Margaret Street Printroom

I have been lucky enough to get a placement as Artist in Residence in the printroom at BCU, Margaret Street. I am currently half way through the 3 month residency. A couple of months back I was photographed in the printroom as part of a promotion for the university. I am printing from a copper plate etching.

Dovecote Garden Wood Blocks

Back in the summer I produced some engraved wood blocks based on plants that grow in the Dovecote Garden. Visitors to my 'Moseley Stories' exhibition could use them to produce their own prints with water-based black printing ink.

Today I used oil-based printing inks and Japanese gampi paper to produce a selection of prints that I could collage onto thicker paper or card.

Wood Engraved Letters

I have been making a set of wood engraved letters to celebrate the birth of my granddaughter Elizabeth. On Friday I tried the first proof print at the Parkside print room .

When the blocks were inked up, there was some areas of cut block that were catching the roller and needed to be cut away more to stop any unwanted marks appearing on the finished print. Once this was done I produced a set of prints in various autumnal colours.

Hot Bed Press, Manchester

Over the weekend I attended a course at Hot Bed Press in Manchester (Salford to be exact). I was very impressed with their studios, notably with the amount of space they had and how well each area was organised.

Soldier Stories: Birmingham and the Royal Warwickshire Regiment 1914 - 1918

Just opened is an exhibition at BM&AG based on the stories of individual soldiers from the Birmingham Pals Regiment.  I met Dave Vaux and Tony Fox, two local historians, at the Dovecote on the first day my exhibition opened. Dave had contributed many photos to the 'Birmingham Pals' book from which I was able to source information about the Furse boys. Dave told me he had a lot of items belonging to Alan in particular which were currently on lone to BM&AG for this upcoming exhibition. As it opened this week, I popped along to have a look what was there.

This photograph must have been taken at the same time as the one I found in the archive, but this time it includes William's wife (or fiancee).

Hopefully I will be able to use some of these artefacts, along with other photos from the Moseley Local History Archive, to create some more prints later in the year.

There is an excellent blog post by the Museum's History Curator about Bill  and Alan Furse.