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.

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!