2021 tick .....

For many, and I suspect most of us, it is wonderful to be saying goodbye to 2021 and welcome this New Year which we hope will be brighter, more gentle and more connected.  By that I mean that we have the opportunity to connect with those we have missed over the last couple of years, or places that we miss and have been unable to visit because of restrictions.  By no means do I think our troubles are over with this pandemic, but I hope this year allows us all more freedoms to spend time with those we love, and enjoy the places we love to spend time.

This drawing below is called 'hope' which is apt I think.  So many of my musings have begun with I hope this or I hope that.  This was not the only inspiration for this work.  I drew upon Emily Dickinson's poem

'Hope' is a thing with feathers - 

that perches in the soul

and sings the tune without the words

and never stops - at all.

 'Hope'

This series of five drawings are all done on architectural drafting paper which gives them a luminesecence which you cannot tell with the photographs.  And they are quite large - 900mm x 700mm.  It is one of those bodies of work that comes from that place where you let go and something else takes over.  I do not often work with this kind of emotive work, never comfortable with wearing my heart on my sleeve, and it is a deviation from the work I had been doing largely last year.

'Gathered'

I am hoping (there I go again!) that the work speaks for itself and speaks about the various aspects of feeling vulnerable and protected simultaneously over the last year.

'Sheilded'

'Solace'

I spoke in my last post of the exhibition 'Red Threads - Holding and Connecting' which was being held in Fiona and Barry's wonderful Deckled Edge Press Studio and which you can read about in Fiona's post.

'Held'

I am happy to say most of my work, large and the smaller ones too, found its way to other homes.  I had very lovely feedback from visitors to the small showing that they just stood in front of my work and gazed.  Lovely supporting words to hear. I think every artist wants to know that people take the time to really stop and look at their work.

Though there is much to say I am now preparing for teaching a few keen artists who want to explore the art of making books.  The studio is ready for show and tell next week and soon thereafter we will commence.  It will be great fun for me to revisit the techniques and design of artist's books as I have not made any for some time.  

Wishing everyone a much happier year this year.  I will add that my year was pretty easy and not that much different from other years.  We live on ten acres where every day I look down through the trees and along the coastline of the Sunshine Coast and am so thankful to live in such a gorgeous spot.  Not too difficult to isolate here - though I have missed that steady connection with family and friends.

14/52 'elanda point' .....

'the peephole'

'most of the pages - always so hard to photograph the whole'

This book was made in response to the few days we were camping at Elanda Point recently - the fringe of swamp gum and root twist on the water's edge.

I actually started with more realistic drawings around the insets but it didn't work and so I resorted to my 'mark making' which gives more a sense of things than the reality of what was in view.  I do love to draw but my years of using mark making in my printmaking work has definitely had an impact on the way I like to work.

This book is made with Fabriano Tiepolo - a firm favourite of mine.  The cover is greyboard with a cutout to reveal part of the front page.  Five pages in all.  The book was sewn before I stuck down the folios so the stitching is hidden inside the folds.   A simple coptic binding completed the book.

Although I am pleased with the pages as a whole, I really love some of the printed details contrasted with the hand drawn marks.  And the over printing in white ink is something I have not explored very much though will certainly try some more.  It brings a wonderful subtlety to the work.

I do realise that my preferred palette must seem repetitive and boring but I can't seem to move away from this 'love' zone whether I work with dark shades or the lights.

Where I am trying to head with my work is starting to take shape with this return to the studio which the book a week project has precipitated.  There is rarely time to give each book much thought or time but now and then I have glimpses of return points ..... points for further investigation.  These details show me that I would would love to take such a snippet and make it much larger without getting too detailed and overworking.  

As I am needing to reinvent myself in the studio and work with less toxic medium,  I am thinking more and more of drawings and maybe combinations of the realistic with the mark making.  All quite exciting I think but I have not arrived there yet ..... and I do keep wondering if I will ever be able to let go of printmaking.  Certainly it is something I would only be able to do here outside and not inside the studio.  Still it is possible when the weather is gracious.  Glad I didn't dispose of all my printmaking material.

8/52 'australian' and 9/52 'flotsam' .....

8/52     'australian'

I love leather and enjoyed making this soft leather cover for my eighth book of the year.  As I work through this project making a book each week I realise that I am making some complete artist's books, and some books which will have drawings in them but will be added into as the year, or years, pass by.  This is one of those books.  I have called it 'australian' because it will be comprised of a series of drawing from the Australian bush through which I wander many a time though rarely sit down long enough to draw.  Hopefully this book will inspired me to sit and draw, or at least to 'collect' on walks and draw at home.

I have done a number of drawings already but have many blank pages.  The soft wrap around leather cover will adapt to whatever thickness of book I settle upon.  It is made from kangaroo skin and I have used the rough edges of the piece of leather to give interest to the cover.

9/52    'flotsam'

This little book reminds me of how much I am a printmaker at heart.  I am enthralled with the lines and marks one makes serendipitously on the plate.  Of course the maker guides the marks but much of what happens seems to just happen.  Of all the techniques I use with etching, my favourite would have to be using sugar lift and aquatint.  With it, the finest and the most bold lines can be achieved.

I have made this book from left over etchings (part of my 'hunting and gathering' book) but remade like this, it called to mind beach markings and though it is not yet housing drawings made while beach walking, it soon will.  Again it is lovely to have a book ready to go for that sojourn by the shore.

I have made a wrap around end on this coptically bound book and have two sleeves which slip on and hold the book firm.  The book is called 'flotsam' as I will be drawing things found lying along the shore - beach debris, and beach marks no doubt!

growing a story .....

Another busy week in the studio and though the wall is growing and the story of 'here' expanding, it is not moving along as quickly as I hoped.

You learn such a great deal each time you make a book.  Maybe because I am primarily a 2D artist and see images in my head all the time as singles, I find it hard then to make multiples of very different images belong together.  Not sure that made sense ..... if I was just doing a series of artworks which spoke about our land I would be finding this way more easy than working it as a book - even though it will be an unbound book.  Within the book no one image can completely dominate the other and there needs to be a thread which ties the book together.  I am using numerous techniques as well which makes this quite a difficult story to tell but I do hope in the end the tale has a sense of belonging.  For most of course the underlying story will be completely obscure, but for those who are interested and ask me to lead them through the story, I will happily do so.

This first image is the one that was heading for the bin ... and the reason for that was twofold.  Firstly as an image it drowned all the other work and secondly, there was too much information in the one 'page'.  One of the things I love about artists' book work is the slow reveal, the fragments of stories.  Not reading the ending before one has passed through all the pages ... and even then wondering if it has finished, or if indeed you need to read the book again to find more of the story.

One tiny corner of our property.
A for avocado tree and all the circles are there because our next door neighbour has built his garden out of old tyres.

The mountain line over our site plan places us up here near the Glass House Mountains - anchors our land.
I still have a little more to add on this image.

My story board.

I want to bring back my magpie but am searching for the right way to work into the negative space - marks are needed!

Lots of work on the go ...

And another layer on the wall.

A few things I brought here from my parents home were these pots - four incredibly heavy rusted/metal looking pots that were used for pouring molten metal into shapes ..... can't think of their name for the moment.  One is over a metre tall.  They will be sitting at the middle level of our land as an installation - near the picnic shed.

Still working on the top layer here - over our house and shed.  

Finding ways to show all our trees and boulders.  

In a very strange way my book reminds me of 'The Country Diary of an Edwardian Lady' though mine is more like 'the contemporary markings of a bush block dweller'!

Still needing lots more images - rope, some of the bush orchids, more steps perhaps and certainly crows, maybe even their nest.  I gave myself May to break the back of this work and I think that will happen but it certainly will not be near completion.  Over the next few months I will be able to refine images and add others.  Once I have an overgrown storyboard, I will ask Fiona to help me decide how this books reads best.

preserve .... a burnt book

It was my idea last year to suggest to Fiona that we do a 'burn book' and in my mind's eye I thought Fiona would hand me some pages of her lovely delicate burning with which to work, and in exchange I would hand over some very delicate but randomly burnt paper and somehow, magically, a soft pretty kind of burn book would emerge.  Ha!  Things don't often  work out as you see them in your minds' eye and this book couldn't be more different from the one I envisaged.

That being said, the challenge has resulted in a book that I would have to say is probably my favourite.  The resulting book looks quite simple but it took months of head wrangling and stomach aching to reach this point.  Fiona's work is very distinctive and when I was presented with seven pages of her gorgeous calligraphy about the burning of books, and ideas that can't be destroyed but fly onwards, I knew I had some serious thinking to do.  To somehow take apart her work and make it mine, and yet because her words were profound, I needed to find my own words, my own reason for bringing this book into being.

In July last year I committed to a project called 'Absence and Presence' - a printmaking project as part of a large ongoing body of work across the globe called 'Mutanabbi Street Starts Here'.  Instigated and co-ordinated by Beau Beausoleil who is based in San Francisco, this work has been in direct response to the bombing of Al Mutanabbi Street, the cultural precinct of Baghdad in 2007. Home to intellectuals, printers, writers, book shops and coffee shops for centuries.  I have yet to make my prints (I have until July this year) but my mind is always ticking over ideas and thus the burning of books, the destruction of priceless treasures, the preservation of books and so on has been on my mind for some time. For longer still is the heartache I feel every time I read of, or hear of the wilful destruction of libraries and the burning of books.  

I am a great fan of asemic writing and rarely use explicit text in my work.  Never in fact.  this book however has two layers of written text.  Not hugely legible because it is engraved into the perspex with a dremel, but if you try hard you can read what is being said.  The black writing is done on the inside of the book and then inked so in fact the writing is then reversed.  I have listed some of the atrocities perpetrated by human intent upon libraries from pre 206BC when Qin Shi Huang had order the burning of books and burying of scholars in Xianyang, Qin China through to the latest heartbreak in Mosul were ISIS burnt 8000 rare books and manuscripts.  

The burning, and there was a great deal of it done to these pages, and then the writing down of these details about the destruction of Libraries throughout history, left me feeling quite desolate.  I had downloaded an article about the burning of books in Mosul by ISIS in the Fiscal Times by Riyadh Mohammed written on February 23 about half way through the article was this lovely passage ...

'900 years ago, the books of the Arab philosopher Averroes were collected before his eyes ..... and burned.  One of his students started crying while witnessing the burning. Averroes told him ..... the ideas have wings .... but I cry today over our situation.'

I thought about using those words ' ideas have wings' in this book, but instead, wrote on the outside of the book, or I should say engraved with an etching needle, the words from one of my very favourite poems by Gerard Manley Hopkins - God's Grandeur.  You can read these words quite clearly if you go hunting across the pages - they don't leap out but they are there.  I have included a copy of this poem at the end of this post.

In my previous post I did mention that there had been enormous difficulties in the making of this book and many of those were due to the structure/construction of the perspex.  I was going to write of these difficulties but really, they are not important.  I am pleased with the result of this book and though it certainly is not the first perspex book I have made, I have included new ideas and techniques in this one which I will use again.  This collaboration of Fiona's and mine certainly does push us but each time we complete a book, we find we have learnt something new about techniques and mostly about ourselves and the way we see and thus make.

I do need to add for those of you who may be looking around for the burnt paper which was to be my contribution, and with which you have seen me play in the last couple of posts.  I decided not to use any of it.  The paper added nothing to the concept of this book and felt superfluous so I felt quite happy to just put it aside.

a pity to have to photograph the book with a white paper background as you lose the effect of the burnt fragments being suspended in the perspex - much like specimens on a slide

this photo gives you a better idea of the floating and layering between pages

some evidence of my text

pity about my reflection - or the cameras' reflection

do love this blue and will intentionally be bringing blue over and through some of my earthy work

Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844–89).  Poems.  1918.

7. God’s Grandeur

THE WORLD is charged with the grandeur of God.   It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;   It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod? Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;         5   And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;   And wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell: the soil Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.   And for all this, nature is never spent;   There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;         10 And though the last lights off the black West went   Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs— Because the Holy Ghost over the bent   World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.

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....