landscape of sorts

ongoing: since my end of year submission i still seem to be spending my weekends in the studio researching, thinking about and/or working on a few different ideas and submissions in print and video.

first up – wasn’t happy with an edition i submitted which ended being shortlisted for a show so i reprinted it to make a cleaner edition and is now gone to the framers – although i’m still not sure framing is the right form of display.

next up – recently i offered to print a small edition for some school colleagues as a retirement present. initially i thought about doing cyanotypes of some of the plants growing in the school – memory, nurture, flourish, growth etc.

making cyanotypes

after the crispness of screen printing, i wasn’t totally happy with these first few attempts – rough edges from masking and cyan bleeding (might try to improve on this over the summer though) although they have a immediacy to them. instead, i decided to make photo-emulsion stencils for screen print using the samples of plants and flowers i had gathered from the school banks and garden. happier with this although ground could have been more transparent perhaps. anyway enough technicalities – i think the print is good to go …

stenciling  

ink and paper prep

printing layers

editioning etc

reflection: i really like using the material and physical matter of a landscape to make a stencil for screen printing. i wonder how this method of printing might work with my lens /photo image? a way to question landscape in terms of real/ideal, image/experience, this/that, here/there, now/then – perhaps i could play around with ‘image of’ and ‘object/material’ in some way? to be continued …..