First thing this morning I got an hour to myself to cut and print my relief block prints. These prints will form the top layer to my pages. They will sit about 1.5 cm above the ink jet prints of the city. I drew out an abstracted and architectoniccomposition and cut it into a jigsaw of separate shapes and inked them in black and gray. I then reassembled the shapes to print and used layers of differing tone and some additional shapes to create varied compositions.
My intention with the imagery I had devised was to create a sense of the new architecture of the city which has engulfed and dwarfed the older buildings and neighbourhoods in the recent new developments, especially in Liverpool One and the waterfront areas.
Then everyone started arriving and I had to stop work and I started helping them out.
I got in early today to get my own book underway and managed to get my paper cut to size and boards for my relief print pages. I’ve just finished printing my cityscape pages on my home printer and its just gone 9pm. So not much done on my own book today! I’ll try to get an hour to myself again tomorrow morning using the etching press and that should get me back on track.
It was a more gentle start today as some students went to the get art supplies first thing so I caught up with Marlene, who is working on the Liverpool slave trade, and with Kealawho had set up her pages on Photoshop and had done a really good job of preparing them to use asscreenprint positives.
Jeana also needed help with choosing the right materials and gluing techniques and Alexis was unsure of the appropriate paper to use for her Turkish map fold book. Lottie tried out printing her photo-polymer relief plate which she exposed yesterday and it looked great.
Everyone has a question for me and by the afternoon I had dealt with nearly everyone and managed to have a tutorial with Rachel who was feeling a bit overwhelmed with her work load. We cut back on the amount of pages and made a plan to introduce more colour into her lino prints of childlike graphics from her local playground.
Piet is the first one to finish his book, he has been working on it at home for the last two weeks as he is a part-time student. Its a lovely book object incorporating blue and red wiring and brain images laid over a map of the similar shaped form of the Queens Drive circular road that contains the city of Liverpool.
Josh was having trouble managing the concertina folds on his book about the Liverpool underground rail system and we worked out a better and more accurate arrangement.
Melinda also needed guidance on how to make her hard covers for a stab stitch booklet and Kaleb changed his mind on his black bookcloth covers for his elegant relief printed concertina book.
It was another dynamic day and books were taking shape and starting to look really promising. Sunny’s layered and pierced book is especially fine and has been enviously admired by everyone today. Joe is like me, still struggling to find a solution within the timescale we have left – one more full day and up toFriday lunchtime!!
Thank goodness for the help of Colette for taking time out of her degree show preparations today and for Christine too. Sarah, our print technician, has been working really hard getting screens exposed and cleaned, sorting out problems and making materials available and is also making her own book in the midst of all this. Our 3D technician Steve has also caught the book bug and his own contribution to the project seems well underway too.
Tuesday morning and it was the first day for us to get into our individual book projects. I spent the morning setting everyone up with a work plan and making sure they all knew where to find materials and facilities to help develop their ideas.
Everyone was well prepared and had obviously spent yesterday thinking through the project brief and finding their own interpretation of the project themes. I have been impressed that our visitors have responded so much to the idea of place as a receptacle of emotional identity.
Today I had many conversations about personal observations concerning the landscapes and city locations we have visited over the last few days. These visits have obviously been beneficial in developing ways of adjusting to dislocation from home and in finding new definitions of home within themselves. So its been a really interesting day for me seeing how these young artists have analysed their experience of being here though prism of the project theme.
Their own discussions with our students also seem to have cemented their observations about the psychological experiences associated with certain familiar or unfamiliar environments.
The photographs show the group at work preparing their images for print, developing book structures and generally thinking through the practicalities of realising their concepts.
Its time now for me to start thinking through my own book ideas. I need to get moving so that I can be working on it whilst whilst continuing to teach and support everyone else and this wont be easy!
In our initial presentation last Wednesday I introduced my significant place as my first ‘home’, or the place that first felt at home, in Liverpool. I have lived in the city for more than 25 years but this particular place has a special meaning for me, my personal life and career, and I’ve been thinking about how I can comment on this over the last couple of days.
Going up the Anglican Cathedral tower and seeing my old home from this vantage point has given me a fresh eye. I took some photos of the city scape while up there with an emerging idea of using some kind of panorama / sequence that culminated at the location of my first home here.
I am also thinking about the layering of information and visual sensuality of the Charlene Von Heyl’s abstractions and am wondering how I could incorporate these ideas into my book pages.
Looking through the stone fenestration of the tower ramparts has made me think about this more, the partial and obstructed views of the city and the need for you, as the spectator, to adjust your own position to get the best view. This makes you a physically active observer.
Now I’m thinking about how I can construct some apertures that both reveal and conceal, so that the city is not seen at once but through a series of encounters. I’m really liking this idea, it closely resembles the ideas discussed in psychogeograhy that I’ve been reading about. These ideas concern the active participation of the individual with the city, or any environment, so that you become more attuned to the nuances of space, place and geography through a rich mixture of sensory, psychological and personal factors as well as external concerns of political, historical and sociological readings.
I have started to edit my photos using photoshop. I’ll begin my thinking by printing some out and have a look at how they fit together and start from there.
Then I have to do is figure out how to pull it all together and find time and a space to do it!
