Resurrection

Honestly.....I know it looks like three months since I wrote any thing here but it really isn't -I got as far as drafts on a number of occasions but they never made it to publication -there was always  a book or a piece of work or a trip to somewhere (anywhere!!) that called and the draft was lost.

Anyway here I am now ready to get at it. New - last  - year coming up: three weeks today(2 days ago!) - so it was time that one began to get head in order. There is a lot that I could talk about  - very intense gallery visit trip to London at the end of June; visit to Ballyferriter in the south-west which produced some interesting photos; a number of visits to Limerick Printmakers to avail of summer membership; printmaking at home; making a note/sketchbook for the coming year; organising a bookbinding weekend in Cloughjordan ( about which more later), but let's just start with  few pictures:

 

 

Right, what are we looking at  - if the theme of the past was being pursued it could be suggested that this was flayed skin and the axons of major nerves dragged out of a limb - that probably would seem somewhat gothic but after all that was a major part of thinking in what has been happening recently; however that would all be a bit of wishful thinking - still before explaining perhaps a few more gothic images are in order:

 

 

...and finally to explain where all of this came from....

 

 

...suitably dark and forboding ...

 

Alright, enough of the coyness - this is Smerwick Harbour on the north side of the Dingle Peninsula and was the site of a major massacre of Spanish sailors at Dún an Óir in the 17th century - their ghosts are still there.

The top images re of seaweed that I picked up on a late evening walk to a small beach near Ballyferriter, which reminded me of skin immediately. I hauled it all the way back here for photography.

 

That's a start - Ill give a little of the London trip next post

 

 

 

 

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:

 

 

 

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.