Exhibition update

The summer exhibition frenzy is almost at an end now. Oxmarket has been and gone; sold three prints, all of them dark, so I may have to rethink my supposition that people don’t like gloomy images on their walls! Hampshire Open Studios finished at the weekend. The Wayzgoose was well attended and Southampton Ukulele Jam tore the place up with tunes such as Rawhide and Come Up and See Me. Some lucky person won a copy of the Made in Southampton limited edition box set; fifteen original prints by members of Red Hot Press presented in a hand-made folio, complete with a specially commissioned forward by Philip Hoare, winner of the 2009 Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-fiction. Print Zero Print Exchange 6 exhibition opened in Seattle on Saturday and I’ve just got to get my selected work to the workshop for it to be taken to Bristol for IMPACT 6, then that’s it for this year I think. Time to concentrate on producing some new work.

Project Atelier update

The studio is looking more like a studio as the days go on – having posted some photos of the inking and hotplate area, here’s the general work area on the other side of the studio. Things will change around again in June when my etching press arrives (ordered it this week - how exciting is that!). The glass inking slab will move to the general work area and the press will go on the bench where the glass is now. This is a much heftier bench so should take the weight of the press. I hope.

It’s wonderful in the studio; so peaceful and relaxing. I’m back to wood engraving now – very satisfying.

Also spent some time sorting out some of Dad’s tools to donate to a new project being set up in the area – bike recycling. The intention is to stop local youths nicking bikes by working with them to refurbish old ones. Sounds like a good scheme.

More found objects: a shoe last, many weights, a Salter's pocket balance, two transformers (the electrical kind, not the 'robots in disguise', a fire extinguisher, an oscillating fan, two model gliders, a rocking horse, a wind break, a gazebo, golf clubs, an elephant's headdress, a barometer, two thermometers and a thing for measuring humidity. It's quite dry in there - idea for storing one's paper

I have my own studio!

It’s just beginning to sink in that I now have my own studio – a long-held dream. Still quite a bit to do to get it fully up and running and it will continue to evolve naturally over time, but I pulled my first prints in it on Saturday – wood engravings. How exciting is that!

Ordered some copper sulphate crystals for etching from Hawthorn’s yesterday and hung up a load of inky scrim to dry from my last visit to the workshop. Smells wonderfully printkmakingish in there already. Took a desk and chair up today so I now have somewhere to sit down and work.

I was thinking today how… bizarre it is really. I started this blog less than two months ago, intending to write about wood engraving; the whole point was that it’s a form of printmaking that I could do at home which wouldn’t take up much room. And here I am, determined to go back to etching and setting up my own studio.

I HAVE MY OWN STUDIO! How lucky am I.

Project Atelier: Phase One

The idea for this project was suggested by a friend some time ago but for various reasons, I didn’t think it would be worth it. However, I changed my mind yesterday morning and Phase One began in the afternoon.

The photo shows my father’s garage cum workshop which, since his death last summer, has become a general repository – for junk mostly. I’ve been dreading having to clear it as it had a lifetime’s accumulation of aircraft-building tools, gadgets, spare parts and detritus. He built real ones that people fly in, not model planes, so it’s not just a few hand tools and a smudge of glue we’re talking about here!

Good old G has mentioned to me several times what a excellent studio it would make, and she’s right of course – thank you G. Just terrifying to clear. And sad. I miss my dad and there’s so much of him in there; it’s going to be hard. But cathartic too I hope. And he’d be glad that I’m using his workshop to printmake in. Anything to do with tools, bits of wood and metal and he was happy.

Spent three hours on it yesterday but have barely scratched the surface… will keep you posted…

Print Zero

Finally finished and printed the edition of 15 wood engravings for this year’s Print Zero exchange. Just need to give them a few days to dry, then they’ll be ready to trim, number, title, sign and pack up ready for dispatch to Seattle.

'Alack! bare-headed!'

Print Exchanges…
are lots of fun. I’ve just received a call for entries to the 6th print exchange run by Print Zero Studios in Seattle. What is a print exchange? Briefly, printmakers from all over the world submit an edition of prints (in this case, 15) to whoever is organising it. Two of the 15 are kept for exhibition and archive purposes and the other 13 are randomly dispatched to other printmakers who took part. This means that everyone submitting gets back a portfolio of 13 different prints by 13 different artists. Plus, you get your work exhibited in other countries; for instance the last Print Zero exchange showed in seven venues across the US and in Denmark. The cardcut on the left was my submission.

I also submitted for the first time this year to another exchange run by Oregon Ink Spot. Deadline was yesterday so it’ll be interesting to see what comes my way over the next few weeks.