Breathe

Since I completed stained glass for my Artweeks exhibition and made videos for what it became - the virtual Artweeks festival - I have not made any glass. Instead, unexpectedly, I have been writing poetry, which is something I have only attempted very occasionally before. I have have been enjoying it enormously and have  become very absorbed. A sequence of poems has emerged, on the  theme of 'Breath'. These  mix thoughts arising from yoga breathing exercises with observations of the current pandemic situation. I have been sending them to friends as a gift during this strange and sometimes frightening time.

Although it is strange and sometimes frightening, lockdown has offered many of us time. In May I began experimenting with ways of making images to accompany the poems. I didn't want to illustrate them literally, but rather to find some visual equivalents for what I was trying to express. ​I decided I could use any art material I had in the studio. I began with my lino-print rollers and inks, using them directly. I printed the poem texts on tracing paper, thinking of overlaying them.

​​I also tried trying mono print drawings, such as the one below, an idea for 'Woodwind' - the sound of the breath emerging from a flute. I laid the paper on the inked tray and drew onto the reverse. The results are unpredictable, but turning the paper over is always a discovery.

Simultaneously I experimented with watercolour, ink and wax resist. I did about a dozen versions of 'Swim' - here are two different very approaches, below:

These idea also went off sideways into a designs for glass, to be kept for another day.

I would like to create an artists book, with the texts printed on translucent paper, interleaved with the printed art work. I intended to get it printed and then bind it myself. I investigated the practicality and cost of having small run printed. But after a very helpful conversation with Mark at KSM Litho in Chipping Norton, and a look at the eye-watering estimates for small runs, sadly I had to rethink. The cost of printing what I had in mind was far too great, not knowing if there would be any interest at all.

So I am thinking laterally and using Sixprint, my online art art card printer, to print the images as large square postcards, with the texts on the reverse. I can then enclose them, as a set, in a handmade cover of some kind, the design of which is still brewing in my imagination. It has to be translucent! I am impatiently awaiting the proof cards.
​
If successful, the 'Breath' collection will be available for sale on my website and at my exhibition in the Charlbury Deli in Sept, along with the best of the original artwork. I am very interested to know what people think.