Some of my favourite pieces I've worked on lately.

Broken Connection

The shape of a coiled Ethernet cable poured paper

Making connections

Twisted Pairs

Untwisted pairs

Basketry Connections

Making a connection with another over the internet

Joining

Mums one last cup of tea.

The spaces we exist in in our homes

The space at the table

Mola revealing layers, Mum's space 'Garden'

Mola: Sandwich 'Everything mum did for us prepared us for life'

Mola: Mum's Space, Sewing: 'Everything mum did for us prepared us for life'

How difficult does it have to get before your brain says ENOUGH!
So the past few months have been nothing but struggle!
I was pumping out an extraordinary amount of work and my body was basically shutting down and saying NO!
So I am on massive extensions of the deadlines, with more and more work building up...so we'll see how it goes. Still, I am really happy with what I produced!

Grief in cloth

I was exploring grief. My mum passed away a year ago. I was exploring the shape of grief. In the beginning, a year ago, the grief was wide, as the year went on it narrowed. A year on, the anniversary blows the grief up. The entire piece is hollow, empty inside. It is made from the fabric which my mum sewed her clothes from. Clothes I remember so clearly as a small child looking up, clinging to her legs, the static crackle from her slip colliding with the synthetic fabrics of her full skirts.

Transformation

I've been printing up like crazy for the past month or so. I have learned so much and there's so much I would do differently, but then again, I'm so proud of my work and a bit sad it's over for now.
I've been exploring transformation through Climate Change. How our world will be transformed, before our eyes and into the future once we're gone.

The first topic i was looking at in this work, I had to create a series of Collagraphs. I had been watching some Climate change videos about Tuvalu and Kiribati islander people who were living existing real-time examples that Climate Change is happening and why urgent action on climate change must occur. 

 The Collographs used fabric, sandpaper foil, card, corrugated card, foam letters, chux wipes, yarn and plant materials.

The final work a series of 4 Collagraphs using gamblin ink and soaked Fabriano academia paper 200 GSM

It took a full week to dry the ink on the chamois

 The two books are to be read together as one.

 A series of multi plate prints utilising techniques and methods such as Collagraph, relief mono type, additive and subtractive mono type, Linocut. Pages 17 and 18 have fold up and out sections that fit the book together.

The cover, the vessel for the Artist book. Chamois printed with a map of the world. Climate change is a global problem

Chamois cover - the world wrapped and tied around the Artist book

Buried the Artist book in the garden, marked it with stones. It will be left there for someone else to find, perhaps a future generation if any survive climate change.

Love, B.

Always waiting for things to dry

I did some test printing on chamois' Wet, dry, fully inked and inked and wiped off.

I cut out the world from recycled box, reversed it.

 I inked the world up in grid sections 40cm wide. (the size of each chamois)

 I wet the chamois in water and wrung it out, careful not to remove it's deep wrinkles and folds...they will add to the aged effect, I hand burnished as the brayer and barren smoothed it out too much.

 They are hanging inside on the print drying line but will go outside in the hotter midday sun to crinkle up a bit more and dry the ink quicker.

 Practiced stitching together the chamois. I like the Jute because of its rawness, but the paler coloured cotton twine stitches much smoother with less resistance. It also is less obtrusive in colour without totally disappearing. (I want it to look stitched together). The chamois as it was drying started feeling weird, like skin shriveling up. I kept thinking of Silence of the lambs as I stitched it together. 'It puts the lotion in the basket'

So why am I printing on 6 car chamois' and stitching them together? Well, my artist book for printmaking depicts the demise of the world from Climate Change over time. I have printed up my prints, stitched them into two sections with fold outs/ups. The two sections are "Once was" and "The After" showing the world as it was and the second telling the story of what it became. It is to be rolled up in the stitched chamois and buried in the ground as if left, safeguarded to explain to our future, if there is one what happened to their world. I printed the world onto the chamois cover, as the more I read about the impacts on each country the more clearly the impacts were shown to be global, especially harmful for already struggling nations. The chamois is very cool in a weird way. I chose it because I wanted it to resemble a really old map, wrinkled and damaged and worn from use. I wanted the world wrapped around the issues of climate change because it is a global problem. I'll be very glad when everything is dry and I can finish the construction. It's been a very long project and I'm keen to move on to Textiles instead! :)