, I'll feature more works from the exhibition, with some work-in-progress photos as well.

Installing 'Interconnection' - over 300 hexagon
cutouts and lots of blue-tac!

My installation 'assistants' - my Mum Jan
and my partner Craig.  Lots of help too from
gallery staff and volunteers.

Selfie view of part of the gallery space.

Opening day and I'm explaining one of the works to
a visitor.

Visitors walking through the gallery.

Here I am giving my speech. 

'Interconnection' - Image credit: Leeroy Todd Photography

'Interconnection' (view from below) - Image credit: Leeroy Todd Photography

Adding to my art toolkit

In the past month, I've been adding to my art tool kit.  Not new brushes, inks or papers (I've got more than enough paper!), but adding to my printmaking skills.

Last weekend I hosted Jet James from Yeppoon for a workshop exploring creative approaches to collagraph plates.  He uses a PVC plate which gets around the problem of having to seal the plate with multiple coats of shellac as you would with book board etc.  It also allows the use of some ingenious materials and drypoint techniques.

I enjoyed the creative process of creating the plates using a combination of embossing, drypoint and collage, giving a variety of marks and textures.  The 'busy-ness' of imagery on my plate is what I really like when I'm doing my monoprinting.  I can see that I can combine my monoprinting techniques with these collagraph plates, and am looking forward to playing more with it in the coming months.

During the workshop, we also had a play with inking using more than one colour, which gave beautiful images but in a workshop situation of a group of 10 keen printmakers was very messy!

My bee print.  I've explored this bee image in drypoint and
lithograph, so its interesting to see it in a variety of
techniques.

Wren print, multicoloured inking.

The Wren plate and print in blue-black ink.

The chaos of multicolour printing.......

Show and tell at the end of the workshop.
Great prints, great group of people!

Experimenting with Cyanotypes

Together with my printmaking friends at Migaloo Press Collective, we've been playing with cyanotypes.

Cyanotypes are created using a photographic printing process where two chemicals painted onto paper (or fabric etc) and allowed to dry in a dark room.  Objects are then arranged on the paper, and it is exposed to the sun to develop.  The exposed paper around the objects develops a cyan-blue colour, leaving silhouettes and shapes of your objects.

Great fun!

Migaloo Press did a play-day, lead by Jen who has experience in cyanotypes.  I had done some years ago but was keen to update my skills and to use cyanotype chemicals I had stored in my art room (on the 'must do' list).

I've captured some of my experiments in the photos below, but I plan to do some more exploring and developing alternative colours using tea and vinegar.  I think this is my Christmas holidays project!

Exposing the paper, with leaves and stones.
Its behind glass to ensure good contact and so that
the leaves don't blow away.

The resulting print from the exposure in the previous photo.
It was a cloudy day so this is a pale print even after 20minutes exposure time.

Another exposure, with a bee image (cut from paper), sedge,
string, talc, and a hexagon stencil.
I'm not a minimalist as you can see!
This exposure only took 5 minutes as it was
 a bright sunny day.

Cyanotype print using Shepherds' Purse weed, talc, and a paper stencil.

The same cyanotype print with a lithograph printed
on top afterwards.

Big Smoke Little Smoke @ Dogwood Crossing, Miles

It's been a while between posts, as I've been busy preparing artwork then traveling out to Miles for installation of my joint exhibition 'Big Smoke Little Smoke' with fellow artist Joanne Taylor.

Here are some photos from the exhibition -

The Gallery building at Miles, based on the iconic Bottle Tree

"Interconnection" made up of
hexagons of prints and papers.
Its a comment on pollination, with the pattern
reflecting the brood of a native bee hive.

Detail of my installation, "Interconnection".

One of my new works, "Natural History", using blueprints
on wooden insect shapes.
Once again my artwork reflects my fascination
with museum collections.

Another new artwork, "I'll meet you at the Mall",
completed during my POD residency last year.
Its drawings of urban birds on takeaway bags,
with textures inspired by the landscape.

Joanne and I at the opening night function.

Thanks to Lyn and Paul for the photos.

Co-operative Artist Book

My final project in conjunction with Sandi Conte (the 2016 Creative-In-Residence at Logan Art Gallery) was a Teachers Professional Development workshop.  I worked with local art teachers to create a collaborative Artist Book that focussed on the co-operative and social nature of some species of native stingless bees.

My goal for the workshop was to create a sculptural book that didn't read like a normal codex format, using drypoint and monotype printmaking techniques and incorporating text on the theme of 'co-operation'.

The final book format is a concertina spiral of hexagons echoing the structure of the brood of a local species of stingless native bee.  The book is sewn together with waxed linen thread.

To house the book, I created a simple card box featuring one of the hexagon artworks and some gorgeous Japanese paper with a textured hexagon pattern.

The book will be exhibited at the Logan Gallery with other works created during Sandi's Creative-In-Residence.

I enjoyed working collaboratively with the art teachers who were able to create additional hexagon artworks during the workshop to incorporate into their own book structures.

The box which contains the book when folded up, concertina style.

The artist book on display, 'opened up' to display the spiral pattern.
Each hexagon was created by one of the teachers.
I also contributed a couple of hexagon works
as well.

The book 'closed up' with a hexagon of wax sheet for
the centre piece.

To Cut and Paste a Monoprint

As part of my ongoing work with Sandi Conte (the 2016 Creative-In-Residence at Logan Art Gallery), I recently conducted a masterclass monoprinting workshop themed on native stingless bees, working with paper 12cm x 12cm.

Some of the works produced during the workshop are proposed to be included in an upcoming travelling exhibition, and as lead artist, I was also invited to submit some works.... what fun!

My approach was not my usual - proceed straight to my studio, drag out 'Thumper' my etching press and start printing.   Instead I looked through my folio and found some bee related works I completed late last year and started cutting them up.

I've used this approach before - cutting up old prints to create paper installations.  In this situation, I cut up the bee prints into hexagons to use in a collage.  The prints were originally done on grey coloured Stonehenge paper which provides a lovely background tone to the prints.

I also incorporated cuttings from a technical book relating to pollen.  I think the text and drawings from this book add a scientific feel to the prints.

The 3 resulting artworks are named "Under the Microscope", monotype and collage on paper.

One of the old works, 'Society' 4/4

'Under the Microscope I', monotype + collage, 12cm x 12cm

'Under the Microscope II', monotype + collage, 12cm x 12cm

'Under the Microscope III', monotype + collage, 12cm x 12cm

A new Artist Book is 'hatched'

After doing a series of bee monoprints a few months ago, I had a lot of pre-cut paper stencils of hexagons and native bees.  So I decided to use them to create a collagraph plate, which is a printing plate made of cardboard with things stuck to it.  After sealing with shellac, I used the plate to emboss some toned printmaking papers, and these have become the pages of my latest artist book, titled 'Brood'.

The book structure, once again in that typical honeycomb/hexagon shape, alludes to the structure of a bee's hive.  The embossed imagery is of the brood at work - worker bees tending to the eggs and larvae of the next generation.  The book needs to be fully opened to see the imagery, which mimics the action of the beekeeper opening and inspecting a hive.

The embossing was done using the collagraph plates on dampened paper, no ink, using my etching press 'Thumper'.

The Collagraph plates and resulting embossed 'print'.

The closed book - the covers are made of box board and some
beautiful gold and black paper I had in my stash.
I thought the paper colour was like the rich gold of honey.

'Brood' - you can see the honeycomb like structure.

Its hard to see the embossing in the photo.
Viewing the book will be an 'up close and personal'
experience, inviting the viewer in for a good look.