silence and the love of printmaking .....

Sometimes when reading an artists' book there comes the delight of knowing that the experience is far greater than the sum of its parts.  I hope that makes sense - it does to me but then I have just had the experience.

What I mean is that this book essentially exists of five etchings done by me with gorgeous quotes which Fiona and I chose on 'silence', added to the etchings with Fiona's calligraphy.  I remember saying to Fiona when we started making this book, that I didn't want it to feel like 'bits of calligraphy'.  Works of calligraphy can be very beautiful in their own right, but I wanted this last of our collaborative books to look and feel 'booklike'.

Until this work was finally made I did not love it.  Partly this was due  to the fact that this was a more typical collaboration where I was responsible for the artwork (and how does one represent 'silence'!) and Fiona the calligraphy.  Previously we have explored 'collaboration' in a much more involved and intimate way and this last book left us feeling a little disconnected until finally bringing it together in this very soft and gentle, quiet book.

Each page is wrapped in tengujo paper and the act of revealing each work is slow and meditative.  The light plays a large part in the reading of this book and because of the manner of its presentation you cannot rush the reading.  Now that it is made and I can experience it as a whole, it reminds me why I love making artists' books and will keep making them.  The slow reveal, the feel of the gorgeous soft papers ..... definitely more than the sum of its parts.

 In these images you can see how the interleaving pages and the light play such an integral part of this book and to its feeling of 'silence'.

And here you can see some of the pages and details.  I used only sugar lift with this work as I wanted to keep everything very soft and fluid.  Lines are partially inked, delicately wiped. I had hoped that there would be enough definition in the uninked lines to be embossed but they were too faint so I had to make embossing plates for the etchings once they had dried.  The embossing added the lift that the marks needed.  It is hard to show that photographically.

I think it is hard to find anything more beautiful in combination that the softness of an etched mark and the crispness of an embossed line.   It is a perfect partnership.

With infinite possibilities, Fiona had to decide  how to write these beautiful quotes.  Couldn't have been more perfect really.

As a complete departure from the unique nature of all our other collaborative books, Fiona and I decided to edition these books, an edition of 10 and a further edition of 10 of each of the prints separately.  These will be for sale at the Noosa Regional Gallery or beforehand.

step by step .....

Once again it has been an age since I posted on my blog but plenty has been happening behind the scenes.  The next couple of photographs are really just a tease ... I am sure Fiona and I will post on this book 'silence' soon.  It is the last of our collaborative books and was done in a more traditional collaboration where I created the artwork and Fiona was responsible for the beautiful quotes we sourced on 'silence'.  It is a very quiet and meditative book and we will speak more of it later as we have editioned this book and have also made a second edition of the five individual prints.

'silence' by Susan Bowers and Fiona Dempster.

I have had to keep away from more toxic things in the last months and as such have been revisiting my painting and drawing days and having a great deal of fun in the process.  Earlier this year I did a workshop with Noela Mills on textures and using some of the elements I learnt I have been working on 'textures of australia' which will form one of the bodies of my work for the up coming exhibition at Noosa Regional Gallery.  I have made four larger individual works and a piece made up of sixteen smaller works to be hung as a four by four installation.  I am really looking forward to seeing them up on walls and not just scattered over my studio floor.

The inspiration for these works has been our trips to the outback of Australia and being lucky enough to take helicopter flights or small plane flights over lake Eyre and Lake Armadeus - both of which were oceans of salt whipped up by wind.  Though the two years prior to my flight over Lake Eyre had been popular viewing because of all the flood water which came down from the north of Australia, I was lucky enough to be there when the typical dry was back and witness the aftermath of a windstorm the night before which created gorgeous patterns and marks and almost made the desert landscape look like frozen tundra, or our ocean shores.

It fascinates me that what we see from on high by way of patterns and marks over extensive landscape, can be repeated in a single rock or stone found on the ground.  People associate the vivid blues and reds with our outback but my eye is always drawn to these soft greys and ochres, charcoals and mauves. In this painting below you can see the remnant of water left in some small puddles amidst what looks like ice but is salt residue.

I have finally completed my 3D drawings ... seventeen of them which will spread across a wall a couple of metres - hopefully in a spot with much delicious light which seems to bring these drawings to life.  The wall upon which I hang them for viewing in my studio has barely any light so they don't look their best.  The process for each of these is quite involved as I firstly need to make the drawings, each of which is between 90cms and 130cms  in height and in various widths.  Once this is done I actually score the paper, which is mostly architectural film inherited from my father, hoping like anything that I am not cutting right through the film and ruining the drawings.  Strangely enough, once all the drawing and the scoring and folding has taken place, one of the most difficult things is to actually the stick down the works along their backs so they become totemic.  Not all all easy when you are not able to get your hands or arms into the lengths of the sculptured drawings!

Part of me thinks that is would be so much easier just to make a number of two dimensional drawings and forget about working in 3D - though I think this is as close to sculpture I will ever come. I am planning some very large two dimensional works in this vein though they won't be happening till later this year, or next year!

I am using many different layers with the drawings - mostly using inks, graphite power and pencils.  I have tried to keep the drawings varied and yet hope they all hang well together.  Mostly they deal with trees and their markings and textures.

I quite like the softness of the backs ...

The seventeen - though I haven't actually decided if this is the final number!

And some details here, and below.

I am also working on a number of artist's books at the moment.  The glimpses of this one below are from a book which will be called 'standing on fishes' and taken from the work of  Rainer Marie Rilke. If you don't know the poem I would 'google' it as it is sublime.  I have had the quote on my computer desktop for a couple of years now and always wanted to make a book of images to suit.  The imagery just happened and when I had made the fourth image and to me it looked exactly like fish beneath the water, I knew I had found my book.  Now I just have to find a way to write the words on the pages ......  will need to solicit the aid of Fiona I am sure though ultimately I want to actually write in the book myself.  I am still in the process of working out how to present this book, what papers to use, whether I need to add anymore drawing or artwork, whether to emboss covers and so forth.  Need to get a wiggle on though as the date for submitting our list of works get closer and closer.

two books meet ..... endure and preserve

Endure and Preserve met today and though the books were truly impossible to photograph, we could feel them grinning at each other as much as we were as they looked each other up and down, then lay quietly beside each other like coupled companions.

I had very little success in photographing these books and I am sure when you see more photographs of the individual books, you will see why.

The books began their life ingrained with angst and really during their making seemed to hold that angst tightly to their chests.  I thought I was the only one having problems, not just with pinning down a thousand ideas into one that would work, but also in the actual construction of the book.  More of this will be revealed when we post on our individual books.

Apart from the delight in our books, enhanced perhaps because of the struggle in realising them, the thing I enjoyed absolutely the most today, was spending time with Fiona.  As she said in passing today, we have hardly seen each other since November.  And that is true.  My life was a tad manic from about September last year, and then I had so many trips both local and overseas, followed by a time of incredible busyness and then hibernating for a couple of months due to poor health.  So, although we live very close by and are great friends, there just simply has not been the opportunity other than a snatched hour here and there.  Today was bliss.

We had time to talk about our next, and last, book and to plan our exhibition at Noosa Regional Gallery later this year.  Big sigh.

I had hoped now to have been heading to bed but have only just made it onto the computer to post on the books' meeting, and then I also want to write another post as tomorrow I am leaving very early for New Zealand and will be away from blogland.

As you can see, it is very difficult to see what these books are like though you get a hint.

Fiona's pages of words wrought beautifully throughout her book.

In my book her words have been burnt, bled and obliterated in order to make the book look like work I have made.

In both our books there is a delicious layering effect through the perspex.

I have included a couple of photographs of my book as a teaser but also to show you how much the surrounding light can affect the book.  I love the image above reflecting the blue of the sky which was flooding the room upstairs when I was trying to photograph.

The image below was taken in the studio under harsh light.  No lovely blues - and probably a more honest representation of the book.  Only a professional photographer will actually be able to get any decent photos of the books and I think we will both resort to that down the track.

Off now to write a post on Preserve.  A name I like but upon which I have not yet settled....

epitaph .....

Book Ideation Cards - Julie Chen and Barbara Tetenbaum - our recipe ..... 

high tech, assymetrical, multiple openings, multiple colours, no text, abstract, muted, photographic, miniature, personal, issue based and simple.

Choosing our cards from each category was fun though I don't think Fiona and I realised at the time just how constraining, or in reality how expanding, this project would be.  It was immediately apparent that for Fiona the challenge would be 'no text' and for me, I think the 'issue based' book was the initial stumbling block.  I think at the end of the day I have to be honest and say that I chose to work with trees before deciding on the 'issue' of trees.  We live on ten gorgeous acres with views up and down the coast but one of the things we have been doing to open up the views, is cut down trees. It is always with great sadness that this happens and of course we still have many many more on this bush block.  Another thing that was a sadness was that one of our huge white gums came down in the cyclone at the beginning of last year.  This will supply us with huge sections of timber for seating around the fire pit but never-the-less, one never wants to see such a gracious tree come down.  

I decided that I would like to record these trees in some manner, remembering them before they were reduced from proud beings to mere stumps and so this book has come about as something personal but also issue based in the act of remembering trees, respecting them, recording them in some manner.  I have also played with the idea that seeds from trees spread and grow into young saplings which will in turn grow into more proud beings. 

Those of you who follow my blog will know I have been exploring new techniques of printmaking in the last couple of months and by employing these new techniques, I think I covered the 'high tech' ingredient from the recipe.  A stumbling block for me was the multiple openings and once I discovered that I could tear open seed like shapes through the fine tengujo paper, revealing the layer beneath, this problem was solved.  The result of many days of pondering is often so simple but it just doesn't appear as quickly as one would hope .... I think it is because as artists we have minds that are open to a myriad of possibilities of direction in which a work could proceed and in order to move forward, we have to decide on just one.  My pencil drawings ended up being very simple marks or lines .... but there again, as I prowled around my book when it was half way through, thinking about all the things I could do, I just had to settle on the one idea and work with that.  I am satisfied that I managed to work to the recipe though I am mindful that with those same ingredients, a number of different books could have been made.

And so, I have named my book Epitaph - I hope my tombstones also look a little like tree stumps.  I do love the fact that by using the marks or relief prints from trees which have lived here on this land, there is a record of their existence. The book is not easy to photograph but I have shown each page and then some of the details.  I have used a number of different weights of Japanese tissue papers for the prints and the book pages are made from Fabriano Tiepolo which is a favourite of mine.

epitaph |ˈɛpɪtɑːf, -taf|

nouna phrase or form of words written in memory of a person who has died, especially as an inscription on a tombstone. figurative : a poignant epitaph to hiscreative career.• something by which a person, time, or event will be remembered: the storymakes a sorry epitaph to a great career.ORIGIN late Middle English: from Old French epitaphe, via Latin fromGreek epitaphion ‘funeral oration’, neuter of ephitaphios ‘over or at a tomb’, from epi ‘upon’ + taphos ‘tomb’.

I have left 'peep holes' in the perspex cover through which you catch glimpses of page one.

First page

Second page

Third page

Fourth page

Final page.