More on Wood Engravings

After completing a trial wood engraved block, I have since engraved the four blocks I ordered from Chris Daunt. Two have motifs from Moseley street signs and two are from Moseley Park flora.

These will be used at the first exhibition planned at the Cowhouse at the end of June, to co-incide with the Open Gardens weekend. I would like visitors to try their hand at printing from these blocks, perhaps I could produce a simple map that could be used as a background to create 'My walk round Moseley'. I am assuming most interest for this will come from children. I have ordered more blocks from Chris and have taken some more photos of imagery I can use. If I could end up with at least a dozen blocks, I think that will give me enough to make a start during the first event.

Text and images for quotes

I have completed another lino cut of the text for 'The Blue Balloon' quote. For the time being I have used images directly taken from the aquatints for the small illustration blocks within the text. I feel this helps explain the quotes, especially who is speaking.

The Blue Balloon

The image below is of the aquatint process about half way through. The lightest areas are stopped out first and then the plate is dipped in the acid for between 30 seconds and a minute depending on the depth of bite required. Gradually more of the plate is stopped out. This particular plate had 8 separate bites.

Having completed an aquatint of Verity's Blue Balloon story, I have done an initial print so that I can work out how I want the second colour to work.

Alan Furse Quote 2

I typed up the quote in Gill Sans and transferred it onto a piece of A3 lino. It took sometime to cut out the letters, but I was fairly pleased with the result when I did a quick proof onto newsprint.

The two squares will contain images, probably of Alan and William.

Alan Furse Quote

To accompany each image there will be a quote. There are several quotes from Alan Furse's diary in 'Birmingham Pals'. I have chosen Alan's account of the day his brother William died . I have had to paraphrase to limit the word count:

“I gave a little dinner in honour of my birthday .......tremendous gun firing could be heard ........
the great Somme show over 40 miles away.

Little did I know as I celebrated my birthday that my best pal had gone on his long rest, and there was lost the whitest man I ever knew.”

Alan Furse   July 1916
 
His older brother William was killed on the first day of the Battle of the Somme, along with 20,000 others.

Ideally I wanted to use letterpress to reproduce the text. I went to the Parkside print room to look at the typefaces available, but discovered that there weren't enough of any fonts that would have been large enough.

As it is important to me that every technique I use has an element of hand finishing, I will have to consider cutting the text from lino. This will be time consuming and difficult to achieve a good standard, but I will try it out.

Exhibition Ideas - Street Views

I have been considering how to give my prints and the associated stories a 'sense of place' when exhibiting them at the Dovecote. A few weeks ago I photographed each house on one side of Salisbury Road from the Park gate to the traffic lights. I then had these enlarged up and spliced them together to create one long image. I am currently experimenting with transferring these images onto paper that can be displayed along the walls of my exhibition space.

The various stories told through the print pieces would be displayed adjacent to a significant location.
For example the 'Furse Family' print would be shown next to the image of 36 Salisbury Road where the original photo was found.

I need to consider how I want to deal with the cars that inevitably appear in the images. I think I would prefer to take them out completely so as to not fix the street view in any particular time frame.

Wood Engraving

A couple of weeks ago we had a print demonstration of wood engraving techniques. I have been very interested in this techniques for some time. I particularly like the work of David Gentleman and Clare Leighton (see below).

 I have been experimenting with a small bock of lemon wood to create an oak leaf and acorn motif.

I need to work on the technique a lot more but I would like to create a series of these blocks that could be used by visitors to my exhibition to print their own impressions of Moseley. This would be a good way of engaging people in some print based activities without having to have a press available.

The Furse Family 2

I produced some more prints from the copper plate of The Furse Family. This time I 'over-wiped' the plate and then used watercolour washes to add tints of colour.

I liked the control I could have over the placement of the colour and how it allowed me to draw attention to Alan, the story teller, or to Florence who particularly struck me when I first saw the original photo.

The Furse Family

Over the last few weeks, I have been working on a print based on a photograph that was found in the loft of No.36 Salisbury Road, and has been in the Moseley Local History Archive since the 1980s (see previous post 4.11.13). I was able, with the help of the Library of Birmingham staff, to find out who the family were. Henry and Florence Furse moved to Salisbury Road in about 1919 from School Road. They had three sons, William, Alan and Claude. The two eldest sons both served during the First World War. By a great stroke of luck, I discovered many entries from Alan's war diaries in 'Birmingham Pals' by Terry Carter. Sadly William was killed on the first day of the Battle of the Somme, and there is a very moving quote from Alan about how he discovered his brother had died and how he found the place where he fell.

 After completing an initial hard ground line etch, I then added an aquatint etched in six stages to create the layers of tone.

I used the technique known as 'a la poupée' to add a range of colour direct to the plate. I started to realise the significance of the colour placement and how it could help emphasise different aspects of the story behind the print.

I also completed a small drypoint and mezzotint print, which depicted the photograph Alan took after he had erected a wooden cross on his brother William's grave.

Helen Peyton

Helen Peyton is a printmaker from Skipton. She has been an artist in residence at the Craven Museum and gallery since 2011. She has been running a project called Smart Gallery, that started in February, in which visitors bring along objects with interesting back stories. Helen uses these to produce her wonderful reduction lino prints.

For more information see http://revealingthehiddenarchive.blogspot.co.uk/

Bob and Roberta Smith's Epstein Archive Gallery

Bob and Roberta Smith (Patrick Brill) worked with curator Neil Lebeter to 'rifle through' the Jacob Epstein Archive at The New Art Gallery in Walsall. The culmination of two years work was the Gallery pictured below. A combination of Brill's trademark typography and items from the archive tell a narrative about the sculptor and his extended family.

Chiharu Shiota at The New Art Gallery Walsall

I have seen Chiharu Shiota's work before, at 'Lost in Lace' at the Gas Hall in BM&AG. The two installations at Walsall are similar in scale and use the same mass of 'spiders web' threads. What I liked about the exhibit at Walsall was that you could walk right into each room - totally immersing yourself in the work.

In one gallery, over 400 old suitcases were suspended from red rope. Towards one end they almost touched the floor and they gradually got higher and higher towards the other end of the gallery, making unusual use of the large space.

Moseley Dovecote and Cow House

 

Today I met with Fiona Adams from the Moseley Society to discuss the possibility of using the 18th century Dovecote and adjoining Cow House for my MA exhibition. They were both renovated in the 1980's and are open to the public on a monthly basis from Easter through to October. They are positioned centrally in the village and were originally part of the Moseley Hall Farm Estate.

The Society use the Cow House mainly to store their exhibition boards and the tools to maintain the kitchen garden surrounding the Dovecote. There is an upper floor reached by steep steps which used to be a feed store for the livestock.

 

The Dovecote is reached by wooden stairs and the first floor contains a permanent exhibition which would have to be covered up. It is possible to go up to the actual dovecote at the top, but the entrance is too small for the public to enter.

Fiona was very positive about my plans and I think this will be an ideal location for my exhibition.