Obstacles
I am not giving up though, on the prints or the other piece. The goal is clear: I have works to finish and I will not rest until I am happy with them and am ready to share them with the world
In all these cases, I know I will get there. The start of my screenprinting journey was similar, littered with issues to overcome and mistakes to learn from, and a sense of triumph when a problem was successfully resolved.
Icons
My feminism is inclusive and intersectional, irreductible to specific events or characteristics which may mark someone as a woman or not. And feminism can go from the most political, engaged positioning to being almost oblivious to itself. Simply existing in a man’s world can be a political statement in itself.
So here are a few women whose visioning talent I admire, and who have inspired, surprised, moved or impressed me. My little summary of their works don’t seek to do justice to their talent or vision
My present ideas for International Women’s Day 2021!
Things have moved on a bit since the Guerrilla Girls’ first weenie count in 1989, which found that less 5% of the works on display in the public collection of the Met Museum were by female artists and that 85% of the nudes were women, but there is still a lot of work to be done. The ratios may have changed a bit since, but collections are still mostly male (and white).
And the world turned blue
Art often feels like sorcery but never more so than when light and chemistry meet to reveal something out of this world. In that respect, cyanotype doest disappoint: not only has the process got a magical quality, but the works created feel chimerical, or otherworldly:
Not touching the ground
Being outside your comfort zone could also have something to do with the ideas you are exploring. Being willing to follow a thought or a feeling to see where it leads you. That can be daunting, because not all emotions or ideas are easy to explore, and it can lead to some highly personal works. Art can be a way of healing, but to get there, you have to expose your wounds, the cracks in your story, and this can feel like a jump into the void.
Obsessions- on Art and Music
With both, I am an explorer, going to museums and concerts as often as I can, immersing myself in the worlds of the artists and of all the fans who inhabit them.
With both, I am an addict, constantly chasing that high, the punctum in an image that hooks me, a note, a voice, a lyric in a song that breaks me.
Taming the beast: from image to print
First I build this original image- the photo or the drawing- into a digital design that I like. This first transformation can be as simple as adding colours or shapes to a drawing, or cleaning a photograph, but it often means a lot more: applying filters, simplifying, fragmenting or repeating the image, recolouring it completely, layering other images in… there is a lot of experimentation at this stage, I start and I stop, I come back to it later, I tweak and I tinker..
A Riso adventure
Finally my print was ready to proceed so there was nothing more for me to do than wait for the final result. That part was a bit daunting, as I am using to screen printing where I am in control (sort of) at all stages, and here I had to relinquish control to the printers.
Exhibition review- Bruce Nauman
Approaching the “Human Nature” neon work, and later in the “100 live and die” room, the chanting noises coming from the surrounding rooms together with the neon glows reminded me strongly of the final scenes of Stanley Kubrick’s film “2001, a Space Odyssey”.
Naked
You may be the kind of artist who makes their own life the centre of their practice, like Tracey Emin; or you may be the kind of artist who hides behind a nickname and never shows their face, like Banksy. But every artwork, everywhere, every time, tears strips out of the artist and expose them for the world to see.