Silent Sunday
Happy Holidays ….
“May your blocks be flat.
your gravers sharp,
your inks smooth
your fingers clean,
and your prints as crisp as you desire … ‘
this prayer was bestowed on Linocut friends by Doug Haug, this morning with season’s greetings. I heartily agree and return the good wishes.
Along with every teacher I have encountered this year; this is indeed the mantra that we should breath before and during our work.
…. So what of the results no matter how we adhere to the rules there are failures and like our ugly child or scruffy dog, they have endearing features.
Like this one just failed from day one; but it remains a joy.
Happy Holidays
Silent Sunday
Yesterday …
Yesterday; I attended a screen printing workshop in London at the Print Club London. No great shakes, I have been to a few workshops over the last couple of years. However, this one was special as I had booked it originally in September for November, before I was brought down by a horrible back injury and then postponed it. It was some time before I considered that I was well enough; not just to undertake the long journey but to stand for several hours in a print room.
So yesterday it happened! The journey was without difficulty to a part of London I had visited earlier in the year; Dalston. Arriving early I was able to have a reconnoitre of the local shops that I noted before.
The course was Photo-emulsion Screen Printing for beginners it was really good I learned a lot and we all produced 6 perfect images to take home. Although, I have tried screen printing before my experience was mostly hands-on using paper stencils. This was more technical using Paint Shop and then chemicals and equipment that I would not have at home.
The idea was that having learned the skills we could come back to the Print Room to use the equipment, practice and develop our new found skills. Sadly, I live too far away to make it practical however I do plan to do deluxe today course and during that time find a print room nearer home that offer similar facilities .
However I am not sure any print room will offer such a wide array of independant shops and cafes I enjoyed at lunchtime.
So I look forward to returning in the new year for a longer session.
Weekly photo challenge … Oops.
I am a printmaker; coming into the creative world late in life. It has been a riotous journey, in the good way, although in the depths of disadvantage I have felt less than joyous. I have begun exhibiting work and even have sold some pieces. This has been the icing on the cake; however my most popular linocut has been the the result of several mistakes and tears.
Reduction print is a way of printing a linocut and often referred to is being the suicide print. It bears this namely rightly because as the print developes so the block becomes more more cut away; it is organic, dynamic and unforgiving … there is no going back.
so this ‘oops’ has given me a tears, a story and a little financial return.
A ‘failed’ reduction print
Its Monday …
Last week I promised myself time to make a painting, print or draw a day … not such a arduous task as I do some art work each day. However I am incline to put ‘them’ aside because they are unfinished or less than a work of art! So I am trying to celebrate and enjoy myself. These few pages are nice.
Silent Sunday
Thursday’s Alphabet of Tea … D is for Darjeeling and Dividend Tea.
I was going to write about Darjeeling, but then I don’t know so much about Indian tea; although I have a friend who served me some first flush earlier this year and it was lovely. However; I know more about Dividend tea, simply because it was very cheap and always on the top of my mother’s shopping list in the 1950s.
It would seem that the tea trade was huge in the beginning of the 20th century; the major traders were very well rewarded and competition was and needed to be enterprising, Clever sales campaigns and advertising became an essential part of the business. Brook Bond used a slogan ‘Full weight without paper’ to highlight the fact that some companies were cheating their customers by including the weight of the packaging in the total net weight in each packet of loose tea.
Following the slump of the 1929 and the misery and poverty of the early 1930s, the company set out to capture more of the market with launch in 1935 of the cheap but good quality ‘dividend tea.’ This was a blend sold in packets bearing a dividend stamp that consumers saved and stuck on a card , reading to exchange for cash or gifts.
I can remember carefully taking the perforated stamp and sticking on to a card and redeeming 5 shillings (25p)
Weekly Photo Challenge … I spy
I spy my next task, I have been looking forward to beginning the classification on the Cole Library for several months. It is a wonderful collection and the first few shelves are mostly biographies and dictionaries; a tiny bit dry so I have been grumbling already, but that is nothing new I am sure there will be some delights as time goes on; but until then I will chug on.
A painting a day … possible?
This blog post might not materialise but I hope it does and come something. I have been ill for the last couple of months; not life threatening but I have been to some dark places and mournful. During this time my usual routines have been thwarted at every turn and for the most time this seemed as traumatic as the pain itself. So, with the pain and subsequent treatment; the hopes, plans, and dreams were were put on hold, some cancelled altogether.
In some respects I have been disabled, but now as I improve and certain routines are returning. Looking closely at the joys and disappointments, not just recently but over the last few years since becoming ‘creative’. I I were perhaps to document the ups and downs the result would be a resounding thumbs up.
However, in reality this isn’t always the case. I can struggle for days, even weeks with downess (not depression I’ve been there). There is an anxiety that is consuming and tiresome; I am always trying to invent ways to enjoy the the starting of a new project or maintaining an ongoing task.
This becomes increasingly difficult when technology, age and ability comes into play. So as I say I am coming out of my recent bout of stuckness and browsing an art magazine. I came across an article about an artist who wished to revive her current practice by beginning a new project, by painting a picture every day and this continues 10 years later and become an international, lucrative and fulfilling community . It would seem that in some quarters these one day pieces are valued.
This got me thinking, I draw daily even in my darkest times; I even keep them and sold the result of some of these scrawlings. Many, I preserve carefully in books and folders; 5 years of progress. I have exhibited them but I don’t consider them my art work, the journey perhaps. not what I aspire to, almost they are a disappointment because they are unfinished or like Cinderella who didn’t make it to the ball.
In a bid to make sense of all the above I will begin my own celebration of a ‘picture’ a day in a weekly blog post … I am not sure which day yet but will you join me?
Coat Hanger Doll's House 