Hebden Bridge Open Studios 2012

I am based at Brooklyn Studios in Hebden Bridge and this weekend we are taking part in Open Studios, open 11 am to 5 pm.  Whatever the weather we will be there to offer a warm welcome to all our friends new and old so call in if you are passing; there's lots of new work on show and an opportunity to talk to the artists about their work.

The chickens have flown the coop

The dead ducks have departed the dovecote, the Godwit has gone awol and the owls have been out manoeuvred. In other words I've had to deinstall my bird skulls from the Grassington Dovecote as the festival has ended and they're now just a bag of bones back in the studio.

I have to report that the Tyvek has done a brilliant job.  The skulls have been outside for nearly 3 weeks in the rainiest and windiest June we've had in decades, and they are still perfect but with the addition of a few spiders webs - most appropriate.  I was really concerned that the InkAID assisted digital printing might wash off in the rain but its fine.  Isn't it great when things work out and materials live up to their promises.

Floods in the Calder Valley

Last Friday the rain was stupendously heavy and prolonged all day and into the night and inevitably the brimful rivers and canals flowed over their banks and into the little towns along the upper Calder Valley.

Fortunately no one was drowned but Saturday morning revealed scenes of sad devastation to homes and businesses in Todmorden, Hebden Bridge and Mytholmroyd.

Its grim to see communities that had just about been weathering the recession OK now reeling.  The only good thing to come out of it is the upwelling of support and community spirit that's seen large numbers of volunteers helping with the clear up and people raising money for the fund to help those worst affected.

Amazing things have been achieved in a few days and many of the affected shops are now opening.
Continued trading means jobs can be saved and wages paid - Shops and Tourism are the main industries in Hebden Bridge and provide decent jobs especially for child-rearing women who choose to work part-time. So please do buy local if you are in the area.

On a personal note, I had artwork in Spirals the lovely Fairtrade Eco shop owned by my unsinkable friends Helen and Sarah, but luckily for me my big framed woodcut print was in the upstairs room.  Two galleries that I was due to exhibit in during July have been affected, one in Todmorden and the other in Hebden Bridge and I'm not sure if both will go ahead now which is a shame, but of course completely minor in comparison to those artists who have had their work destroyed.

Despite all this, there's so much still going on in Hebden, there's life in the old town yet! especially this Saturday with the postponed Handmade Parade, Mytholmroyd Gala and the start of the Hebden Bridge Arts Festival. And the following weekend its Open Studios which I'll be fully participating in again at Brooklyn Studios.

More Woodcuts

Two more very recent woodcuts of Hebden Bridge Terraces.

I've enjoyed exploring all the different marks to make trees out of although the thousands of little gouges have strained my hands and shoulders and made a terrible mess in our kitchen (should have done this in the studio but sometimes its more comforting working at home when its chilly and dank and its supposed to be our summer...).

I'm possibly sorry that I've cleared so much from the road going up the hill, it seems too pale, although the hill roads round here do shimmer and reflect a lot of light, especially when damp. If I'd left it grey then there wouldn't be enough contrast.  It'll be interesting to see what difference hand-tinting might make, and I will probably fiddle around with some proofs to change the emphasis a bit.

Green Annihilation - in black and white

Exhibitions and Hebden Bridge Open Studios are looming so its been nose to the grindstone recently - a woodcutting frenzy has resulted in these little prints of upper Calder Valley terraces that seem to be disappearing into the trees.

The recent monsoon-like rains have led to rampant growth and reminded me of reading Marquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude over half a lifetime ago, where it rains in Macondo for 'four years, eleven months and two days'.

I took some pictures of the blocks before the initial inking as I love the soft look of them at this stage.
Its still always a shock when the image comes out reversed and very contrasty - you get used to seeing things one way and then suddenly everything's facing in the opposite direction - its easy to get confused...

Annoying Blogger

I like using Blogger most of the time but occasionally it drives me crazy when it seems to wilfully jumble up all the careful positioning and refuse to be corrected. So sorry to anyone following this blog who gets multiple posts just now.

Art Trail at Grassington Festival 2012

I've been keeping quiet about the work in progress for the Grassington Festival 2012 Art Trail, largely because I've been feeling unconfident about it.  There's always the worry about making a fool oneself in public.

Originally I was going to make some kind of book structure out of paper to be displayed in a shop window, but I did really want to try to make something to go outside in a specific site, for the challenge of it.  As soon as I saw the lovely ancient stone dovecote I knew I wanted to put work there and it just seemed natural to involve the folding paper bird skulls I started making as part of the 28 Days later drawing challenge in February. What better use for a disused dovecote than as an Ossuary? Like a cabinet of curiosities or a shrine to the birds whose skulls are so beautiful and redolent of their species.

So today I went to Grassington to install the work, ready for the start of the festival on Friday.  My colleague from Brooklyn Studios, Lynda Thomas very kindly offered to help me and I really appreciated her standing guard as I scampered up and down a wobbly ladder.

Here's all the stuff in my studio ready to be packed up this morning and an earlier trial run of installing a skull in a niche in the printmaking area.

And here's the initial concept drawing in my sketchbook with a mini skull in situ.

The theme of the festival is Tracks and Trails and the 15 participating artists were asked to respond to an artwork chosen from Leeds Art Gallery's Picture Lending Scheme. I chose Black Landscape an etching by Norman Ackroyd.

The connection between the etching and my final artwork is the starkness of the winter land, a black and white world where the underlying architectural structure of the landscape is revealed. And on those late winter and early spring walks you often find exciting objects to bring home, like the wondrous skeletal remains of birds and plants that still speak so strongly of their living selves.

More Enfolding Landscape Revealed

Here's the second part of The Enfolding Landscape Revealed.  The image is all about the wader's eggs I saw on High Brown Knoll at Easter 2011.

The Turkish map fold format really helps to give the sensation of drawing back the grass to reveal the simple but well camouflaged scrape that forms the nest.

The Enfolding Landscape Revealed

Finally the first Turkish Map Fold Book thing is made!

Its been almost a year since I first had the idea during last years Watershed Residency. These links will take you to the posts in my Catchwater Blog where I started developing the concept of the Enfolding Landscape: Interconnections,    The Enfolding Landscape.

I wanted to focus on revealing the hidden, the obscure, the seemingly insignificant and the overlooked within the natural environment. The kind of things you only notice if you look really closely, especially in the South Pennine uplands where the landscape can frequently seem to be a vast wasteland of moor  grass, rushes and heather with very little going on.

I knew that any work on this theme would need to employ folding in one form or another because the fold has become an increasingly important element in my work, as a philosophical and intellectual idea as well as a physical component of the artwork itself.

The Turkish map fold encourages the user to take an dynamic role in the act of revelation - you choose the degree of exposure depending on how far back the fold is expanded.  ( I know this is true of any image in a book but somehow the extra folds make it seem more active I think).

Shame the photos are so dark but all the lovely sun has disappeared and the gloomy rain has come back again.

Hand tinted version of sheep vertebrae woodcut

Here's the sheep vertebrae woodcut with its hand tinting completed. I've aimed to show the bones peeping through the Crowberry, with the white bone contrasting strongly against the dark earth and the green leaves.

The map fold concept I'm planning requires a cover and I've continued the Crowberry motif with the addition of the blue/black berries that develop during the summer:

Somehow an element reminiscent of European Mille-Fleur tapestries from the Middle Ages has developed although that wasn't in my mind at the start.  It must be something to do with bright colour on a dark ground and the detailed scrutiny of small plant forms.  I don't mind though, as I think those tapestries are beautiful and a bit mysterious.

I want the foldouts to be affordable so I'm going to make an unlimited edition using commercial/digital printing.  Today was spent fighting with a hot computer trying to sort out the double-sided printing and getting the colours right - very frustrating and did not get to go out in the blazing sunshine like I wished.

Developing an image for a woodcut print

Off and on since February I've been struggling with this print of 3 vertebrae from a poor old sheep that didn't survive the harsh winter up on the moor.  Its a companion piece to the curlew's nest.

I started off with a blurry photo taken in a hurry (I wish I'd brought the bones home with me but had nothing to carry them in and didn't fancy 'contaminating' my pocket).

Here's the original drawing I showed in an earlier post.

My usual process is to make drawings in pencil or pen to understand the subject. The problem I find with these initial drawings though is that they're the wrong way round in terms of positive and negative.

So the next stage is developing the image on black paper with white paint. To me this makes far more sense as the white marks replicate the cuts and gouges made in the wood with my tools.  The white on black is great for exploring mark making and getting a feel of how the final print might look.

I always darken my printing blocks before cutting and use Royal white graphite paper to transfer the reversed image. The white transfer paper isn't that common but I know you can get it mail order from the Heaton Cooper Studio here

Originally the image was just the bones and the crowberry plant but this ended up looking too starkly emblematic so I needed to add the grass. But then the bones lost their impact and I had to rework them to increase contrast.

This is the final black and white proof of the print.

Ultimately the plan has always been that both the bones and the eggs are to be part of the Enfolding Landscape series and will become folded 3D objects (Turkish Map Folds).  I'm still working on the covers and other details but should be able to show you soon.

Curlew Sex!

On the way home from delivering work to Masham and a recce to Grassington for the festival Art Trail, we were whizzing down the big road from Skipton to Keighley this afternoon when over in the field what did we see - mating Curlews!

All I can say from the brief viewing as we flashed by is: it seemed to involve careful beak placement, precise balancing and a lot of wing flapping, as you might expect.

Alternative Curlew Dance

Can't decide if I prefer this one or not.  Constructive criticism welcome.

Curlew Dance

Playing around with  photos taken this morning on High Brown Knoll.  A lovely walk but sad to see the remains of some Curlew eggs predated by crows.  The harsh side of nature.

Busy, Busy, Busy and Too Near The Bone

Hard work these past few weeks, getting work finished and framed for an exhibition at The Gallery in Masham called Close To Home starting on 19th May.

I've chosen to interpret the theme in terms of uplifting and contemplative landscape features near my home.  I thought about including the new woodcut of sheep vertebrae lying amongst crowberry on the moor as it provides a counterpoint to the Curlew's eggs and reflects on the eternal cycle of life and death. However, I decided not to as the exhibition is helping to raise funds for Herriot Hospice Homecare and an image of death might be upsetting for supporters who are feeling vulnerable - a case of too near the bone.

The exhibition poster has a lovely teapot print by Helen Peyton bringing thoughts of domestic cheeriness and the preview is on Friday 18th May 2012 at 7.30 - 9 pm.  Well worth supporting if you're in the area.

Grassington Festival 2012 Art Trail

By 10 am on Saturday morning I was at Leeds Art Gallery with a group of other artists. We had the delightful task of each choosing an artwork to take home!

I'm taking part in the Grassington Festival Art Trail, a collaborative project with Grassington Festival, Leeds Art Gallery and fifteen artists.

We will all be developing new artworks for a sculpture trail at Grassington Festival in June.
Using original artwork from the Leeds Art Gallery picture lending collection, each artist selects and takes home a piece of art and uses it as inspiration to create new work in response.

Members of the public can see the artists’ responses installed around the village during the Festival in June and they can also enjoy the original artworks inside local Grassington shops and businesses.

I swore I'd choose something small and easily transportable but was very taken with this lovely austere etching called Black Landscape by Printmaker Norman Ackroyd and had to have it.

The frame is about A1 size and heavy so thank goodness I didn't have to catch the train back to Hebden Bridge or my arms would be dislocated by now! The trudge up to a distant car park was bad enough but luckily I was fortified by numerous cups of tea and croissants provided by the charming facilitators Bryony Pritchard from Grassington Festival and Ted Wilkins from Leeds Art Gallery.

Grassington Festival is on from 15th - 30th June so I now have 6 weeks to make my response - the overall theme is Tracks and Trails which fits in well with recent ideas - looking forward to a new challenge and seeing what others get up to.  You can follow progress here as my work develops and also on the Facebook group set up for the project: http://www.facebook.com/groups/389873544386001/