Printing Winter

My old adana has been struggling to get a good print for quite a while now so it was time to take it to Caslon for a service. After a good look it was clear that this little press had been working very hard since the 1950’s and it was time for a rest. So many of the parts were worn and it was going to cost as much, if not more, to fix as getting a refurbished press. So thank you so much to Roy Caslon for my new refurbished adana 8 x 5 press. Its first job with eightfivepress was printing 100 sleeves for WINTER EP, music from my other project Red Deer Sleeping. The music is set to poems by Amy Lowell, Alfred Lord Tennyson, A. E Housman and John Clare.

Printed with polymer plates from Lymebay Press on 100% recycled card by Ecocraft.

WINTER by Red Deer Sleeping is now available to pre-order on Bandcamp. The EP will be released on the 15th January 2020.

Cosy up wth a copy of Winter in snow white or woodburner black!

Three Brecon Peaks - Short Film + Launch Date

Here’s a very short glimpse of ‘Three Brecon Peaks’ in the making.

Neil Confrey will be unveiling Three Brecon Peaks print at St. Canna's Alehouse on Tuesday 26 November 2019.

There will be prints on show, poetry by Paul Deaton, Amy Wack and Katrina Naomi. Red Deer Sleeping will be performing songs from the new EP, Winter.

Pints, prints & poetry: for sale
from 7.30 for an 8.00pm start

St. Canna's Alehouse, 42 Llandaff Road, Canton, Cardiff, CF11 9NJ (across the road from Chapter Arts),

Thanks to:

Nick and Ellen - The Letterpress Collective

Neil Confrey - Confreys Solicitors

Paul Deaton - Seren Books

Three Brecon Peaks

The poem ‘Christmas’ by Paul Deaton sparked excitement in a recent conversation with Mental Health Law Specialist, Neil Confrey. Neil commissioned me to make a piece of work for a Christmas card which Confreys Solicitors send to their clients every year. We discussed the idea of letterpress printed cards using my Adana 8 x 5. Neil wanted to introduce a poem to be printed on the inside of this year’s card.

A Watchful Astronomy

Poet, Paul Deaton, of The Spoke poetry collective in Bristol came to mind while independent literary publisher, Seren Books had also recommended The Spoke poets to Neil. The planets were lining up. Paul was on board and together we decided that the poem ‘Christmas’ from Pauls’ poetry collection ‘A Watchful Astronomy’ would be perfect for the project.

Typesetting the chill hills

I was excited about incorporating Paul’s poem into the main image for the card rather than separating the image from the poem. Neil came up with the idea of an edition of letterpress prints so now I could imagine the poem in all kinds of ways. It was obvious after our conversation that my Adana 8 x 5 wasn’t going to be the right press for the job. I got in touch with Nick Hand from The Letterpress Collective and booked some dates to typeset and print the edition using their Vandercook press.

Concrete Poetry

Paul was happy for me to fracture his poem for the print. I focused on the three Welsh peaks Cribyn, Pen Y Fan and Corn Du - placing words from the poem to reflect the different heights of the hills and his deep connection with the ever expansive planet. Neil likened the result to Concrete poetry.

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Inking Up Welsh Mountains

Visualising Welsh mountains in winter drew me to shades of misty hues of blue green grey. I questioned how well each peak would line up after being through the press three times. Ellen suggested rollering the ink by hand onto the type and then running the un-inked rollers of the Vandercook press over the type. I made a test print in one colour which printed well. I then mixed three colours and hand rollered a different colour for each ‘peak’. The results were good and I was ready to print the edition.

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Printing The Chill Hills

Thanks to Nick Hand and Ellen Bills from The Letterpress Collective for the time and space to create this print in their amazing studio and for their helpful suggestions along the way.

An edition of 40 letterpress prints of Three Brecon Peaks will be available early December. I will keep you posted of the launch date which we expect will be taking place in Cardiff.

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Three Brecon Peaks

A Letterpress Edition of Prints

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Three Brecon Peaks is printed on 300gms white Somerset Satin paper using letterpress and linseed oil based ink. Dimensions W 57cm x H 38cm.

Neil Confrey - Confreys Solicitors

Paul Deaton - Seren Books

Nick Hand and Ellen Bills- The Letterpress Collective

Seasons of Nature

A friend recently gave me this Yixing-style teapot with tea bowls, glass water pot and bamboo tray. What a thing of beauty it is. So tiny you can hold the teapot in the palm of your hand.It reminds me of a print I loved from Bristol Museum’s Master of Japanese Prints ‘Life in The City’ (Okita of the Naniwaya teahouse, by Kitagawa Utamaro I) and a reminder that the third exhibition in the series ‘Masters of Japanese Prints: Nature & Seasons’ is only on for a few more weeks. I pack my notepad and camera and set off for the museum.

Spring

The gallery welcomes me with Spring in full bloom. The walls are abundant with blossoming cherry trees and a fine sprinkle of yellow mountain roses and wisteria. Under the cherry trees people in boats are gazing up at the blossom as petals float down the river. There’s an exchange of poetry and a game of hide and seek. A courtesan is reading a letter. In the grounds of a temple, people are gathered for the annual Cherry Blossom Viewing. 

Summer

In Summer people are celebrating the festivals. Kites and lanterns. Carp streamers for Children’s Day. The meeting of a heavenly weaver and a herdsman. Peonies, Irises and Morning Glory. Summer rain, boats and fishermen on the choppy deep sea.

Autumn

Autumn brings full moons and red maple leaves. Orange persimmons and chrysanthemums. Wild geese, sweetfish and bush clover.

Winter

As I arrive at winter, one of the prints (Parody of the Ukifune Chapter: Ferry on the Sumida River by Utagawa Hiroshige) reminds me of a song I am working on for my Winter EP. The original poem Falling Snow is by the imagist poet Amy Lowell who was inspired by Japanese prints.  

Falling Snow

The snow whispers around me 

And my wooden clogs 

Leave holes behind me in the snow. 

But no one will pass this way 

Seeking my footsteps, 

And when the temple bell rings again 

They will be covered

By Amy Lowell

A couple of years ago I produced a limited edition of letter-pressed EP covers for my other creative project Red Deer Sleeping. The music from ‘Autumn’ was set to old poems by imagist, victorian and romantic poets. The Winter songs are finally coming together so I will soon be working on another limited edition of letterpress covers for the Winter EP. In the meantime there are plenty of summer festivities to enjoy and as we move closer to September and the nights begin draw in you can listen to ‘Autumn’ songs inspired from poems of Amy Lowell, Adelaide Crapsey, Christina Rossetti and R.L Stevenson.

Bristol Museum

Red Deer Sleeping

Amy Lowell

A Choreography Of Space

“Limination tells you that you are in one spot and it’s not the same as what preceded it or what follows. It’s a way of creating a flow, a progress, like reading a book. As you pass through a gate, you’ve turned the page to a new chapter, and at the following gate, you start on the next chapter. Or, you could think of it as unrolling a hand scroll, turning as you go from one image to the next. It’s a choreography of space.” Alex Kerr - Another Kyoto.”

I love the different processes involved in making a print. Here are some pics of rubbings I made with carbon paper to check the images after carving the keyblocks for In ‘Praise of Saints.’ Top Left: Saint Catherine of Siena. Top Right: Florence Nightingale. Bottom Left: St Veronica. Bottom Right: Saint Catherine of Siena.

Limination

At the beginning of the year I began working on woodblock prints ‘In Praise of Saints’ after my visits to Queen Alexandra hospital in Portsmouth over the New Year.

While sitting in the hospital chapel I reflect on this new word ‘limination’ coined by Alex Kerr as he explores the concept of Kyoto’s stone paths that lead to the ancient temples. Along the path there are many gates. Each gate is an entry point into a new place, a new chapter and another path that continues to the next gate and the next and the next and so gradually “removes you step by step from the outer world”* making gentle progress towards your final destination; the temple.

This state of being between places and removing oneself from the outer world resonated with my time in the hospital. Watching my mum being rolled through a maze of corridors, from the emergency room, to acute medical, to the recovering wards. Each ward, a gate of entry to the next phase of recovery, with these new places came new nurses and doctors, new sounds and smells, new doses of intravenous therapy. My own perception of time warped and I was in the hospital ward bubble observing the gradual path of recovery and the desire for us all to be closer to the ‘temple’.

St Catherine of Siena & Florence Nightingale

Emerging Saints

There are twelve stained glass panels of saints in the QA hospital corridor and four inside the chapel. I initially had the idea to make prints of all the saints but I realised once I began the work, and Tony and Glen had asked me to take part in their exhibition, that I needed to scale down the project. I focused my energy on St Catherine of Siena, St Veronica, and Florence Nightingale. I carved two-colour woodblock prints of each saint, ommiting many elements from the original stained glass panels, focusing on the saint’s hands and faces and simplifying each composition. I printed the keyblock with Japanese carbon ink and watercolour for the background. The carved woodblocks were printed on Kitakata Japanese paper which is beautiful in texture but extremely delicate and a challenge to print!

St Veronica

In Praise of Saints - Shrine

On completion I explored the idea of framing the prints but after a visit to the framers I realise I didn’t want the images to be boxed in behind glass. I wanted to keep the lightness of the prints to evoke the lightness I received from the stained glass panels. Paper lanterns and Japanese sliding doors sprung to my mind.

“The sliding doors of the house itself and the cupboards are made of paper mounted on a light wooden frame - so light they can be moved with a fingertip.” A Traditional Japanese House Bruno Munari.

I couldn’t work out how they should be displayed until I had a conversation with my friend and creative buddying partner Lilla Duignan. After much discussion about my process she suggested the idea of a shrine. It made complete sense and I set off in search of something that could lightly hold the space for these saints. Thanks to Bristol Reclamation I found a piece that was just the right size for the exhibition and enabled me to create a more reflective three dimensional piece allowing space for contemplation and invitation.

For the exhibition piece the two-colour woodblocks have been printed seperately, the keyblock cut out and placed in front of the pale background to invite a deeper connection.

Thank you to all of you who came to The Golden Show exhibition at Centrespace Gallery. It was wonderful to see the little notes of gratitude gradually filling the bowl.

A big thank you also to Tony and Glen Eastman for inviting me to take part in celebrating their 50th wedding anniversary. It was so lovely to share the space with so many interesting artists.

I have gifted most of these two-colour prints to friends and family who have been an integral part of this journey. I may print more if there is interest so do get in touch.

with thanks to

Tony Eastman

Glen Eastman

Lilla Duignan

Alex Kerr

Shiko Munakata

Junchirō Tanzaki