A vase prints installation?
I been thinking of the things I could do once I have printed enough different designs and colours of my vases. I been planning on doing some research into ways I could sell them online to see how many people would be interested in buying them but it seems that I don’t want to do that just yet! I thought of a way of using my vase printing works as a combined installation piece which I think could look good.
How will this work?
Well… during my travels in China I have seen many different vase shops and seeing all the different vases that I have been printing has given me a nice idea into making my very own English vase shop that hold Chinese vases. Again for me, it’s like another China and English connection within the new work and I think could work very well together, not only that but it brings back a few memories that I discovered in China too.
Materials needed?
The white space room is where I am thinking of installing this work because I think that it is a good enough size hence why most china vase shops are almost the same size but some can be very large. Next I basically just have to get hold of some normal pine wood to use as the shelves and then maybe I can treat them with some varnish or stain to give it that oldness look.
Then we will have the modern day vase prints that I have hopefully completed by this time and then we got the bond between old and modern looking which is what china faces with today. The vases won’t stand on the shelves but they will be hanging on the wall behind the shelves and the vases will look like they are almost sitting on top of the shelves. I really strongly believe that this will be a great idea with the China and English culture bonding together again and also a good way to display my Chinese vase prints.
Why look into Grayson Perry’s vases?
Well… I thought about the way I design my vases with Chinese cultural patterns on them and wondered if there was any other artist who does something similar to me. I started to research Grayson Perry’s vases when I was doing the printing of my vases and how he puts his feelings onto his vases. He puts his feelings on the vases in a way that he expresses mostly about what the children in the world go through and how they suffer and combines these feelings onto his vases.
How does Grayson Perry relate to my vase prints?
With my Vase prints, I am expressing the English and Chinese culture bond together within my printing and also a memory trace of the experiences of seeing vases shops in China. There were so many real nice quality vases that I wanted to take home with me but were too expensive and delicate. So when I was walking around I noticed how people like cutting out stencils and putting that as a replacement for a drawing or a painting or whatever.
I wanted to make my own vase stencils which I did and in a way I am expressing the Chinese culture by printing these Chinese style stencil vases. I am trying my best to bond the two different cultures together with two different types of art because Chinese has their stencil art and I have my English printing methods. Like Grayson Perry, I am expressing my feelings and experiences that I went through to get these ideas of printing vases and the results are shown in my previous posts.
Can Grayson Perry relate to my vase Readymades?
I would say it can because each one of his vases tell a story of different previous life styles of what children have gone through and other matters. My vase Readymades do tell a memory trace within inside and the surfaces of my vases and acts as a life recorder of an old couple who have lived around these objects for years. These vases reflect upon their absence and act as a replacement of the old couple who use to live in the apartment.
The couple vases are slightly different in each other but really they were made for each other just like the old couple were made for each other. So yeah I guess Grayson Perry is a good influence to look into how he makes his vases and what stories lay behind the surfaces of them. Vases can tell stories and so can my prints.
Moving on to another vase design?
I would say that now that I have mastered the printing formula of my vases with using the right colour inks and papers and techniques, I can now try out other vase designs to see what they will look like. Today 25/03/2015 I wanted to make a good start by asking Glen – the favourable technician to help me make up some new vase stencil silk screens.
As I have explained previously in the other vases that I made, Glen makes up the same process in creating these silkscreens through projecting my stencils onto emulsion. This is what makes my printing abilities possible and workout really well for me and is one of the best printing methods I have ever come across in my life.
What will I gain by moving onto other vase designs?
Basically… I will gain more inspiration by producing other vase designs that I currently have and waiting to use and I believe in having a variety of different printing designs so that I can workout what works best for me as a printmaker. I want to see how other vase designs turn out and compare them all together and maybe produce more of some and less of the other and it also depends what other people may think of them.
I sometimes think its hard as an artist to be the viewer and sometimes i feel that I should step back a little and become the viewer being critical and questioning my work more. Luckily enough I have had quite a few interesting and nice comments so far about my first set of vases that I made and with any luck it would be nice to try getting feedback for my next set of vases. This will help me a lot towards my research in developing better vases in the near future.
Next plan of action!
mmm keep printing until I perfect and will keep you updated on any new discoveries and ideas that cross my mind which may come sooner than I think lol.
Experimenting on a new printing theme?
Ok so earlier in the week I have been doing a side experiment which does not involve my main body or printing work, this is just simply to see what it could look like printed onto plywood. I chosen plywood as it has a kind of smoothness edge to it and should no doubt be more clearer when it come to printing onto it with inks.
why did I do it and how did I do it?
I wanted to basically see what kind of effect I would get once I print onto the wood because sometimes the wood can give off a nice grain effect after covering it with inks or paints. I thought that this would be a good side experiment to see what the outcome could be once I print onto wood.
To do this… I had to try finding some scraps of plywood from somewhere and I manage to see a nice long narrow plank of it hiding behind the wood workshop door. I was very pleased indeed to find this piece and was just about the right narrow size to fit the printed vase on it. I began to mark out the sizes for each printed vase on the wood and got Glen the technician to cut the plank into 5 pieces which = 5 prints.
Next.. I begin to spend an hours worth of sanding down the edges of 5 small planks of wood making sure that when I got to screen print on the wood the edges of the wood won’t tear or rip the silkscreen. Once that is completed I am ready to print them and the way I do this is to use some clear film plastic to use as a marker so that I can align the wood in the right proportion to print on.
Next I do the first print onto the plastic film to use as an aligner for the plank of plywood and then place the wood underneath the aligner and then take away the plastic film to print it properly. Now the plywood plank is in the right spot I can now print onto it and properly and the result that I got is shown above.
Any signs of continuation with this printing theme?
well… I wouldn’t say no to stop doing this idea completely but I don’t think it will be my strongest area within my printing career. I think I will in no doubt still keep developing ideas from this and do some more and maybe also onto a type of fabric or other materials. For me any idea is well worth trying out because its not until you discover these new ideas or someone telling you that you begin to realise how far my artwork can go. will keep you updated on new ideas to come.
What has changed since the last Vase Process?
The last vase prints that i made was just about the initial outlay of how to print through both stencils to creating a nice vase print and never even thought about using better paper at that time. So this week I have decided to use better quality papers using paper card and mount board which I had in mind. Using these types of papers are easy to use and at the minute they seemed to be a new good asset within my printing. In the end, I decided to pick the Paper card as its cheaper and is just as good printing quality as the mount board.
Why does paper card work better than the paper I used before?
So… I have come up with a better idea of using the paper card because it does not crease at all and also the colours appear bolder and more stable than the normal cartridge paper that I used. I do not get any splodges or tiny drips because the paper card is thicker and can hold the colour inks very well. This is my best definement of my vase prints so far and maybe the paper card will be the best paper that I could ever use to make my printing more stable for the colours and quality.
What is the next plan of action?
Today was a good day with a lot of positive outcomes with printing on the paper card and now I will gather a lot of thought together to plan for my next set of vase stencils to print. Now that I have got the formula right, I can now prepare for more vase stencils and see the nice bright and bold colours in them on the nice paper card.
Also with Dale Devereux Barker ideas in patterns I may try some patterns out on some vases to see the effect I get and then that will be three layers of printing which could look nicer and more colourful. I will also look forward to Dale’s upcoming thursday class 27/03/15 where he will teach me how to blend my colours on my vases to look like the light is shining on the main colour of the vases. It will be an interesting session with him and will keep you updated.
