Stride out along the path

Today is assessment day- this sounds a bit like the day of general judgement - a phrase from another life. Even that phrase reminds me of a book I am reading at present called "The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August" (Claire North) Which concerns a man with numerous alternate lifelines -much more complicated than that but you would have to read it - excellent and thank you Paul.

Here's a picture I haven't shown before :

 

I won't be gnomic this time!

 

It is the result of receiving a hair trimmer for Christmas and now I am self-tonsured but once again the picture is a demonstration of making the familiar unfamiliar.

 

 

 

This is another example of this idea. I showed this image in the presentation the other day, rather conceitedly likening it to John Coplans; it is picture of some part of my body taken by myself but to be perfectly honest I am not sure what it is. Nonetheless the point is mad that one doesn't have to travel to exotic destinations or look for specially "beautiful" scenes for subject matter in ones art.

Throughout the coming summer I hope to continue to post with images and ideas that may be of some interest.

Don't go away.

 

The path does not stop

Still thinking about art.
Still doing it.... although today was more about putting the finishing touches to end of year business.

Liam and I worked together this morning to finish the second ten of the hybrid print edition, and Liam rightly pointed out how much of an influence Peter Kennard has been on both our ideas and work. I should point out in passing for anyone who may be in London during the summer that there is a full retrospective of his work taking place in the Imperial War Museum and it has received very good reviews.

Anyway here is our second edition:

 

Screenprint on toprolled intaglio plate.

After this I was upstairs hanging my two large pieces.

This was originally in Revive where it hung horizontally and now I have attached weights so that it hangs straight.

Getting this lad up on the wall and straight was quite a procedure but was worth the effort. There is always a certain amount of anxiety about going in the next day to  see if it is still in place.

 

detail showing one of the CMYK SkinShreds.

 

I should be fair and tell you what this is:

 

Actually a decorative tile in a bathroom with eight little coloured glass insets about 1.5cm square.

 

Keep your eyes open.

Tweetie on the path

Right- I showed a strange piece of cardboard last post and here they are is in their finished forms , outside first and then the two insides:

 

Thus - two coats of acrylic ink, stamped with birds all-over and then screenprinted with the Mouth ( a scanned engraving I had done previously); then the text that was originally intended for the outside screened on inside..... for the curious who would care to look through the bird-hole.

This is the Tweetbox or collapsed bird-box. There are two of these and one will be in an exhibition in Ireland and one will go on show in China at a very big print conference. This is all thanks to Noelle Noonan here and Catherine Hehir in Cork.
So, we had a six-hour window yesterday to design and print and during this there was a visit from a group representing a body concerned with art education - and education generally within the European commission. Your correspondent had a number of contacts with them throughout the course of the day and while tiring the whole was incredibly stimulating.....oh dear, how po-faced!! Look, it was just brilliant and you wouldn't have expected to have something like this right at the end of the year. Wonderful!
Here are some pictures of the process as it went on throughout the day:

 

The Tweetery at work

Note Eddie's highly -organised screenprint inks and Louise' intense concentration...



Back to the edition -Here is a picture of the first one and the second will be finished on Wednesday hopefully.

In the tradition of ground art that I have persisted with have a look at this and try to figure out what it is:

I will tell you later.

Mystery Train

Keep coming back to song titles  - the bizarre thing was that  when I wrote 'Wheels on fire' ... I heard it on the radio the same day - it hasn't been played for years??!!

I said I would explain regarding the arm image  - well look at these:

 

 

These are the first copies of the hybrid edition - Liam and I produced ten of these - at least I should say Liam did the screenprinting and I just handled the paper; However we were under the misapprehension that that was it whereas we were supposed to do ten per person - anyway it worked out for the best because we started a new ten with Liam's tree as the base and we will screen the arm on again but in a different format. So even if you think you are finished  there is nearly always more to do.

 

The screenpriner again - I spent a very long day at this last week

 

 

 

Here you can see one of the SkinShreds up to cyan. It was necessary to put  a white layer in first as CMYK is quite transparent and would not show well against the quite intense colours of the digital print. It all went quite well except that one of the shreds was a bit messed up because the size of the print caused it to be trapped under the pin of the bed. I will get  a picture when it is hanging.

 

 

These are three prints from the collographic plates I showed in the last post; there is a coloured one of the middle piece which I did not photograph unfortunately as it is much better than the monochrome. The skin effect of the top one has great possibilities for further development.

 

Here is another picture to whet your appetite - I will explain in my next post what this was all about: