Recent History - An exhibition by current and past WSA students in The Brooks Shopping Centre, Winchester

Back in the summer I visited Winchester and saw a small show in The Brooks Shopping Centre. It was a show of work by students of Winchester School of Art and as always I took a few pictures. I don't know who all the work is by but will add names if I find any of the artists.

Print Isn't Dead

A quick linoprint for People of Print

People of Print currently have a Kickstarter campaign running here for their new publication 'Print Isn't Dead'.

It's been a busy year

It sometimes feels like I've not achieved a lot this year, when I look at what I've done artistically. However I did complete a three month print studio internship at the beginning of the year and set up a studio at home. I made a print edition for an exhibition during the summer and I also made 50 wedding invitations, 50 orders of service and 50 thank you cards for my wedding. I've also visited quite a few gallery shows.

Lately things have finally calmed down. Getting married and falling pregnant this year have both taken a lot of my time. Now that everything wedding is over, I've been in my studio playing around with oil paints and mushrooms (more on that soon).

Here are some pictures from the year, as I notice I've posted very little about what I've done, mostly I've just posted show reviews.

My studio is all set up and it's lovely to sit at a desk and mess about

 Hops left over from wedding decor. No idea what to do with them, yet.

 Thank you cards for the wedding. Simple linocut, handprinted at home with waterbased lino ink.

More lino Thank You cards.

I started printing with blue and moved on to orange.

Wedding invites, Linoprinted hops

Recently I've been collecting pinecones and spraying them gold for Christmas decs. 

A linocut I made for a fellow Moomin fan as a Birthday present back in January.

Anyway, I am due to have a baby any day now, so will I actually get more artwork done next year? Who knows. I will try though. Maybe the first few weeks will not be very productive, but hopefully I will find a balance. 

For the next few hours/days before the baby arrives, I will be making prints and painting, so I hope to post some more things soon. I've had a good 2013, seen some great work, bought a couple of lovely prints, made some fun work and learnt a lot through reading and my internship. I've especially learnt a lot about Linocutting and hand printing. I still have a long way to go though. I hope everyone had a good 2013 and I wish you all the best for 2014!

Follow my blog with Bloglovin

Ochre Print Studio Summer Show 2013

Earlier in the year I completed an internship at Ochre Print Studio. I am now a member of the studio and recently I took part in a 20:20 boxed edition project. The project is a kind of print exchange, you made an edition and then you receive back one of your edition plus 19 other randomly selected prints. The final prints were displayed at the Ochre Print Studio Summer Show.

 The exhibition was also part of the Surrey Artist's Open Studios, which continues through to Sunday 23rd June. You can find more information about SAOS here: www.surreyopenstudios.org.uk/index.php and more info about Ochre Print Studio here: http://www.ochreprintstudio.co.uk/

Here are some pictures of the complete edition, there were so many great prints. I now have my own box of 20 of them.

 My bunny is towards the bottom left

Bunny!

 I also really loved the following pieces.

 Annee Robson

 Dale Barker RE

 David Dragon

  Laurie King

 Anne Desmet RA

Next year I hope to submit more prints for the exhibition.

Rabbit

I decided to linocut a rabbit just before Easter, however I became pregnant shortly after and lost all of my creative drive due to feeling so sick.

Now that I'm feeling a bit perkier and reflecting back, a rabbit seemed oddly metaphoric of the whole situation.

 Numbered, named, signed and ready.

I decided to submit the print as an edition for the 20:20 project at Ochre Print Studio. So last Tuesday I printed 25 onto Somerset paper. 20 will go into boxes, along with the prints of other artists and I will receive a box of 20 prints myself, including one of my own and the work of 19 other artists. The final prints will be displayed and sold at the summer show at Ochre, which runs on the weekends of 15-16th June and 22nd-23rd June, 11am - 5pm.

Prints drying on the rack

Linocutting

 Since seeing 'Eat your heart out' and some of the work at the Saatchi, I've been really interested in hearts, I was going to do a multiple colour linocut, but It is reasonably big and is taking time to plan out, so in the meantime I started doing this small, but highly detailed linocut.

I wanted to look at the heart as a symbol. Valentines day is coming up and hearts are everywhere, but the hearts we see on the shop shelves are a far cry from what a heart actually looks like.

I plan to make cards using my anatomically correct heart symbol in the place of the usual commercial heart.

I'm sure I will take this project further, but am so far pleased with the results.

I'm going to head into the print studio on Tuesday to print the final editions before moving the project along to creating the cards and beyond.

 

Beginning stages of cutting

 

 

Test prints