A Sense of Place – a collaborative print project

I now have a number of lino cuts sparked off by this project. Lino is a new medium for me. It became the medium of choice when I chose Borneo as "place". My partner, in this project, Alison had lived there and I had just come back from a visit there. It seemed to be an obvious choice.The lino cuts are influenced by the tattoos worn by the Iban men. It's been great sharing and bouncing ideas around between each other.

My partner Sue has a print ready and we've been working out how best to arrange the first viewing of each others work….

Meanwhile, I've been working on gum arabic lithos of black and white images from different places, but mostly my garden. The garden, which is a new one built and planted from scratch, has just gone through its fifth winter. I find myself more and more absorbed by the detail – especially in winter. The same things happen but are different each year, which is of course the pattern throughout all of our lives.

The blackbirds have fed from the crabapples right though the winter, there were so many that the tree looked like it was decorated for Christmas.

And I love my shed (of course) and its scruffy corners and spider graveyards.

I am also interested in places that hold remnants of other times – this image of a corner of Morecambe that hasn't been madeover yet is one of those..so a bit more printing tomorrow and then I'll see my partners print! pam

This is my finished image for the first part of the project. Jane and I have been working on our individual pieces and they’re ready for exchanging. We’ve decided to work independently on the next stage of the project too and will probably respond to each others work by producing work in our own usual areas of print.

I don’t know how I’m going to approach this new piece of work, I was thinking of enlarging a section of Janes print where her mark making is the most interesting and use that as a starting point but I’m not so sure now. On Friday I had a sneak preview of the print from the drying racks and at first glance it reminded me of a decaying apple core but on closer inspection I started to see dragons and ghouls faces everywhere.

Julie Dodd

My work is a nostalgic look at family holidays spent on the North Wales coast during my childhood in the 1960’s. Using family photographs and photographs of flowers, I create designs and photomontage in Photoshop that reflect my memories of childhood.

Growing up in Liverpool our family holidays started and ended with a trip through the Mersey tunnel. For this project I have used the shape of the River Mersey, from the point of the tunnel crossing to the Runcorn Bridge and beyond. By repeating the river shape I have created a floral design which reflects both my love of flowers and my ‘Sense of Place’.

Christine Taylor

At last s whole days printing uninterrupted!.I feel at last that I have made good headway today. I have finished cutting the lino cuts for my project. I have printed them onto paper to assess them, but I have also printed them onto acetate, which will make it easier to lay them over each other to decide how they fit best together, and the size of background paper I will need. Deciding whether to screenprint the background or monoprint it? Now I have the acetates done I can decide how best to fit it all together. It always feel exciting at this stage.

Allison John