#mamdp

Earlier in the year I signed up for the Sketchbook Project that is housed at the Brooklyn Art Library in New York. Participants get sent a blank sketchbook and a list of prompts (should you need them) and once you have filled the sketchbook it is then posted back and archived in their library.

When starting a new sketchbook I make a note of all the songs I'm listening to at the time and compile a playlist that is attributed to that book. It becomes a snapshot of sorts, not only to what is my most played on Spotify but an indication to how I'm feeling and what I'm thinking. 

I started my sketchbook in the summer and went to my current sketchbook for inspiration. I noticed three of the songs in my playlist at the time were ‘Moon River’ - Frank Ocean, ‘Hijo de la Luna’ - Sarah Brightman and ‘Man on the moon’ - R.E.M. so began making prints that were inspired by the moon. It seemed fitting also because the shifts I do at work mean I see more of the night than the day so had plenty of time to stare at the night sky. 

This book was the beginning of me making marks that were purely intuitive. I played the songs that were my source of inspiration and reacted to the feelings they evoked as well as the images they conjured. It was a very freeing way of working and incredibly therapeutic. 

‘Untitled (for Never Before)’ by Josef Albers, 1975 - screenprint on paper.

I happened upon this exhibition accidentally whilst in London and it ended up being one of the better shows I saw that day. The works exhibited were inspired by the influential book by Josef Albers; ‘Interaction of Colour’ and featured prints, drawings and site specific installations.

This show further inspired my growing interest in abstraction and I was interested in the ways in which geometric shapes were used as tools for investigating the very nature of colour. 

Albers described colour as an ever shifting paradigm and he was enthused by ‘the unique behavioural properties of colour’. This line caught my eye when reading the literature from the exhibition. I have never been taught how to use colour before so generally shy away from it. The way that he described colour as having behavioural properties makes each colour seem to have a personality, which I suppose it could be argued that they do.

I feel that opening up to the possibility of exploring colour might be a step in the right direction this semester. I have already ventured in to the unknown with a more abstract approach to my investigations so using inks other than black may send my work in a completely different direction.  

“May you live in interesting times.”

I have just got back from a great few days in Venice visiting the Biennale and have come back very inspired. I have never seen so much creativity in one place from artists all over the globe there were a few pieces that stood out among the rest.

Jean-Luc Moulène

‘Coupé-Coupé’ by Jean-Luc Moulène, 2011 - painted wood.

Moulène studies what happens to a group of objects when they are spliced together but are still individually recognisable. Moulène explains that it is as if ‘they were words in a sentence’. I really like this turn of phrase, I have recently been musing over my own series of marks and trying to put them together as though they were words forming a poem so it was interesting to see an artist thinking in a similar vein. 

Carol Bove

‘Bather’ by Carol Bove, 2019 - stainless steel and urethane paint.

Bove’s sculptures featured throughout the Arsenale gallery space and were instantly recognisable. Her works are described as ‘collage sculptures’ which I liked and her visual language explores ‘bends, dents, twists, torques, kinks, crumples, creases and folds’. We can see the vigour that she would have approached the work with and the adjectives used to describe her artistic process are evidenced. I myself am trying to portray my own visual language which is as hands on as Bove’s, I can see parallels between our works, hers being almost a three dimensional distant relative to what’s currently in my sketchbook. It leads me to wonder how my two dimensional work might be realised in three dimensions, relieving it from the page and breathing life in to it in a physical space. 

Stanislav Kolíbal

‘White Relief’ by Stanislav Kolíbal, 2013 - wood, iron and graphite drawing.

Kolíbal represented the Czech and Slovak Pavilion and was by far my favourite exhibitor of the Biennale. I found his abstract works to be beautifully minimalistic. In contrast to my work his was extremely rigid yet just as expressive. His drawings almost appeared sculptural, similarly his sculptures appear to be his drawings that have escaped the page. I spent a great deal of time in this room thinking about line, shape, form, the relationship between two and three dimensional works, mark making as language or vocabulary. A truly inspiring show.

Screen printing is a technique where an exposed mesh is used to transfer ink on to a surface with the exception of areas that a blocked via a stencil. A squeegee is pulled across the screen to fill the open areas of the mesh with ink that are subsequently transferred on to the paper (or whatever material you are printing on to). Multiple coloured images are built up using layered screens so printing a CMYK image is also possible using this technique. 

Though a lot of screen prints nowadays are made using digital imagery and then exposed on to a screen, today’s workshop introduction was about the variety of marks that can be made by hand. Much like the lithography workshop we were given a sheet of mark resist film to draw on using pens, pencils, inks and similar. I opted to use scraps of fabric as well as hand drawn marks and I was very happy with the printed result.

Frea preparing the screen with light sensitive emulsion on the left, Dave placing our drawings under the screen and ready to be exposed on the right.

 A very similar outcome to my lithography test from last week however a lot of the graphite tones around the cheeks and forehead haven’t exposed as well. Perhaps in future I could afford to be harsher with the marks made, but that’s what these workshops are all about I suppose.

What I was particularly pleased with was the outcome of the hair and eyebrows. I made these with scraps of a mesh-like fabric that Dave had lying around the studio. This sense of experimental play is beginning to become more prominent in my work as the weeks go on. 

For years and years humans have gone to great lengths to memorialise the dead. From monuments to grave stones we have found new and inventive ways to remember lost life, one very morbid method however is the death mask. 

Death masks are casted replicas of the deceased’s face intended to preserve the final expression of the subject. They would often be cast in wax, plaster or similar materials and are made directly after passing. Artists would use death masks as reference points for portraits or sculptures due to their extreme accuracy before the invention of photography.

I have a basic understanding of casting, following tutorials online and casting my own face. I’ve replicated it in paper, latex, plaster and intend to further these investigations at university in the fabrication centre. Life and death masks though somewhat morbid are a celebration of life and capture a moment much like a photograph does. I see these as three dimensional prints of the face and the most honest of self portraits.

This week’s workshop was an introduction to lithography and it has been my favourite workshop yet. We were introduced to both stone and offset lithography, both of which have their own unique uses but are equally as expressive in terms of mark making. 

Stone lithography was quite a lengthy process and i’m not 100% sure if I could do it without a technician present but we began making marks directly onto the stone using dip pens, crayons, ink washes and gum arabic. The process that followed involved adding gum arabic to the stone to soak in to the oil, talc and resin. It is then washed with water and the process is repeated until a good consistency is achieved (I think!) Once the stone is dry the ink can be applied with a roller, in between each roll the excess ink is wiped off with a sponge so that only the oil based ink sticks to the oil based parts of the stone. After a few attempts at printing the third print that was pulled was the darkest and most successful. I really enjoyed the variation of marks that can be achieved and having everyone’s samples on the one sheet was great to see just how varied the technique really is.

Offset lithography involved drawing onto a sheet of folex that is then exposed, much in the same way you would for screen printing however it’s on to an aluminium plate. The drawing side was much more relaxed than when we drew on the stone. With stone lithography any greasy marks from hands or palms would attract the ink and affect the end print.   

Again I worked from my ID photo and tried to be a bit more loose with my mark making to take advantage of the results lithography offers. I saw the stone litho print as my test sample in terms of marks that can be made, the offset one was putting in to practice what I had learnt from this. 

‘The Arrival’ by David Hockney, 1961-63 - Etching and aquatint on paper.

I was disappointed to have missed Grayson Perry’s exhibition at The Arnolfini last year so made sure I got to visit Grayson Perry: The Vanity of Small Differences at The Bristol Museum.

The show explores the British fascination with tastes, values and class through the display of six large tapestries amongst other works from the collection of the museum.

Perry’s exhibit is inspired by Hogarth’s series ‘A Rake’s Progress’ wherein which the fictional character of Tim Rakewell journeys through the social classes and his tale is told from infancy right through to his death.

Hogarth’s prints are exhibited alongside Perry’s, as well as David Hockney’s collection of prints that are also inspired by the very same tale.

I felt very inspired by Hockney’s prints that portray his own journey through New York when he came in to some money after selling his art work. I like that the prints are inspired by Hogarth but are autobiographical, telling the story at a time when homosexuality was still a taboo subject.

In our introduction to relief printmaking we each made a two colour reduction with the only limitations being the inks would be grey and black. I must admit I struggled with linocut printing. I enjoy the finish it has, all the little mistakes and accidental cuts add to the overall image but it feels a little rigid. I’m used to gestural, expressive marks that are very spur of the moment whereas this took some planning. I would like to explore this method further however, maybe with a little more time to prepare and map out my image beforehand and be a bit braver with my mark making.