Twenty Five Years Later

Twenty five years ago I worked in a textile factory laboratory and office.  In the spare time at the office, I often used to doodle.  I made one particular doodle that I particularly liked and copied it.  It remains, an A4 sheet of paper with a small doddle copied many times on it.  It is dog eared now but I'm glad I still have it. 

Recently I decided to immortalise it in print and while I was printing it I thought back to working in the office and how stifled and trapped I felt.  I would never have imagined, when drawing this doodle, that one day I would be in a print studio in Kilkenny, twenty five years later printing it.

Two Books

I made two new books for the Artist Book fair at Limerick School of Art and Design.

I'm not entirely happy with either of them for the reason that I don't think there is a complete synergy between the idea, the form and the execution.

You can't really just decide to make a book without thinking everything through and then thinking it all through again, then starting and always being willing to abandon an idea if it isn't working.  I think artist books teach you to have a very elastically creative mind but then giving up on an idea, especially when hours of work are there in front of you, is very difficult.  I gave up some ideas but never really started again from scratch and I think these books aren't 100% because of that.

Book 1:  Irish Bus
A set of 11 postcards detailing a bus journey from Hospital, Co. Limerick to Oranmore in Co. Galway wrapped in a hand-reproduced bus timetable for route 51.  I love travelling by bus and kept a diary, recording conversations, things overheard on the radio, and things I saw.  I also took photos and made 11 little scenarios out of my notes.  Currently Bus Eireann is in severe financial difficulty and may not survive for too much longer so these anachronistic postcards my turn out to be a record of an anachronistic journey.

Book2: To See Your Own Light
I often listen to Hildegard von Bingen while drawing and made a drawing into a single page book, housed in a folder.  The outside of the drawing has one of her pieces of writing that I thought especially pertinent written on it;

We cannot live in a world that is interpreted for us by others.  An interpreted world is not a hope.  Part of the terror is take back our own listening.  To use own our voice.  To see our own light.

Origami Printing

For Christmas I got some origami paper.  It was beautiful and as I've never tried anything like this before, I followed some online instructions to make a few origami pieces.  I found it very addictive to the point where every day I try and learn a new piece or practice making ones I've already learned.  My memory is shocking and I frequently forget after a few days how each one is made if I don't keep practicing.

So then, looking at the flat origami shapes, I thought about making larger versions and printing from them.  It worked after a little trial and error and here are the results.

(It is only a coincedence that I am posting this now, so close to Valentines Day as I am not sentimental, nor into any of that gushy, once a year, lovey-dove fest.)

I thought that the ghost print of the origami would be the best and I tried it in gold.  It was NOT GOOD.  There was no detail and the sewing on the paper origami 'plate' didn't help.

The actual print from the origami itself was better.

So I tried it in black ink against a roughly inked up background to contrast with the lines and precision of the origami

The different levels of ink on the origami give different results but what was really nice and intriguing were the ghost prints from the back of the origami

Then I printed a star.  The origami has to be flat so I need to learn a few more to continue this series.

Crane*

*Not suitable for printing!