Good Morning - more work on lino prints

In the past few weeks I have been making some headway on my small book project Good Morning/How Are You? As I mentioned in a previous post, this will be a series of very limited edition (10 each) multilingual handmade books. The concept is existential with images to be reflections of comfort, companionship and renewal.

The first three books in the series will be in English, Irish and Spanish. I had to redo one of the Irish lino blocks because I had miss-spelled the Irish for Good Morning - i.e., Maidin Mhaigh is correct.

I was happy with the new test print.

With my trusty bone folder, I scored the margins for all the pages that the lino block images/texts will be printed on. This took awhile, as the Strathmore paper is quite heavy.

I also set up a more careful registration system - I had just been eyeballing it on the test prints.

Printing without a press has its own satisfactions.

Conas atá tú? means "how are you?" in Irish.  

One of the images for the books is two mugs.

A teapot is the ultimate symbol of comfort for me.

I had a good day of printing today! Here some prints are drying on the living room floor.

Blackberry Apple Pie!

My daughter recently waxed lyrical on the wonders of autumn. One of her favourite things of the season she proclaimed, was a fresh blackberry apple pie. How could I not take this hint? My husband had picked fresh blackberries at our local park and picked apples from a friend's garden. The cupboard store provided the rest of the ingredients. First, the no-fail, easy pie crust that I use all the time. Directly in the pie tin mix 1.25 cups flour (I usually do a mix of self-raising & coarse), pinch of salt, about 1 tsp sugar. 

In a measuring cup mix 1/3 cup sunflower oil with 1/3 cup milk, then pour into flour mix.

Stir around with a fork, mixing the wet & dry ingredients. If it seems too moist, just sprinkle in small amounts of flour, but a pliable consistency is more desirable than a crumbly one.

With your hands pull out about half the pastry dough and set aside (this will form the lid) and then mould the pastry to the form of the pie tin. (This is a very hands on process!).

Peel and chop the apple. I used 3 medium garden apples, but you can use a large cooking apple if preferred. I always soak the apples chunks in some lemon juice before adding to the pie.

Add the berries layer, some sugar (white or brown), more apples if you have them.

The lid is composed of a patchwork of pastry dough -- it can fall apart in your hands if the pieces you are using are too large so just a bit of patience is needed to cover the pie completely. Make sure to cut an "x" at the top, to give the juices an out (this may or may not happen). Years ago I was given the tip that sprinkling sugar on the top crust of the pie before putting in the oven eased slicing. This may or may not be true, but an extra bit of sugar in or on a pie never goes wrong!

Bake at 180C for about 25 mins, the crust will be golden brown. I usually leave the pie about 10 mins to settle before slicing. This is extra delicious with cream poured on top!

Good Morning. How are you?

I've started work on a small, hand-made book project. Very simply, the books will be less than 10 pages , five of these pages being lino prints (two text, 3 images) and each book series in an edition of 10. Each series will be in a different language - starting with English, Irish and Spanish. The first & last prints in the book will be simple texts "Good Morning" and "How Are You?" The three other prints, separating the texts, will be simple images - a teapot, two mugs, a boiled egg. Existential breakfast. Here goes. Tools for printing.

Trusty wooden spoon technique rubbing the print into being.

The inked lino blocks after a series of test prints.

Lino-blocks and test prints.

I have decided the final books will be printed on heavy Strathmore paper and the cover will be corrugated cardboard. I will bind them simply, using the Japanese stab-binding technique, with a different coloured cotton thread for each language edition. Here are the test prints for the Strathmore paper. I have since been informed by trusty, Gaelgor (Irish-speaking) sources that I made spelling errors in the Irish text for "Good Morning" (should be "Maidgin Mhaigh") so I am cutting a new lino block today. But here are the Strathmore paper test prints drying.

Aughnanure Castle

My daughter was at summer college in the Connemara Gaeltacht, so while visiting on family day one Sunday in July, we had prepared a picnic and did the very scary drive from Lettermore to Oughterard. My trusty (though now out of print) Guide to National & Historic Monuments of Ireland, by Peter Harbison, had alerted me to the existence of Aughnanure Castle, 2 miles outside Oughterard. The castle is surrounded by a beautiful moat - the Drimneen river.

The original castle dates from the 13th century, but what stands there now is a 16th century tower house castle.

The sentry stairs are completely intact, but. for health & safety reasons I'm sure, there is a "no climbing" sign nearby. Authenticity is maintained without a safety hand rail.

One can enter the tower, walking up spiral stairs to several large rooms, but it is the out buildings and walls that are most interesting.

I almost missed the amazing carvings on the windows as they are only visible from one side of the wall.

Several windows had these intricate carvings on them, and one had to walk on what one would consider the exterior in order to see them.

In fact, the wall was not an exterior wall but an interior wall marking the banquet hall, which was no longer apparent.

Clonmacnoise

In July I went to visit my daughter who was in the Gaeltacht of Connemara, but on the way there stopped at the relative half-way point at the sixth century monastic site, Clonmacnoise in Co. Offaly. Situated at the crosspoint between an ancient land route running east-west, the Eiscir Riada (an esker), and the Shannon River running north-south, Clonmacnoise was a busy place in its ancient heyday, and therefore there were also lots of battles and sackings there. The tour guide admitted that the Vikings got a bad rap here, as most of the trouble that ever occurred historically had to do with squabbles between small Irish kingdoms and tribes.

The site is quite large, with lots of unusual features, including 2 round towers. Apparently a very tall round tower was hit by lightning in the twelfth century and the second tower was built using the stone debris from the top of the first tower.

One of the high crosses as seen from the portal of one of the seven churches on this site.

The high crosses on site are replicas, with the originals being preserved in the Visitor Centre museum.

The crosses marked an area of sanctuary, but one of the crosses may originally have been a pagan slab, as indicated by its carving of a non-Christian fertility god, Cernunnos (with a ram-like head).

The tour guide pointed out a new "pagan" tradition that had only started this year (2016) -- tourists were leaving money at the foot of this cross slab within one of the churches.

A view of the Shannon river from the side of the Pagan cross slab. The carving a cross-legged, ram-headed Cernunnos is apparent.

IADT Grad Show

At the beginning of June I went (several times) to view the IADT Grad Show. I had had a chance to get to know the fourth year art students last November when I helped out with the "rollover" shows at Pallas Studios in Dublin. It was a double pleasure then to see the final works of these emerging artists and to see how their practices had developed in the intervening months.  

I had previously seen photos of Mary McClelland's mixed media photographic installations (or wall mounted photographic sculptures?) but didn't realise until I saw them in person that the delicate framing is layered waxed paper. This was the centre piece of an alter-like triptych.

The elongated rose form is again created from layers of waxed paper, not quite enclosing a piece of honeycomb, fresh and oozing. McClelland's work is elegant and evocative; at once spiritual and erotic. To see the other elements in this piece and more of McLelland's work click here.

Since I consider myself primarily a painter, I couldn't help but take an interest in the paintings on display. There were three large paintings by Mateusz Lubecki, two of which can be seen below.

I was intrigued that Lubecki's paintings are both naturalistic and abstract at the same time!

I was very attracted to the stylised and mysterious paintings of Jago Moulton. The loose brush work of the white and flesh tones played off and emphasised the flatness of the polka dot dress and the black hair and background.

To me this painting is like a photograph from a dream - holding a memory and meaning that you can't quite get at to understand fully. I love it!

The exhibition contained all art forms and I have only featured a few pieces here by three grads, but a more comprehensive look at works in the exhibition can be accessed here.

Postcard 1916

Postcard 1916 was an exhibition of postcards, curated by artist Eileen Ferguson, which took place in The Old Post Office, Clones. Individual blank postcards were provided to interested artists to create small works in response to a specific word in The Proclamation or The Proclamation itself. The exhibition was a response to the 100th anniversary of the Easter Uprising.

The wall of postcards, though at first daunting in its diversity and jumbled nature, became intriguing for this very nature. The cards were all so different showing an incredible individuality of response to the same theme. 

There was also a great variey in the media used for expression: photography, print, collage, encaustic, paint, cloth

and any mixture of these materials.

Artists responded using the language of The Proclamation, or in their own words.

 Cards used naturalism, abstraction and symbolism...

I cannot comment on or show an image of every card in the display -

but one certainly gets an idea of the diversity in the exhibition.

The exhibition will be packed up and brought to France for further exhibition in La
Vielle Poste, Larroque in August of this year.

My own response (in situ below right) was a response to the word "children". I created a collage using ripped paper, an image of children collecting wood from the rubble of Sackville St (now O'Connell St, Dublin)  on a background of excerpts from my paternal grandfather's Witness Statement of his "military" activities leading to the foundation of the state.

 The postcard my husband, James Hayes, submitted (in situ, above centre left) is a lino print of the anniversary dates collaged onto a background of writing excerpted from The Proclamation.

There were so many interesting responses, it is impossible to showcase them all. The curator of the exhibition, Eileen Ferguson, was delighted with the response -- receiving postcards not just from Ireland, she also received cards from Canada and Germany. Ferguson also spoke of the range of work received and interest from both amateur and established artists, as well as enthusiastic responses from children and young people who had participated in some workshops.