Bernie Rutter: Artist and Curator As an artist I am excited by the use of text across a variety of techniques and process’s, from modern and tradition Printmaking, through to Painting, Ceramics and Glass. From the obvious use of letters into words, to the more playful use of letters as abstract shapes and found form, through to the veiling of text in to the painted surface. Sometimes the message is obvious, sometimes veiled, sometimes just for fun!
Photo: Chris Webb.
Top: ‘Nest Building’ Bottom ‘Learn to Fly’
Charles Shearer I am an artist printmaker and teach part-time at Art Schools and Universities in and out of London. I also help run numerous print workshops about the country that have now become annual fixtures. My interest in Printmaking began at Gray’s School of Art in Aberdeen in 1975 where we had access to a very traditional print room and though I specialised there in Graphic Design I continued developing ideas through print. Over so many years I have devised and come to value methods that are more creative and direct and as most student groups are only timetabled to me for short introductory courses then ideas can be instantly realised through simple large stencils or by drawing and cutting into card and printing from textured material etc. We begin at 10am… at 1pm we have a room full of images… The print ‘Bubblwrap Joe’ was devised as a quick demonstration piece to a mixed group of Illustrators and Design students at Solent University. Combining found packaging material and letterpress as they received instruction on the use of our type presses.
‘Bubblewrap Joe’
Vitor Azevedo
Vitor Azevedo is a visual artist and curator who studied Fine Art at Derby University. His work is inspired by his own personal history of 3 cultural origins ; Portuguese, Capverdean and British, and stems from a background of religious symbolism, family values and a love of the sea. His desire to create work using strong and expressive colour is central to his practice as a painter and is a directly inspired by growing up in a house with two non sighted parents.
'All of the work I make begins with a spontaneous reaction derived from points of interest or stimulus, and as the work develops, there is a progression as the initial concepts transform into a unique combination. I also feel that everyday life is like a palette, little pieces can be used to create work that reaches an audience rather than being self-absorbed. We all have a past that is often sub-consciously transmitted into our work and sometimes only after completion do we reflect to realise this. A huge interest of mine is to combine exhibitions with physical theatre and collaborate with other artists, such as musicians, dancers, video projection and film to create a full menu of visual art that compliments all aspects. To me, my work reflects my own personal journey becoming a capsule of time, change, landscape, travel and self-analysis. I hope I can share my work with people that are used to "watching" art as well as newcomers and at least try to make people think. The result is art that reacts with its own environment'.
‘To Truly Deserve’
Sharon Baker I am an artist based in Birmingham. My practice uses printmaking processes and responds to the environment, the urban and the natural landscape and how people affect, influence and change it. I am intrigued by what people feel is of value and what they choose to discard. I make work using photographs, drawings and collage using fragments collected over time from a photograph, magazine cutting or a scrap of fabric; from detritus, the discarded or overlooked. I am drawn to the closeup, abstract elements of familiar objects or unusual juxtapositions of shapes, reflections, text and colour. My images can evolve over time into motifs and abstractions of the originals. I explore imagery using different printmaking processes and mix print techniques with collage, drawing and painting. I enjoy the uniqueness of the types of marks and textures you can create in a print: sharp edges and blocks of colour contrasting with gestural marks and textures on a uniform paper surface. I make my prints using the workshop run by Birmingham Printmakers, an open access print workshop providing artists with a dark room, machinery and equipment they need to make prints. I am also in the process of converting a bedroom at home into my studio and have my very own beloved Bewick and Wilson etching press there so I can print at any time of day or night ( but mostly in the day time).
My current prints are based on photographs. They are photopolymer intaglios created using light sensitive film sealed onto an aluminium plate. In the dark room the plate is exposed to U.V. light using a black and white ‘positive’ The film is developed in a similar way to the traditional analogue process of printing photographs from negatives. Once the image is fixed on the plate I can make prints from it experimenting with different ways of inking the plate and overlaying colours using rollers. I combine my photographic images with mono-printing and stencil techniques to introduce different layers of tone, colour and shapes.
‘Large Rutter Bros 1’
‘STW SV Blue’
I love the physicality of printing by hand; everything from the smell of the inks to mixing them, applying ink to the plate and then wiping it off again, using rollers and of course passing the plate and paper through the printing press. It’s time consuming and meditative and I’m never happier than being lost in
JFk Turner Is a painter and Collage artist who uses found and discarded textures and packaging to create small scale paintings on wood. The text based pieces included in this show are created from lost and found letters and elements of text. ‘Like a scavenger from the future I find and collect the ephemeral things we discard, the things we ignore and the traces we leave behind’.
‘Untitled 11’
Small Print Chris & Hannah Barker Based in Derbyshire, Chris and Hannah are co-founders of The Smallprint Co studio. With a background in fine art print they develop unique illustration, book works and prints using letterpress and other techniques inspired by their collection of original presses and moveable type.
Martin Leedham
Geoff Diego Litherland
‘The Lines We Walked when We Once Walked Together’
Martin Leedham is a printmaker who works with ink, paper & glass.
Geoff Diego Litherland was born in Mexico and is currently based in Wirksworth, Derbyshire. In 2012 he completed an MFA in Fine Art at Goldsmiths University of London, he is an artist with a considerable exhibition profile, a part-time lecturer at Nottingham Trent University and co-director of Haarlem Artspace.
Within this work he used a plaster cast mould of vintage wooden poster type, which he has then slumped glass into. In the kiln, as the glass expanded and contracted, the plaster shattered, so giving the surface of the glass a random fractured texture.
‘ I don't usually use text within my work, other than in the titles. Titles are way to use language in a more poetic and ambiguous way, gently nudging the viewer into place that the work might inhibit. This work has a particularly evocative title and has indeed have a lot of text within it, as it's based on an old map of Yosemite Valley’
Graeme Reed Like any artist I’m really just trying to capture my own experiences and understanding of the world around me. I’m living in an image saturated world punctuated by combinations of routine daily life, and snapshots of global images from media and screen-based technology. This heightened juxtaposition of multiple visual experiences seems to increasingly reveal itself in personal anxieties and insecurities. In my recent work I focus on ‘fashion’ as a metaphor for this; the passion, confusion and anxiety we feel about our ‘appearance’ , and our constant thirst for approval, or disapproval! The images inevitably start to explore ideas about ‘fitting in’, ‘belonging’, ‘approval’ and ‘confusion’ etc. I always start my prints by creating ‘characters’. The characters defiantly stare out at us, seeking both our approval and our condemnation. The characters are riddled with insecurities, but they always manage to resolutely make their presence felt. “This is what I am…..I think!” they shout at us. My character’s have a particular passion for ‘fashion’. They use it as a metaphor for self-expression, but it also comes with confusion and anxiety. As a consequence, the artworks tend to explore ideas about ‘fitting in’, ‘belonging’, ‘seeking approval’, 'standing out' and most notably, a sense of ‘disorientation’ felt by being pulled in so many different directions. Our lives are saturated with ‘Images’ and ‘Text’. Neither one is more important than the other. As an artist, it is important for me to retain both of these elements in the artwork. For me, scraps of text are part of the unfolding narrative of the storytelling. Fragments of words are as ambiguous and puzzling as the images that engulf them.
‘Monster’
Jeremy James “The people and animals in my ceramics don’t belong to this world. They appear to inhabit a world very similar to my own, but distinctly not the same, one in which animals and people interact but often their relationship to one another is not clear. It is another world that might be seen from ones peripheral vision or glimpsed in moments of idle daydreaming. I am still surprised by these creatures that materalise in my hands from pieces of clay, even after 36 years of making. It is why I continue to go back into the studio
Hand coloured lino prints “Tyger”, Stoneware clay, wire and goldleaf. 40cm high.
Jo Sweeting My work is based on the concept of ‘Shul’, a marking which remains after the thing that made it has passes. A dry riverbed or hollow an animal made in the grass are ‘shul’. My interest is in how these traces are left on our bodies and memories. I use words, or a figure or plant as a starting point and focus on growth and change. I celebrate a moment in time. Starting points can be poetry, an overhead conversation or the landscape. Jo has carved four woodblocks depicting different seasons: Spring/Callow, Summer/Combe, Autumn/Kex and Winter/Shaw. Each is bordered by words in Sussex dialect, and together they form a work called ‘Calendar of the Sussex Wild’.
‘Winter – Shaw’
‘Summer - Combe ’
Sa ah Rushton
‘R‘Et Elegans Aurum’
Rob Chapman Rob Chapman is an artist printmaker who specialises in wood engraving and letterpress. I have been using text and letterforms as integral to some of my work for many more years than I care to remember. It has been an element which has been used when appropriate, as a device within the design, as an adjunct to the visual imagery, or as a signpost or even a distraction. I have always considered my work to be narrative in form, not in a literal sense but as pieces, or series, having beginnings, middles and ends. I don’t intend that the work includes a story but that it provides sufficient stimuli to engage the viewer to explore the subject matter as part of a continuity of events: not telling the viewer what to understand but inviting them to look within the imagery and draw their own conclusions. Text may help or hinder but will hopefully invite greater engagement. Rob’s wood engravings are reflections on his local countryside. His interest is in the more intimate elements which make up the landscape; trees, grasses, animal remains and the many more small pieces of the world which we generally pass by. An increasingly important element is the historical continuity of the land – the echoes of it’s past inhabitants – which Rob is beginning to explore more fully.
‘Alphabet for the 20th Century’
Mary Kuper I am an illustrator, writer, designer and lecturer, working to commission for books and magazines, design agencies and exhibiting. The materials I use are diverse, extending from traditional wood engraving to 3D and computer based work. The link is an enjoyment in the expression and communication of ideas, both visual and written. Career path The relationship between text and image is central to my work as an illustrator. Much of my work is to commission, however I have also been able to pursue my own particular concerns. This increasingly focuses on my interest in linguistics. I produced an illustrated Etymological Alphabet, Clarion Press and Fine Press Book Association Illustrated Book Award, 2002. Since then I have worked on issues related to language with the English Project at the University of Winchester, The National Poetry Library and the Endangered Languages Documentation Project at SOAS. I am a visiting lecturer on the Illustration course at Camberwell College of Arts and have periodically initiated public art projects in areas connected to my work. Much of this has been in North Kensington, using drawing to engage people in debates around planning, refugee displacement, the Olympics and as artist in residence with the Consortium of Supplementary Schools, developing visual teaching resources for local Moroccan, Eritrean, Sudanese and Georgian language learning
‘Punctuation’
Glossary of Printmaking Terms INTAGLIO PRINTING Intaglio comes from the Italian word intagliare, meaning, “to incise.” In intaglio printing, an image is incised with a pointed tool or “bitten” with acid into a metal plate, usually copper or zinc. The plate is covered with ink and then wiped so that only the incised grooves contain ink. The plate and a dampened sheet of paper are then run through a press which applies pressure to create the print. Usually the paper sheet is larger than the plate so that the physical impress of the plate edges, or the platemark, shows on the paper. The ink on the print tends to be slightly raised above the surface of the paper. Drypoint Drypoint prints are created by scratching a drawing into a metal plate with a needle or other sharp tool. This technique allows the greatest freedom of line, from the most delicate hairline to the heaviest gash. In drypoint the burr is not scraped away from the surface but stays on the surface of the plate to print a velvety cloud of ink until it is worn away by repeated printings. Drypoint plates (particularly the burr on them) wear more quickly than etched or engraved plates and therefore allow for fewer satisfactory impressions and show far greater differences from first impression to last. Engraving Engraving is a process in which a plate is marked or incised with a tool called a burin. A burin works on a copper plate like a plough on a field. As it is moved across the plate, copper shavings, called burr, are forced to either side of the lines being created and these are usually cleaned from the plate before inking. An engraved line may be deep or fine, has a sharp and clean appearance and tapers to an end. The process is slow and painstaking and generally produces formal-looking results. Etching Etching has been a favorite technique for artists for centuries, largely because the method of inscribing the image is so similar to drawing with a pencil or pen. An etching begins with a metal plate (originally iron but now usually copper) that has been coated with a waxy substance called a “ground.” The artist creates the composition by drawing through the ground with a stylus to expose the metal. The plate is then immersed in an acid bath which “bites” or chemically dissolves the metal in the exposed lines. For printing the ground is removed, the plate is inked and then wiped clean. It is then covered with a sheet of dampened paper and run through a press, which not only transfers the ink but forces the paper into the lines, resulting in the raised character of the lines on the impression. Etched lines usually have blunt rather than tapering ends.
An artist can choose either to work with a hard ground or a soft ground. In hardground etching, the artist draws directly onto a hard, waxy surface that resists the mark-making process, allowing the result to be very much like drawing. In softground etching, the artist draws instead on a piece of paper that covers a soft wax coating on the plate. When the paper is lifted, it removes the wax where the pencil pressed. Lines in a soft ground etching are often more fuzzy at the edges, like crayon lines. An artist can also use the waxy soft ground to make imprints of other things besides a pencil, like leaves or lace. Aquatint Aquatint is an etching technique that creates printed tonal areas. Powdered resin is distributed across a metal plate and adhered through heating. When the plate is submerged in an acid bath, tiny areas unprotected by the resin particles are “eaten away” or “bitten”, creating recesses. The design, wholly in tonal areas not line, is produced by protecting certain areas of the plate from the acid with an impervious varnish, by multiple bitings to produce different degrees of darkness, and by the use of several different resins with different grains. Spitbite Aquatint Spitbite aquatint involves painting strong acid directly onto the aquatint ground of a prepared plate. Depending upon the time the acid is left on the plate, light to dark tones can be achieved. To control the acid application, saliva, ethylene glycol or Kodak Photoflo solution can be used. Traditionally, a clean brush was coated with saliva, dipped into nitric acid and brushed onto the ground, hence the term “spitbite.” Spitbiting gives an effect similar to a watercolor wash.
Sugarlift aquatint For sugarlift aquatint, a syrupy solution of sugar or condensed milk is painted onto the metal surface prior to it being coated in a liquid etching ground or ‘stop out’ varnish. When later the plate is placed in hot water the sugar dissolves and lifts off leaving the image. The RELIEF PRINTING In this technique, the artist sketches a composition on a block of material and then cuts away pieces from the surface, leaving a raised area which will receive the ink. A roller is then used to apply ink to this raised surface and the image transferred to paper with a press or by hand burnishing or rubbing. Since the recessed, cut-away areas do not receive ink, they appear white on the printed image. Relief prints are characterized by bold dark-light contrasts and an impress into the paper of the inked lines. The primary relief techniques are woodcut and linocut.
Woodcut Woodcut is the earliest and most enduring of all print techniques, in which a block of wood is used as the matrix. While woodcuts were first seen in ninth-century China, Western artists have made woodcut prints since the fourteenth century. They were originally conceived as religions icons and sold as souvenirs of a pilgrimage to some holy site. Woodcut soon became a popular medium for the mass distribution of religious and instructive imagery in Europe, not least through books since, with the invention of movable type, the woodblock matrix could be set in the same press with the text and both text and image printed together. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, woodcuts were developed in Japan to an exceptional level of artistic achievement, known as the ukiyo-e period or Linocut Linocuts are printed from a linoleum tile. The linoleum is handled in exactly the same way as a wood block but, since it does not have a wood grain, the surface of the resulting print will have less texture. The material takes all types of lines but is most suited to large designs with contrasting tints. Monotypes and Monoprints Monotypes are one-of-a-kind prints. They have been known to be called the “painterly print” as well as the “printer’s painting”. Monotype brings together elements of painting, drawing and printmaking. The words monotype and monoprint are often used interchangeably; however, there is a difference. A monoprint may use some form of repeatable layer or element in the production of the image, whereas a monotype is a completely unique image that is not repeated. Working on an unarticulated surface or plate, the artist applies a layer of ink, which is then wiped off in sections, in order to create an image in a reductive fashion. The ink can also be applied directly to the surface in an additive fashion, much like a painting or drawing. The image is put through the press and transferred from the plate onto a piece of paper. There is then the added option of drawing into Chine Collé Chine collé is a special technique in printmaking, in which the image is transferred to a surface that is bonded to a heavier support in the printing process. One purpose is to allow the printmaker to print on a much more delicate surface, such as Japanese paper or linen, which pulls finer details off the plate. Another purpose is to provide a background colour behind the image that is different from the surrounding backing sheet. The most common method of using chine collé is to trim the thinner paper to the size required, then apply an adhesive paste to the paper and allow it to dry. When the printmaker is ready to print, the paper is arranged on the press with the plate and the (dampened) heavier paper and the ensemble is run through a press.
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