When I was on my foundation year at Chesterfield college, (around 11 years ago) I fell in love with both etching and digital printing. It really sparked my serious pursuit of fine art study, and I was accepted onto a print and painting course at Wimbledon college of art. That was a pretty grim experience and I dropped out at the end of first year. I went back to university a couple of years later to study fine art at The Ruskin. For reasons I genuinely cannot explain, whilst I was there, I was terrified of the print room. I never went to a print induction, and completely dropped printing from my artistic interests. I've been regretting it for years. Drawing is the underlining principle that pins all my work together, but printing is such a fantastic extension of that, and it's one I completely abandoned.
Late last year, I signed up for membership with Carousel print studio in Sheffield. They are the kindest, friendliest people, and it's a place of creative exploration and experimentation (and not remotely scary!) I'm so glad I finally got over my strange fear, and ventured back into something that I feel really passionate about. I've done an etching and drypoint course, and I've very recently started cutting some simple Lino prints. I'm experimenting with paper types and quality a lot when I'm there at the minute, rather than focussing on getting 'perfect' prints right now. I'm learning so much every session, and I love the magic of printing again. Here are a few photos of my early experiments - I'll be drypoint printing another pigeon this Friday and I'm so excited for the outcome!
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Doesn't time fly?! Here are some images of my art created for BioFest, a celebration of biological studies at Sheffield University, over November 2023. My piece was exhibited in Firth Court for the main ceremony; it was only on for a couple of days, so sadly not all that many people got to see it. However, the evening itself was hugely successful. I learnt a lot about studies the university is doing (paralysing fruit flies being the one that sticks in my mind the most), and got to enjoy the work of other artists, including Kid Acne and Luke Jerram.
I hadn't originally planned to create prints on fabric, but I'm so pleased I went with my gut and changed my initial idea - the fabric partitions were reminiscent of hospital wards, and spoke to the lived reality of patients, rather than just the scientific element of the work. Whilst the drawings and the printing are uniform and delicate, the reality for those living with cancer is very different to that; stretching and manipulating the fabric onto the frames created a sense of tension and unease. Following on from the project, I plan to use the fabric to create tote bags, which I will be selling in aid of cancer research UK - I'll launch them on my instagram when they're ready. |
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February 2024
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