Tuesday 27 April
Chris, Jude, Louise, Patricia
Letterpress Demo am
Today we were introduced to the letterpress process by Rob Buchert and saw history brought to life by a master craftsman in suit and sandals. We were very worried for his toes as he worked the press!
We saw the physical activity needed to assemble blocks of text, the special relationships formed between type face blocks and the tactile nature of the sculptural letter forms. And we noted the personal interaction inherent in assembling the text block which is missing in our default habits with the digital text. Despite careful planning with the composing stick, the end print was still a big surprise and contained satisfying embossment which embedded the text into the paper. More thought was involved, making your choice of words far more important. The process creates a special quality, and seems to invest something significant into the meaning of the words.
After the session we taked about how we might incorporate letterpress into the project. Michelle suggested that it might provide a further opportunity to produce a collaborative piece involving not just WMC but the combined group. The result was an idea to produce a prose poem, with Louise's guidance, using text to record our personal observations or our impressions of Utah's astonishing landscapes.
We have made a plan to introduce the idea to the whole group tomorrow as a suggested partner piece to the collaborative litho plate we will take on our travels. We will get feedback from the group on what they think about this.
Lithography Demo pm
MFA Student Amy Royer introduced us to BYU's litho department and demonstrated the printing process with a print from a prepared litho stone.
Its a long and complicated process which both baffled and beguiled us. We want to do more but time is so short.
Our solution to make it acessible to us was to limit colour and to share plates, and also incorporate plate images from the group into our individual prints for the book.
Despite the complexity, Amy, succeeded in hooking us into the possibilities of the process and broke down quite a few barriers to its technical considerations and we are determined to give it a go.
Patricia
First impressions
WOW!!!!!!!
Massive, humongous, university with wonderful facilities. The Print rooms, and note I said print rooms were very well equipped and Sarah they had windows in them. The digital media suite was full of apple mac computers and the printer could produce a print that was bigger than two A1's together. The tech man there said that they can reproduce almost any size we require. The Arts Center housed the performing arts as well. The atrium in the centre of the building was spacious and opened up over the four floors giving ample space for exhibitions to be displayed to their full advantage. Off this atrium were theatres and also another very large gallery where our exhibition of the collaborative project will be displayed for exhibition next Thursday. Near the Harris Arts Centre is the library and Art Museum buildings.
Open, warm, friendly, generous spirited people, eager to share and learn both with us and from us. They have done everything possible to make us feel at home both on campus and at the homes where we are staying. On Sunday we went to a really nice family for dinner. The house was like something out of Grand Designs, set in acres of land.
The scenery is breathtaking and words fail me to describe the beauty of the mountains that surround the city with rests in the valley below them.
First day we also gave our presentations which seemed to go down well. The students were very responsive to all we threw at them. Especially our colloquialisms, Michelle was explaining how something could go west and further used the expression to explain this by saying that a thing goes pear shaped and later they said that they all thought she was saying they had pear shaped hips. OOOOOOPS!
Joe, Amy and Tolly have done everything possible to accomodate us both on campus and off. Such wonderful people.
Scot – Monday 27 April
Today we had our first day meeting the students at Brigham Young University. As a group we had different expectations of what the people would be like however the students were all very friendly and welcoming. We knew we had to speak in front of the group and a lot of us were nervous about it, but our fears were put at ease as the students introduced themselves individually to us which broke the ice.
I managed to have quite a lengthy conversation with a group of the students about the cultural differences between our ways of life. It was a good way to start communication between us which I feel will help the collaborative project.
After our initial introductions we proceeded to begin our group presentation about Liverpool and our work. This was a great success and I received a lot of positive feedback from some of the students who were really complementary about my work. I was really happy that my work was being understood and well received even on this side of the Atlantic!
Today has been such a success that I've become so excited to go back into the university tomorrow and take part in the classes. I also have a real urge to start working on our 'Mapping The West' project, which is actually going to be exhibited here in the university gallery.
We are so lucky!
'Mapping the West' began as a brief conversation between myself and Joseph Ostraff when we met at the 'scissorspaperstone' artist's book fair in London last year, where we were both showing our artist's books.
Over the past year we have kept up a dialogue to work through the practicalities of setting up a collaborative relationship and to develop a project strategy for a bok arts masterclass.
Ideas have come from both sides as to the content and direction of the project theme. We have decided to work towards developing individual book ideas that use the map of the canyon land Escalante region of Southern Utah.
Project parameters will limit the maximum area of the books to the size of the open maps and will ask that when folded or closed they should be the size of the folded down map. beyond this anything is possible.
The project itinerary will take in introductory presentations by the WMC students to introduce our hosts at BYU to Liverpool's culture and urban and outlying environments as well as a presentation of our visual practices.
There will be introductory master classes in lithography, letterpress printing and book production techniques before we brave the wilds of southern Utah on a three day camping expedition.
This post will begin on Sunday 26 April
