Wood litho

The latest issue of Pressing Matters magazine arrived yesterday, and two processes have engaged my interest.  The first article to attract me is about Danielle Creenaune and her use of Mokulito/Wood lithography.

Danielle Creenaune: The source (image from here)
I had encountered the term Mokolito before once or twice, but Danielle Creenaune's website goes into step by step detail.  Most illuminating.  There is also a video showing her working on the wood.

Danielle Creenaune: Bushwalk with you (image from here)

Molly Lemon: Tangled (image from here)
The second article is about the artist Molly Lemon and her wood engravings.  That took me to her website where I was drawn to her work with pressure printing - there is again a step by step guide.

Molly Lemon: Pathway II (image from here)
I see two recurring themes here for me: printmaking and trees.

Preliminary thoughts for lino cutting

I rediscovered a design that stalled in limbo some years ago, and am thinking now of perhaps developing it further.

And on the other hand I quickly drew up this outline.  Perhaps I'll cut both.

Or, ... they are both more of the same as before.  There is a restlessness within for a new path.  So far I cannot see it, so I shall keep going along the one I'm on, but keep myself alert for possibilities.

About time for printmaking

The new landscape (image from here)
Seeing Helen Baines' collagraphs with drypoint has made me think that I'd like to return to trying some more myself.

Looking outward (image from here)

Excitements

I have recently received my first copy of Pressing Matters - their fourth issue - having found out about the magazine through Annie Bissett's blog.

Also my 'handbag' press has arrived, and after Wimbledon I'm hoping for cooler weather so that I can explore using it.  Too sticky for stitching, my activities are reduced to tennis watching, reading, and most intermittent animation required for gathering fruit to make into frozen yoghurt.  

As ever ...

... when I should be settling down to something serious

a silly idea pops into my head: a hare-raising story!  A doodle to add to my lino cutting pile perhaps.

Prints at Pallant House

Marie Laurencin: Depuis ce Jour Fatal etching (image from here)
The current exhibition in the Pallant House print room is Women Artists: The Female Gaze.  The prints are from the gallery's collection, and what a splendid show they make.  My absolute favourite is the one pictured above, but it only just squeaked ahead of so many others.  These are but a few which particularly caught my interest:

Cornelia Parker: The Blue Room lithograph (image from here)

Kiki Smith: Blue Girl etching (image from here - I'm not exactly sure if this is the right image, but the print I saw was almost exactly similar)

Paula Rego: The Guardian etching (image from here)

Shani Rhys James: The Hand Mirror etching with aquatint (image from here)

Cathie Pilkington: Eve and Eve mokulito lithograph (image from here)

Jennifer McRae: The Absentee lithograph (image from here)

Can't settle

I have many things to get on with, most of which need a deal of time, but I find myself distracted to focus on something different.  My main determination at present is to eliminate extraneous STUFF.  Stuff which has accumulated over so many years, and has been added to and accommodated as parents have died.
Stuff might prove useful, books might be read or re-read, stuff is too good to throw away, but now obsolete, or out of fashion, or in not quite spruce enough condition to give away, ....
Anyway all this in itself should make me busy, but the very process of sorting through the stuff - especially in this case the textile stuff - has tripped me up.  I found myself making a collage of bits left over from other projects.  And now have given myself yet another stitching project.

The base is a screen print on heavy calico.  The image is a drawing of part of the plan of Winchester cathedral.  Many years ago I was part of an exhibition in the cathedral and as I live relatively near I did the early morning shift.  With hardly anyone in the cathedral I spent an enjoyable time looking at the structure of the place, and especially at the medieval inlaid tiles.

I made screen prints of the tile designs too, and bits of those are in this new collage.

The figures are offprints from other projects.  I also added some text about the tile makers, and all that would have been ok - but the idea is to pull it all together with the kind of intensive stitching that I used for City living, below.

Sigh. 

Inspired by Nature's bounty

Alan Reynolds: Summer: Young September's Cornfield (image from here)
This morning I went into our local museum to see an exhibition:  Angie Lewin - A Printmaker's Journey.  An exhibition of Angie Lewin's work alone would have been interesting enough, but this is so much better: a collection of pieces which the catalogue describes as an introspective exhibition: one which gathered together major influences, affinities and works of importance to her own visual journey, past and present.
I enjoy seeing Angie Lewin's work.  I so admire her compositions, her collections of evidence, memories of being in the landscape.  My favourites, however are the images which capture the shape of the landscape such as Skye to Harris (below)

and especially Black Island - both in the show.

The piece of hers which I loved the most in the exhibition is a watercolour: Wooden Dish with Uist Pebbles (image below from here).

One delightful surprise was a painting, Brimham Rock, Yorkshire by Graham Sutherland which I had not seen before.  What a powerful image.  The painting, a gouache on paper is the original from the Shell poster shown below (image from here).  The frame and lettering diminishes the power of the original.  At first I thought that it was a tree, but no - the rocks exist. 

Astonishing, the painting is representational, but moves, pulls in the viewer, enticingly looking like a tree in wind, then contributing to the otherworldliness of rocks and their surroundings.  (image below from here)

Another delight, another discovery for me was Monica Poole's wood engraving Under Water (image below from here).

And yet another new artist to me, and attractive, unusual work is Paul Scott's Scott's Cumbrian Blue(s), The Garden Series, Willow Cuttings (image below from here).

All in all this morning reinforced my general feeling that I get more of substance these days from small specialist exhibitions rather than the huge blockbusters, not least because I encountered only two other visitors this morning (and they soon left, leaving me alone) rather than crowds.  I now have lots to savour.

Three threads (part 1)

Hughie O'Donoghue: Three Studies for a Crucifixion II (image from here)
This week I was fortunate to see three exhibitions in one venue: the Pallant House Gallery in Chichester.  I had arranged to meet a friend there to see two exhibitions - the Pasmore and the Nolan - but the bonus for me was the display of woodcut prints which I had time to visit before my friend arrived. 

Vanessa Bell: String Quartet (image from here)
The display covered quite a range of styles which I enjoyed perusing.  Durer's work is always a delight, and it was interesting seeing Vanessa Bell's illustration work, as I was not so familiar with her prints.

Ben Nicholson: Five Circles (image from here)
Of the abstracts, two artists' work was intriguing: Ben Nicholson I did not expect to see at all, and indeed it turns out that this is most likely the only woodcut he executed.  I love the way that the grain of the wood fits his minimal style so well.  What a pity he did not do more.

Rebecca Salter: Celest 1 (image from here)

Salter's work also fascinates me - it always strikes me that she is trying to make pieces which look as much unlike woodcut as possible.  The two on show here are like fine woven cloth.

Emma Stibbon: Hverir, Iceland (image from here)

Such a contrast with the work of Emma Stibbon which is pure drama in landscape.

Utagawa Hiroshige: Travellers surprised by sudden rain (image from here)

John Buckland-Wright: Figure (after Stanley Hayter) (image from here)

I was pleased to see a couple of 'usual suspects': Hiroshige and a homage to Stanley Hayter by John Buckland-Wright.  But was thoroughly delighted finally to see Nana Shiomi's work close to - having previously admired it online only.  Of the prints from 100 views of Mitate, it was No88 Great Buddha which appealed to me - shown below.

But the work which inspired me most was not a woodcut at all.  It was in the gallery/café space outside the print room: Hughie O'Donoghue's Three Studies for a Crucifixion II - magnificent carborundum prints, illustrated at the top of this post. 

Tadek Beutlich: an upcoming exhibition this Spring

Tadek Beutlich was an extraordinary weaver of bright constructions, and also a printmaker.  I mentioned his work in a Ragged Cloth Café post, and Liz Hankins, daughter of his assistant got in touch with me then, and again now to let me know of an upcoming exhibition and opportunity to buy his work.

The exhibition will be on from 3 - 12 March this year at The Jointure Studios, 11 South Street, Ditchling, Sussex BN6 8UQ - more information from the Emma Mason Gallery.

From Liz Hankins' email to me:

My mother Fay was assistant to Tadek in his Ditchling studio at Gospels (formerly Ethel Mairet's home and studio) and I had a few of his textiles come to me at my pop up gallery (Vision Gallery) about 6 yrs ago, which I sold, hence his widow Ellen Beutlich asking me to help find homes for the remainder of his studio works.when Tadek died in 2011.

The upshot of it all is that I have identified and catalogued all his works and taken on print specialists Emma Mason Gallery,fortunately based in Eastbourne to sell Tadek's prints and I am delighted that the V&A are taking some more textiles and prints to add to the ones they already hold by Tadek. I have found other Collections who will take pieces too, such as Folkestone Creative Foundation and Farnham Craft Study Centre and Ditchling Museum, but a large selection of the remainder will be on exhibition at The Jointure in Ditchling for one week 3rd to 12th March 2017.

Work will be for sale, so apart from being a chance for you to buy an original Beutlich, it is also a chance for admirers of Tadek's textiles and prints to get a closer look at his work before it is dispersed. We will have talks and workshops too including a talk by Fay Hankins about working with Tadek at Gospels and answering any questions.

There is also an exhibition at Ditchling Museum running until mid April with a selection I have given them to show, of Tadek's prints and smaller textiles as well as Ethel Mairet's own annotated copy of her Book of Vegetable Dyes from Gospels, which Ellen Beutlich donated to the Museum.

 

We would be glad to let as many people know as possible if you could share this on your blog and on Ragged Cloth and with any other groups or artists etc who might be interested, since our exhibition at the Jointure is only open for the one week and so many have been waiting for news of this.

 

Biography of Tadek Beutlich, 1922 - 2011 from the Emma Mason press release:

 

Tadeusz Franz Beutlich was born in Lwowek, Poland in 1922 moving to

Poznan in 1930 and it was in Poznan at age 15 that Beutlich started a

foundation course at art school, initially fascinated by painting, sculpture

and stained glass. His studies were halted by the outbreak of the Second World War leading Tadek to join the Second Polish Corps, part of the British 8th Army.

At the end of the war Beutlich was one of forty-nine officers and soldiers

selected to study art at the Rome Students Centre, which in the following

year moved to the UK. Arriving in Britain by ship in 1947, Beutlich took up a government grant offered to all ex-servicemen initially studying painting and drawing at the Sir John Cass Technical Institute.

In 1948 after seeing French tapestry weavers demonstrate weaving at the V&A, Beutlich was inspired to seek out the textile department at his college where he started by weaving small kilims. In Poznan, weaving was still a male profession and it was popular to display the kilims they wove on the walls of houses, including Beutlich’s own family home, which would have a lasting influence on him. Beutlich transferred to study textiles at Camberwell School of Art and Crafts, London where he graduated in 1950.  He subsequently taught at Camberwell from 1951 to 1974.

 

Fish (image from here)

I was particularly interested to read about his printmaking, about which I had not really known before:

During this time he also experimented with printmaking, making large and very striking relief prints, most printed in the 1960s and 70s building on the early success of his print ‘Fish’ which was awarded second prize in the Giles Bequest Competition when it was exhibited at the V&A in 1956. Beutlich printed his prints by hand, without a press and many were printed for the print publishers, Editions Alecto.

 

As a student his tutor Barbara Sawyer had taken him to meet the weaver

and dyer Ethel Mairet at her home and workshop, Gospels in Ditchling,

Sussex. Mairet’s use of unusual fibres such as jute and sisal had a great

influence on his work and he also briefly experimented with some of

Mairet’s natural dyes. Some years after Mairet died the trustees of Gospels decided to sell the house and workshop but wanted it to pass to a weaver and they offered it to Beutlich, who moved there with his family in 1967.The space at Gospels gave him the opportunity to work to a larger scale, often making ‘off the loom’ wall hangings.
In1974 he and his family moved to Spain where he discovered new materials such as esparto grass, which enabled him to work without any looms. He and his family moved back to the UK in 1980, where he continuing to develop his work and ideas.

 

Somewhat out of season

Finding the pattern
The first kinds of activity at the beginning of a year I find are sorting, and then finalising, then continuing ... before any new work begins.  Thus, the first finalised design is Bounty (below) - which probably won't be stitched until a more appropriate season for the subject.

And I have got round to putting a new post up on my work blog.

Trying to get back on track

Time passes while I don't seem to be making any progress.  This month the only things I have achieved involve shopping - which is not something I do often, with the huge (HUGE!) exception of books.  Starting with which I am really enjoying the catalogue for the Picasso Portraits exhibition (see image above) at the National Portrait Gallery in London.  It is brilliant, pointing me at all the artists which influenced Picasso in particular cases.  Despite having been an ardent fan of Picasso for decades, and realising that he did plunder his own vast knowledge of previous - and contemporary artists, I had no real idea of how he jumped about from instance to instance.  This is one of those wondrous books which is an eye-opener, as well as being a great springboard into further looking and learning.

Another purchase is a big one: a relief press, well, a table top one.  After a bit of research online I came across the Blue Boy.  On my return from our trip I ordered one.  I unpacked it this morning, and hope to spend time getting to know it in the coming days.  I'm not exactly sure where it will live permanently (oh for a purpose built space ...), but meantime it can happily stay where it is till I get to know it better.

The third purchase was an indulgence brought on by extreme headcold misery.  This is the kind of behaviour I thought I had left behind years ago: buying stuff for which I have no immediate purpose.  And indeed this purchase - or part of it has reinforced that determination once more.  The linen threads are beautiful subtle colours, but of course what I had forgotten was that natural dyes are often fugitive.  There's a warning on the packet to keep the work made with them out of direct sunlight.  Sigh.  The cone is a fine yarn mix of silk and stainless steel, which I am curious to try at some point.

I should just have bought a book!

A couple of hot days

Summer seems to have returned to us, and for a couple of days it has been too hot to work in the kitchen print studio until the afternoon.  I have been carving five images to go together, and want now to proof them to see if further cutting is needed.

As I look out of the open french window in the sewing room I see that I will soon have lavender to harvest for bags,

but meantime I am preparing some of my putterings for stitching.  I've added a new post to my work blog.