Printmaking

I don't know /  by Justin Harrison

I don’t know what I made, or why I made it. But I like it.

I wanted to test the print screens at work, so I knocked up a quick stencil. Impromptu - I went with an impulse and a sense, I briefly saw this in my head. Cutting the stencil freely it took no more than 10 mins to make. (Using newsprint paper as the stencil)

Again in a rush due to other commitments - I pulled a quick print preloading the screen and pulling 2 passes.

The above is the first print. I was kinda pleased and surprised. Again I worked quick and unselfconsciously as it was just a test. But I can tell Iike the result… I photographed it and have been returning looking at it from time to time.

Again - It this thing that I need, to give myself permission to make work easily- not every worry piece of art hs to be laboured.

It’s inspired me - I want to use the stencil and make 2 colour prints of the black, grey, amber and the yellow that follows me. Also I had thought to make a print of the stairs, reduced to stark blocks of tone. A translation. I make a test in Illustrator - trace over the photo but dislike the literal iteration, it needs to evolve and be an interpretation. I’ll approach it again with simpler more intuitive making.

I also worry as this os quiet a departure form what I have been doing, but somehow I need to make it, get it out of my head.

 

Just stuff I like /  by Justin Harrison

Not been the most productive this past week, I think my Brian had had enough after the assessment and interim show. So as an attempt to get things moving again - I’m just collating a bunch of stuff I like especially around the idea of books.

There is always a desire to draw and to explore drawing, I’m looking for a common thread to explore or maybe just make stuff and see what happens, I suspect the latter is better because the former sounds like an old procrastination tactic. I like the idea of pages and pages of delicious drawing building a narrative, coloured collographs, mono prints, raw drawings and etchings…

I discovered an artist too (picured above) who seems to be working with similar motifs. I also see similarities to his invertigations.

“In Tibetan text ‘Bardo’ refers to the transitional state between one life and the next, a state in which those that have passed, in a karmic sense, may ne guided by the living towards a more positive ‘rebirth’.
When a tree dies its wood can taken a new form and be re-imagined within a different realm.
Clays was once rock, formed beneath oceans, raised up by the mountains to crumble and be washed to the seance more.
Metal, Glass, Leather, cotton, plastic, stone - all that exists is moving, becoming again, in a constant, cyclical change.
Birth is not the beginning and death is no end”
Nic Webb: Instargram 2MAR2023

Also see: https://www.nicwebb.com/works/hod-english-oak

 

Passing Through - Collograph Print /  by Justin Harrison

‘Passing Through’ Collograph print on paper. (Image my own)

I needed to find a school/studio safe process to seal the collograph plate. This was a test of the new sealing process.

I kinda like it.

He’s got something going for him and he’s going places, even if he is dead.

Another fast piece, made in under an hour. Although not one sitting - more like 10mins, 30 mins, 20mins. I wasn’t timing but you get the idea.

Again there is a pleasure for. me with drawing and by extension printmaking, specifically collograph. I get to draw three times. Once when I first draw the image, second when I cut the plate and third when I wipe the plate.

There is something deeply satisfying about drawing for me, it’s visceral, and somehow beyond my words. I long to make a drawing so honest and from so deep within that it it falls off the page.

Again I’m connecting to my materials trying to find a tone of voice to them, also not thinking too much.

Rhythmns.

I also wondered about encaustic wax, I stumbled across it today reading a web page about it. There’s a quality to it that I suspect could be really delicious. I’ve set drawings in wax before by just dipping but this is a more intentional process, proving layers and tones. In addition it gives me another material - another dialect. I’m concerencd that I’m adding yet another process to learn and adding more time whichh I really don’t have right now…

Tick tock….

 

I am everything you left behind again. /  by Justin Harrison

Another dirty sink. Another opportunity. Although in my excitement I made a rookie mistake. I used white paper when the sink is really a mid grey. I lost out on all the delicious white. next time…
I think this game is developing some rules too.
1. I can’t interfere in the process. As in no adding or sub-tracking to what is in the sink, only what is there.
2. I can’t coerce anyone to make such an opportunity.
3. It has to remain a secret for as long as possible.

It’s strange to be a part of the art making process yet exist outside of it at the same time. Not sure what to equate it to - except perhaps Levi Strauss ‘Triste Topics’ where he finds he exerts undue influence over a South American tribe when they witness writing for the first time and it creates division.