Contemporary Arts Society Annual Exhibition

 

I have submitted two of my cyanotypes from the three rivers exhibition and several unframed pieces with plant material embedded in mitsumata paper. Plus ten of these cards will be available for just $4 each.

Questionnaire and A4 Art

I was recently asked to answer some questions by a student from Ireland and thought I would share them here along with my answers.

How did you become an artist? have you an artistic background?

I sort of fell into it really, my early training was in the sciences but I always did some creative activity with my hands, knitting, crochet, bargello, enamelling, pottery, jewellery making. You name it I tried it! When I discovered paper it just took over.

Which was the first artist book you ever created?

I made quite a large book called 'Lecture Upon a Shadow', it was made from black handmade paper and every second page was an embossing of a body male and female front and back. It incorporated a poem by John Donne that I had printed using my computer then layered it so that it was embedded in the alternate sheets. When I first made it I glued the pages together, I had to come up with a way of spacing the sheets since they had quite a bit of depth. I made a very heavy cover that was hinged and never really sat right. I have since rebound it by sewing it with a soft cover and have turned the heavy cover into a box. 

Lecture Upon a Shadow c1996 Cast recycled paper and embedded digital print

Lecture Upon a Shadow c1996 Cast recycled paper and embedded digital print

Where do you find your inspiration when creating your artist books? 

All over the place, sometimes it is the theme of an exhibition, an idea might sit with me for a while and I'll work on it in my mind and often get the final idea when I'm lying awake in bed!

Do you intend for your books to reflect on you as an artist? 

I guess so, sometimes I have fun with my books but sometimes they can be quite political.

Could you define an artist book in your opinion?

This question! The $1000 question. I like a fairly inclusive definition and could say 'a book made by an artist'. I like to include sculptural book forms and out there interpretations, they don't have to be made of paper they don't even need pages as such or text. I guess they do need to have some sort of narrative and a connection otherwise almost anything could be considered an artist book.

I see you're an artist of many talents, What is the main type of media you like to use? 

My main medium would have to be handmade paper, I get quite excited by the versatility and flexibility of paper as a medium.

Lastly, Have you any advice for me as a young artist about to create my own first artist book?

I would say go for it! It is a great area to work in and I think there is growing interest in the field.

I spent a bit of time yesterday doing gelatine prints for inclusion in the Contemporary Art Society of Victoria A4 Art exhibition that will be shown at Herring Island, a little island in the middle of the Yarra river. The exhibition is open to anyone in Australia and is so easy you just send in up to 4 pieces A4 size and the society frames them all and hangs them in the Gallery on the island. There is still time to enter the works need to reach Richmond by next Friday, I am posting mine today given our new postal system with three classes of mail. There is more info on the CAS website. I am also submitting for the Contemporary by Nature show that is on before the A4.

Here are my Gelatine prints.

Connect 2 on recycled paper with plant fibre

Connect 1 on plant fibre paper

Connect 3 on handmade cotton paper

Connect 4 on handmade cotton paper

Contemporary Art Society and Jelly Prints

I started writing this about two weeks ago but life and commitments got in the way. I have two works in the Contemporary Art Society annual members show that is on at the moment at Gallery 341 that is at 341 Church Street Richmond. I will be there on Thursday 24 September after 11 am until 2-3 pm. Here is one of the pieces I entered.

Untitled Collage 42 x 30 cm

I have been having a lot of fun lately with gelatine prints. A few weeks ago we had a weekend away in Anglesea for the Surf Coast Arts Trail and saw a demonstration of gelatine printing in the Anglesea Art Shed. I had to try it out on the spot and I was hooked. I came home and made myself a couple of gelatine plates and have made lots of beautiful pages. It works particularly well on smooth handmade paper. Here are just a few of the pieces I made. 

I have had so much fun with this that I have offered to run a workshop for Papermakers of Victoria next year.

Shadow print of leaves and string

Double print of leaves and string

several over prints with plastic shapes and orange bag

Plastic shapes again

Indian wood block

Printed directly onto card, leaves and string

Collage using the pieces I made in Anglesea along with some silk and handmade papers

CAS brooch show and some nature printing experiments

The Contemporary Art Society of Victoria has a brooch show opening on the 1st of June and since members get to enter for no charge I thought I should participate. I made three brooches from paper pulp pressed into carved plaster that I coated with shellac and graphite then acrylic paint then scraped back some of the paint.

Fossil 15#3

Fossil 15#2

Fossil 15#1

The fourth brooch was one of my experiments with nature printing and embossing. I inked up a parsley seed head with waterless block printing ink then made a small sheet of paper from recycled abaca and pressed the inked seed head into the paper and dried it on a sheet of fibro cement. I then gave it a few coats of shellac then sewed seed beads on. 

Seed

I tried a few different ferns as well as the seed heads and then I also printed onto some mixed fibre sheets I had made as samples for the workshop I am running in early July, Journey; an Artist Book from Go to Whoa.

Fishbone fern on recycled abaca

Workshops taken and giving

Last year when I was in the US I took a class with Karen Hanmer at the San Francisco Center of the Book. The class was making a pyramid book made up of triangles. When I returned Val, who organises workshops for Papermakers of Victoria asked if I would run the class for PoV. That is happening Sunday Week 21 April out at Bundoora Stables, PoV's studio space.

Karen mentioned in her notes that the method could be used for other shapes like hexagons and squares so I have made up a model using hexagons, the first problem was getting an even hexagon. I tried using a compass to draw a circle then mark off the circle into six. This should have worked but didn't because my pencil slipped in the compass. Next trial I folded a strip of card in half and cut off a triangle at 60 degrees to the fold, I then used the cut side to measure the second side and cut another triangle at 60 degrees to the fold. I then unfolded and used this as a template to cut my sheets. I had already printed some etchings of bees onto some handmade paper so these became the backing for the hexagons.

Bee Hive 2013
Acetate etching on handmade paper 

The Hexagon

That leads into another workshop taken this year with Liz Powell. It was called Eco Friendly Etching and we used zinc plates and copper sulphate. I was quite pleased with my second plate that was a delicate line drawing but not that impressed with the first. I printed a few versions of both plates and made up a small book as suggested by Liz. She was a great teacher very patient. The book was formed with a concertina spine and windows in pages that were folded in half and glued to the concertinas.

some new leather bound books

My postcard for the Yabbers postcard exchange from our session of plant and metal dyeing

My contribution to the Contemporary Art Society Brooch show, all pieces around 5 x 10 cm

reinvented butterflies

It has been way too long since I posted, here it is almost the end of February and it seems that the year is just starting! I haven't been producing very much lately, seem to have been spending too much time on administration and on clearing out a room and a couple of sheds. I am only partly done on both those counts and we are in the middle of a heatwave so it is definitely a day for either staying inside or heading out somewhere that is air conditioned. We don't even run to a fan but our house is well insulated so it is still bearable inside.

I decided to reinvent some of the Butterflies that I made as part of the Yabbers contribution to Earthworks, the Papermakers of Victoria exhibition that was held last year so I went ti IKEA to buy some deep square frames and wouldn't you know it they didn't have any of the size I wanted. They did however have some rectangular ones and as it turns out they work perfectly. I will be submitting the set of three to the Contemporary Art Society exhibition that is on at Herring Island (in the middle of the Yarra river at Burnley) from 2 until 17 March, weekends only 11.30am to 4.30pm. I have called the piece Papillon in Three Parts, very original!!! The black is commercial card that I've hand cut and the colour is mostly New Zealand flax paper that has been dyed with Cartesol dyes.

The large stamp is my name stamp that I carved at a workshop with Miho Araki and the smaller one is an antique soapstone chop, I don't know what that says.

 Since Christmas I have made one batch of books using the papers that I dyed last year with rust and plant materials, the covers are book cloth that has a photocopy of one of the pages from the book. These were all done in a stainless steel pot with bits of rusty metal and the bundles of paper a la India Flint. I have since inherited an old copper and a cast iron pot but haven't had a chance to test them out yet.