Wheels on Fire......rollin' down the road...

Probably better not to pursue that to the next couple of lines ... just might be true.

All a rather pretentious way for saying that I am on the train on the way in and it is nearly the end of another year.

Still trying things out:

 

 

These are three collographic plates with the addition of masking tape tissue, glue  and carborundum. A number of things have helped such as putting the plate through the press to flatten tissue, putting on a layer of oil, but most of all barely dampening the paper. I will post the results tomorrow.

This was another steel plat which was left, again by accident, too long in the acid but it again produced some interesting prints. If I was using the soap ground on this again I would try to be somewhat more particular with my timings.

Here is a sneak preview of one bit of our hybrid print production.:

 

I will explain later.

The Path Narrows

Took a field trip to Dublin last Friday to visit RHA.
The main show was called 'The Untold Want' and included  work by Robert Gober, Vija Celmins, Ana Mendieta,,Felix Gonzalez Torres, Andrew Vickery, William McKeown but there was a smaller exhibition of still lives by Joe Dunne which I found to be very attractive with strong echoes of Giorgio Morandi:

 

They are deceptively simple but as in most things that appear simple, difficult to do well.

 

while enjoying the main show particularly Robert Gober's sculpture:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I heard this voice calling me by name - Hazel Egan -  who qualified last year and whose work, deeply coincidentally concerned itself with skin!!?!A very long conversation ensued  rudely interrupted at times by people who wanted to know things about the exhibition (Hazel is a volunteer invigilator) but she alerted me to a very interesting book on skin art (Skin: An Artistic Atlas) on sale in the foyer (duly acquired)

 

I continued my perambulations to Taylor Gallery in Kildare street and they had two shows - Lacuna 3 was the one that interested me, particularly for one artist :

 

Regretfully the reproduction here is not great but these interested me deeply because they are very close to the skin photoetches which I  am planning;I would also be very interested in the photogravure technique which I have read a bit about -as you can see this was one of a set of five and I was very taken with them.

 

 

 This piece particularly interested me because of the support on which the screenprint was placed - oxidised (rusted, to you and me) steel. I have mentioned steel and the rust on its surface elsewhere (several times) because there is a great similarity with the degeneration of the skin surface with age and weather. I think that I will seriously consider looking for a piece of rusted steel on which to screen 'skin shreds' as I am planning do with the very large digital prints: 

 

 

 

Note the metre rule to give some sense of scale.

Here was a test run of screen printing on Oyster paper (on which the above are printed) to check that I would receive the ink - seems good but I will have to do a CMYK test before going on to the big prints.

This is courtesy of Fiona  in Y2 whose drawing skills are wonderful - I should stress that this is just a strip from a much bigger image - Thanks Fiona.

 

 

I have been less than dutiful in photographing my work of late -  a bit too wrapped up in it to think of the photographsbut there have been a number of interesting developments centring around etching in one form or another ; soap ground is proving excellent but I lefet the last steel plate in the acid over night unintentionally and while the result was intriguing it wasn't what I wanted and the consequent prints where rather uninspiring ; also the plate is so ragged that it is difficult to wipe enough oil out of the depths to achieve definition. I will use the soap with zinc-a number of runs through he acid - then aquatint it and hopefully do some more spit-biting. to get a range of tones.

 

The Third Year Project was handed in last Monday with a great sense of relief. Final title was "Crust  : Skin and Landscape " and I hope that it will be reasonably well-received - in the end I could say that I enjoyed it and it seems more and more likely that I will pursue the subject of skin past the surface next year. I have mentioned this as a possibility and staff seem to think that there is much more here to explore  - particularly the trope of 21st century obsession with surface often to the point of deep superficiality ( now there's a phrase to play with......)

 

Speaking of surface here is a Ground Art image acquired recently in Dublin:

 

 

This is very much in the whole concept of surface -more later.

 

Here are two photos of the same scene taken about eleven hours apart - evening and morning:

 

 

With that little bit of lyricism to surprise you I shall fade for a while.

The Path is well-lit

Ok, as I regularly say- this is the first day of the rest of my life.... desperate cliché but I'm all out of imaginative rejoinders at present.
It is the last day of the Easter break and from tomorrow there are five weeks till end of year assessment. The Third Year Project is finished  - in draft anyway -and to be seen by the tutor: fingers crossed for not too may amendments.

Because of this I was able to return to a book project I had been working on; here are some pictures and I will explain as they come up:

 

This shows the case(cover) almost finished but in front is the birch bark backed with Heatn'bond  to make it usable.

 

 

The book block with its binding tapes

 

 

 

Front and back of the book - 15 x 11cm

 

 

Endpapers and headband

 

 The book is blank at present but I have a programme for it that should be finished in time for assessment.

 

Last Wednesday a terrific exhibition opened in the Church Gallery in LSAD  - The Plane Invasion  - to honour a past student of the college -Orlaith Spain -  and this was put together by those who knew her. In passing it is worth noting that her work is also in one of the four shows now running at LCGA. But to return to The Plane Invasion - this consist of over sixty pieces by many artists who are still teaching in LSAD and some students also. I am not sure how long more it is on for but everyone should see it.

Equally, anyone with the remotest interest in art should go to LCGA  - work from the National Drawing Collection  - two print shows (one curated by Susannah O'Reilly : Plan A + Plan B)  and a travelling installation - Waste Land - all of which are excellent.

 

I was in Dublin before Easter and visited Copper House Gallery -or Fire as it is now known: they specialise in digital printing and my whole view of this has change completely and I was very interested as I am making a lot more of these  - and if I can get this business of the PSD and Tiff files sorted I can show some I have made.

 

Another visit I made over the break was to IMMA where among other things I saw this wonderful vdeo piec using three screens side by side to show a study of the skeleton of the house used in the film 'Giant'(1956) - This was built on a wide open prairie and the video dramatises the arrangements and concentrates on the recording of the ambient sounds - it really is tremendous and makes me think again about he possibilities inherent in video.

 

 

This was a still from the video and here is some info about the artists

 

 

Worth following up.

 

Some of my studio work has been influenced by the much lamented Helen Chadwick and I will come back to this later but I was surprised to see this small piece by her at IMMA:

 

   Helen Chadwick (1953-1996) Untitled 06

from Other Men's Flowers, letterpress
1994, on wove paper

 

Here are some images also from IMMA:

 

STILL FALLING I Cast iron and air 317 x 276 x 148 cm Collection of Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin, Ireland

This is by Antony Gormeley and I have already shown it here about a year and a half ago, but in its entirety -this time I am far more interested in the surface texture and how this might be related to skin, in that all surfaces are essentially skins and this has all the hallmarks of crust - skin & landscape ---- you'll be hearing more about this.

 

My final visit was to the shore - sea and land - Sandymount and Blackrock - to record the edge where one skin meets another. Just a few shots because there is  a lot more work to be done on these:

 

 

You can see that the last one particularly has the look of old skin ...... I will persuade you.

 

 

I started with books so I will end thus

 

 

 

.... and the edition:

 

 

and from the sublime(!!??!) to the utterly ridiculous:

 

 

This one started from my hatred of waste and an enormous strip of perforated brown paper that came as packing in two parcels from Amazon; I just couldn't bear to throw it out and I wanted to try out this open binding with tapes that you see in the first and last images - great fun and it will require something unusual as content.

 

I will erturn with images of etching from the workshop.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Path Through the Fog

.......physical and metaphorical.....but even as I write, the physical is clearing and the sun is breaking through.
Dear me its very early in the morning for such slush, but its one of the small trains and it is too unsteady to attempt to showimages work of the sort I have been doing. Here's one:

 

This, believe it or not was a piece of wood I found in the bog and I am working it in to the skin surface to show the parallels there are between ageing landscape and ageing skin -hence body

(unfortunately I don't seem to be able to upload PSD or TIFF files so

you are missing out on the better ones.

Here is something else I have been doing:

 

I am just going to explain that this post was set up as a draft about three and a half weeks ago when travelling in by train from Limerick Junction to Limerick - and never published  - for the sake of historical completeness I am just going to put this up  -also as public penance for my laxity .........