Legs Akimbo...........................

It's been a while since I posted as to how things have been. Well I am still using a crutch to get around. I have of course tried from time to time, to do a stretch of distance without it to see how I am and it's just completely impossible for me to 'walk' without it. I kind of hobble, with my left leg jutting out towards the left and as if one leg is shorter than the other. Its an awful site and it feels painful in a way thats difficult to describe. My left leg is gone numb in the foot area (as if it is dead) and the same goes for the front part of my lower leg, all the way down.



The pain is still there as well but not to the extreme levels as in up to about even three weeks ago. I have fallen twice here in the house whilst on my crutches and although the first one was quite bad, in that I feel it set me back a couple of weeks and brought on my pain in the left side again, the second fall was not so bad because I was able to put my hands out to save myself. There now, you have the full grotty details. Sometimes wonder who I am talking to but at the same time its OK as I am quite comfortable in talking to myself.
Still got the lower back pain but the nerve going up the full length of the left leg seems to be taking a back seat for the time being, thank gawd!! touch wood ( I am afraid I actually have to, admit that I do that when stuff really matters to me!!)

I got the images off to Printmaking online OK, as usual, it took far longer than I imagined and of course I had to do it mega perfectly. Would you believe it though they managed despite my meticulously organized information, to get the details wrong on one of my images. So thats another thing that I need to do.

I can't remember where or how I came across this printmaker artists work but I liked its anatomically grotesque edge which at the same time is extremely beautiful.

Amber Dye (her real name) hails from Seattle, WA, by way of Philadelphia and South
Florida)

She makes her etchings at the
printmaking studio in the Sevshoon arts centre.

Amber completed her BFA in printmaking and drawing from the University of Central Florida in 1996.
The print featured here is from a series of prints that are inspired by medical and anatomical illustrations, several books on medical oddities, and the idea of constructing body parts/objects that are physically impossible. To see more of her extraordinary work go to her album on flickr

Animals - our relationship to them

Just thought I'd post this on here. Its an image from absolutely ages ago that I still like. It was unusual for me in that I used "tippex" onto a photo I came across in a newspaper and at a much later date stuck it onto a water colour sheet.

It is something to do with our relationship with animals and the fact that we give different status to different species as in e.g., cat (I have two cats whom I am very fond of and who are an everyday part of my life) cow ...I eat minced beef, which is the result of those animals being reared to be killed and eaten. Then theres sheep .... I once was on a printmaking residency in Cumbria. The place was called Lowick Print Workshop.



I had my accommodation in a caravan which was located in a field which had sheep and cattle grazing in it.

That really made me think about the issue of eating animals and the way that us humans are with animals.
That issue was kind of in my mind when I made another piece called "Sticks and Stones"
its a hand coloured collagraph.

"Sorry" by Gail Jones a novel I read recently

This shows the front cover of the most recent novel that I have read. In itself, it’s somewhat of an event, as I think the last one previous to that, which I read, was “The Lovely Bones” which must have been about two years ago now. I seem to recall that my lovely friend Linda Haslam, gave me that and another book which I " relation to my own) have moved over from England, because of her father's employment at a local university. Part of what I found particularly of interest was the way that she and her chum Billy ( a deaf mute) terminology of that era, related to the "black fellas" (as they referred to themselves i.e., the indigenous Australians).
The so called 'grown ups' just perceived these people as labor for their sheep farms or whatever and then proceeded to exploit them whenever it suited them.
If I thought that my own mother was 'odd' then Perdita's mum was in another category altogether. Going around the place quoting from Shalespeare when it probably would have been more appropriate to say it from the heart or something along those lines.

Their whole house was made up of columns and stacks of books, this being the only thing that they had had shipped over from the UK when they moved to Oz. Perdita loved books and it provided another realm where she could 'virtually' find many of those things that she longed for.
The family employed a home help in the form of an aboriginal girl who was only a few years older than P., and they became very close.

Here are a couple of "proper reviews" which are more succinct than my efforts.

firstly an incredibly short one by Rob Cawston;

"Novelist and academic Gail Jones' latest book, simply entitled "Sorry", is a poetic exploration of childhood, language and retelling, and a critique of the politics of apology in modern-day Australia."


then a fuller and very informative review by Maya Jaggi, from the Guardian Newspaper


Saturday May 26, 2007
The Guardian

Sorry by Gail Jones



Sorry by Gail Jones, published by Harvill Secker.

Gail Jones's fourth novel invokes Australia's "stolen generation" - the many thousands of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children wrested from their families for decades until the 1960s in the name of forcible assimilation. This historical injustice was the subject of a national inquiry in 1997, and the following year an annual National Sorry Day (sometimes called a Day of Healing for All Australians) was instituted - albeit without the blessing of the prime minister, John Howard.


Though the novel is informed by this recent history, Jones' approach to it is oblique. Set in Western Australia in the 1930s and 40s, Sorry is narrated by Perdita Keene, the daughter of English immigrants, looking back to her early childhood before and during the second world war. Her father, Nicholas, carrying shrapnel in his back from the previous war, was an embittered anthropologist stationed on a scrub land cattle station to do field work in aid of "governance of the natives", while her mother, Stella, sought ever more crazed refuge in Shakespeare.

Perdita's preferred family are Billy, a deaf-mute boy with "upstanding ginger hair and stippled greenish skin", and Mary, a literate Aboriginal ("half-caste") teenager drafted in from a convent to care for her during Stella's bouts at a lunatic asylum. When Nicholas is stabbed to death, and Mary confesses and is taken away, Perdita develops a hole in her memory and a stutter whose eventual cure lies in remembering the true circumstances of her father's killing.

While Mary's traumatic history is gradually revealed, the themes of separation and trauma, the haunting of memory and forgetting, language and speechlessness, are explored at one remove, through the parallel history of Perdita. Her narrative shifts from first to third person as she trawls her past, recovering her fluency with the help of the Russian Dr Oblov, and wondering "why it was she actually forgot. And why she must now remember her forgetting."

Her emotionally distant family, sure of its own superiority, is implicitly contrasted with the warmth of the Aboriginal communities from which children are stolen. It is from her Aboriginal wet nurse that Perdita learns "what it is like to lie against a breast, to sense skin as a gift, to feel the throb of a low pulse at the base of the neck, to listen, in intimate and sweet propinquity, to air entering and leaving a resting body". Her stuttering, when words would "roll in my head, like mist, like water, then emerge blurted and plosive, like something unstoppered", is partly about the loss of her wet nurse's language.

The injustice of Mary's imprisonment suggests - perhaps too explicitly - the metaphorical freight that the story is intended to bear. Visiting Mary, Perdita "carried the burden of such vast wrongdoing ... But although it was offered, there was no atonement. There was no reparation ... She should have said 'sorry'." Her guilt contrasts with the complacency of Perdita's mother, who withholds the testimony that would free Mary on the grounds that "What's done cannot be undone."

Jones's writing can be fluid and memorable, though the influence of Toni Morrison is pervasive from the opening page ("This is a story that can only be told in a whisper"). The persistent quotation of chunks of Shakespeare, alongside allusions to Heart of Darkness and Rebecca, proves an irritating device.

More engaging are the grounded descriptions, of Billy with his flapping hands "beating at his confusion", or the locals' scorn for the "pommy" Nicholas, a "fraud and a bloody no-hoper ... with his mad-crazy missus and his gone-feral kiddie". There are welcome, though sparse, depictions of small-town Broome, with its corrugated-iron shacks lining red gravel roads, its Japanese and Malay pearl divers and Aboriginal cattle ranchers. Just as Perdita's story is punctuated by turning points in the war, so her memory loss is counterpointed by gaps in official history, such as the Japanese bombardment of Dutch refugee ships in Broome in 1942 - another atrocity that people elected to forget.

In the acknowledgments, Jones recognizes that "Aboriginal Australians are the traditional custodians of the land about which I write", adding: "This text is written in the hope that further native title grants will be offered in the spirit of reconciliation." Though the sentiment may be laudable, it highlights a palpable design and self-consciousness that mar some of the writing. Jones - whose novels Sixty Lights (2004) and Dreams of Speaking (2006) were long listed for the Booker and Orange prizes respectively - teaches at the University of Western Australia, and the influence of theory is occasionally obtrusive. Yet when characters and events are left to speak for themselves the story proves powerful and poignant.

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Big Blue Sky, Losing and Remembering

YIKES!!!.........It's 5th July and I am amazed at how fast the time is going.!! What you have to appreciate is that I am an extremely ancient being and time goes faster faster and speedier as you go through it.

Actually I do remember when I was a child in Ireland how the summer holidays from school went incredibly slow and I just was amazed at how long a stretch of time those 12 weeks or so seemed. I used to gaze up at the sky on the green outside our house and somehow felt that that big blue sky, was in someway, connected to this sense of a grand expanse of time.

Nearly finished writing up a new artists statement for Printmaking online dot co dot UK, (they get stranger and stranger but I find it hard to resist being a little sardonic) who are 'taking me on" as one of their online artist/printmakers. The site particularly appealed to me because of what it's name implies i.e., the creative process of printmaking.

I had to collate images that I have here, in my print studio, available for sale.
I think it's six that they like to have available for sale, by each artist.

Anyway so that's when I realized that many of the lovelier ones, are out on exhibition.
In the process of assessing my current 'stock' as it were, I became aware, that, of the original four jpgs, I sent them to see if they were interested, I had actually sold one of them.
I would like to do another version of it, in any event, as I am very fond of it. This is the one I am referring to.

On another but related note - I also found that I could not locate my most recently updated CV. on my laptop This would have been done I would guess about last November, December. Thus I began to search through my more recent CD's and DVD's and amazingly I wasn't able to locate ANY CV folders which is pretty surprising as its the kind of thing that I usually don't ever have trouble getting hold of . Bah!!.

Anyway so I have been looking myself up on Google to see if I can 'jig' my memory as to projects that I have participated in and even to locate a CV somewhere. Trouble is it won't be that updated. It's something to build on at least.

Thank Goodness for the internet. I really mean that in so many ways and on so many levels.
We are a very fortunate generation, indeed, to have this at our fingertips.

Putting up with Limitations - aint easy !

Gee whizz, did you ever start typing in your blog entry and compose about three sentences only to realize that you had not placed the cursor in the box well - that's what I just did right now argh !!

Its July the first already and not much has been done on my part lately in relation to my art making but then I suppose you could say that I have been ill. And yet it doesn't seem quite like that to me as mainly it's just that my ability to stand and walk to any extent has been taken away from me. Gawd only knows where they put these things?!

I have been in loads of pain thats true and unfortunately it continues. Morning time continues to be a right fiasco as previously noted and that's despite the very good medication that my GP prescribed to help with this. I have to take it the minute I wake up and then wait for about an hour. If I attempt to move before that then it's a case of the argh!!......oouu!!...ouch.... oh my gawd!!!.... etc etc and I have to try to regain a position of least pain while I let the blasted peg (sorry leg) settle its nerves down again.

I just wanted to get some kind of an entry in for today so that theres some account as to my existence. C. has been wonderful to me throughout this wretched business - he really has.
It's just as well that the European Football tournament was on TV of late followed by the present Wimbledon Tennis tournament -- which helps when I am having to have a lye down on the sofa otherwise I would probably listen to the radio. I am a real radio buff - I mainly listen to radio 4 and Radio Scotland. Also the World service.

New Artists Books Community - Join in !!

Artbooks at ning dot com, is an international online forum for artists, curators, librarians, students and researchers interested in artists' books and the book arts.
Lets create an online social network for creators of artists' books, curators, librarians, researchers, bookbinders, zine-makers and students who want to discover more about artists books and related topics.
Please do come along and participate.

Early in the Day

It's Friday and I am in the studio again, morning is the absolute worst time of day with my health condition, as it stands.

I wake up and once I start to move it truly is agonizing. I can't hep but scream out or cry out with the pain and things were so bad this morning that I couldn't even get my trousers on and had to ask C. to help. The left lower leg is dead as a plank. Moving out of the bed into the bathroom is a struggle and going down the stairs slowly is excruciating. Then sitting on my blue stool in the kitchen, I try to get the few 'breakfast' things I need together e.g., tablets (for all the good they do - but I keep taking them for fear things would feel even worse!!) cereal bowl, milk, cereal and spoon.

Fortunately C. came down and I was able to get him to pass me most of these things while I sat there desperately trying to find a comfortable position for this wretched left leg. it is like a leg that's been severely grazed and bashed and is raw and there is pain deep inside too.
C. also saw to Mister Monty who was meowing his head off as if to say I." am famished please give me my food right now - this minute!!". I remember I kept telling Monty to shut up.

Once I'd knocked down the final tablet with the fruit juice - thought I'd better clean up all the cat bowls and cups and stuff in the sink. We need these things before the dishwasher will go on again and we only have 6 cat bowls. If we can, we use the dishwasher just once every two days. It's hard going doing this stuff at the sink but it kind of distracts somewhat from this blasted pain.

Then I think "Can I face putting the pizza's together for lunch"?............ It's not that it's difficult or laborious but well I do it anyway. So I chopped the mozzarella and sprinkled on the 'spiced beef' (that I cooked up on Sunday morning, chop a few green peppers and chuck that all onto the passata which has been spread onto the bases and that's lunch prepared.

Then I make my morning cup of earl grey tea, which I have preferred to drink for gawd knows how long. C has to have his decaffeinated so I hate to think what it tastes like but I guess he has got used to it.
Mister Finny Foodles, turns up late for his breakfast and is being 'peculiar' about coming into the kitchen to his 'perch' to eat it, so I call C. to deal with him. He ends up taking it outside to the garden, for the cat to eat it.
That's a little zoom in on my mornings of late. As is evident I would be utterly lost if it wasn't for C. Bless him

Then I have to go drink it on the sofa and have a lye down as I am kind of exhausted.

The image is an etching by Gwendolyn Basala, which I find to be apt for this little vignette.

Falling, feeling isolated and fed up with Pain

"Self" unique inkjet chine colle and woodcut/offset 2008




"What can you do with a drunken sailor , what can you do with a drunken sailor, what can you do with a drunken sailor, early in the morning !!" I don't know where there are any keyboard digits for musical notes but this must be surely how I appeared to C. as I crashed into the wall of our sitting room, as I caught my crutch on the chair and went crashing to the floor earlier on this evening.
Boy did it hurt. Fortunately there were no broken bones and as I said to C. - "Its OK, I'm alright"
However as the hours passed by, I realize well I am pretty sure that I an quite bruised and the pain in my back which was already pretty severe, got a lot worse. Took some more tablets but can't say that they make that much difference. But I thought I had better take some anyway.
Oh Yee Gawds, what ever shall yee fling my way next ??!!



Anyway ....that's the trouble when you have a weak leg and a crutch you are sometimes inclined to trip or almost trip or fall. I fell over the other day in the post office right in the door. Talk about a grand entrance. That one didn't hurt much at all. The people in the post office were so kind I was astounded the way everyone there came immediately over to help and make sure I was alright - a couple of blokes helped me up off the floor. I was pretty shook up though.

Well another day gone and nothing much achieved on the art front. I did buy some acrylic rubber stamp mounts, on Ebay though which was good. I was particularly pleased with them as they are larger than the wooden rubber stamp mounts that I bought a few weeks ago.

Well I have always wanted to get more into making and using rubber stamps in my work anyway. As with the singular etched plates, that I made to use in my installation for Sweden -- I like that I can have the possibility to just place an image here or there on an artwork almost like in "collage mode". I really do like to "build" an image as I go. Part of it, I think, is that I like to elucidate associations and form a narrative of sorts although it's nothing "literal".



I mean I have done the other approach where you "plan out" your image and then e.g. make two plates or use a digital background and then superimpose an etching on top.

The other way I have gone about making artwork is to create a mono-print background and then combine one element with another

Images included in this Post


I ought to mention that the are the prints sent to the Yunnan International Print Exhibition, China. The show will be held at the Yunnan Museum in Kunming, the capital city of Yunnan province, during the first 2 weeks of September. They sent an email inviting me so I decided to do it. There will be a catalog and prizes, there were no 'entry fees' involved.

As always - if you click on an image you get a larger version with details of the technique/title etc and of course a closer look!!

Agony in the Garden ( well Garage actually)

'Unbelievably here I am in agony again with my flippin nerve leg pain. And it's because I went to the hospital today for a scheduled appointment for an injection in my spine. Before I went, it wasn't there - I was relatively OK pain wise.

But let me tell you, having an injection in your spine with a so called "local anesthetic" (some gel that they rub on) is not a good idea or to be recommended - it was an absolute nightmare.

I was moaning, screaming and swearing with the torture of the pain from the doctor pushing that needle into my spine. He did it, halfway from the waistline to the the chest. It probably took about a minute to a minute and a half but it felt like forever. NEVER, never again would I agree to it.

In London when I have had these previously - it has been under general anesthetic.

And to think that earlier in the day I thought to myself "Why am I going along there to have this when I am feeling relatively OK?".
I suppose there was a certain amount of oh well I suppose I ought to. And a vague hope that it might clear my pain altogether and I might be "normal" again !!


When I asked him why we had to now have this injection under local as opposed to general anesthetic - he said something about there being even more needles involved or was it some thing about it being better to do it this way for some reason or other - I can't remember very well what he DID say but I will certainly be asking him again.

I think it is to save the NHS money - quite honestly thats why.
Just like their two bit "NHS Direct" service. Gawd one really despairs !!


I most definitely wish I had stayed at home.

It has got worse since I have got home and is now reaching up the full length of my leg. I can find no position of rest where it's not hurting like hell!!

I just hope that it will have lessened by the morrow !!

Thus ends my news burst.

Summertime Football and Cats

Things seem to conspire against me getting around to making a post here on my blog.

Well- it's a beautiful summer evening and although my leg is still painful - I am not feeling too bad, on the whole. It's really difficult to know, how my condition 'stands' (ha ha ha) but it seems that this leg is going to be around 'in the state that it is in' for some time yet. I surprised myself this afternoon, in a way by lying on my full length sofa. It was just nice to be able to do this, at last, because of my disconcerted leg nerve. The first math of the European Football tournament was on T.V., and I watched Switzerland play the Czech republic. The latter won, one nil. I particularly enjoy tournament of this calibre i.e., where international teams are playing and you are watching the sport at its very best. This would include also the World Cup. On the past two occasions that it has been on the TV here in the UK, I have also enjoyed watching the African Nations tournament. The first week is always the best I find. I love watching all the different kinds of people and there are usually at least a few gorgeous looking guys to absorb at the same time. Monty our tubster jumbo cat came in at some point meowing his head off, he's a very verbal cat ( i.e., loudmouth) trouble is he only has the one word. So of course you have to guess whether its some kind of genuine and valid need he's asserting or whether he just is mouthing off as he just doesn't know what to do with himself. Sometimes he just needs to be settling down to go for a nap and its just part of his ritual towards that end.

He really has turned out to be quite a character. He was so shy when he was a kitten. And Finny was the more forward one. Now the situation is reversed.

So here I am trying to do Sitting Down activities

Well that means mostly working on my laptop here in my garage/studio. I suppose I ought to try to just call it "my studio" but I keep saying the garage. It's just that it has a huge pull up door opening the entire front wall (as it were). Not that I ever open it. It's got stuff leaning up against it and one mono print stuck on the door. Today I managed to clear out all the drawers of my Ikea plan chest
(it's only A2 size!) and has six drawers , which aren't that deep , probably about 2 inches or 5 cm. Anyway each drawer was filled with a miscellany of paper works etc. So I emptied each one up here on my huge worktable, which is in the center of the studio. I then began to sort them out into piles. Completed works, image research/resources, prints to complete, blank paper, 'chine colle' sheets.
I decided also to label one empty drawer, as a place to stuff things into !!



Tomorrow I am going to prepare my artist's book, to send to an exhibition in South Africa. It's to be a selected exhibition so of course I hope I get selected otherwise it's £20.00 down the drain plus the postage costs there and back. They are publishing a catalog, so if I do get in, then that would be really nice as well. Seemed worth the risk. On the whole now my policy is to only submit for projects that are publishing a catalog and showing in a gallery of good standing. Having said that I may now and then, enter works to shows that have a theme that I can not resist or that are fund raising for a cause close to my heart. I have already done quite a few of those.

I actually have been in so many exhibitions that i cannot remember a lot of them. That would particularly apply to when I started out.

Better finish now as it's getting close to "lights out" time.

Heres a lovely print I came across recently.

I will be featuring more of her works on my tradigital blog soon.

Continuation of the Leg Saga

I can't remember where I left off yesterday evening, though I think it was that I ended up admitted to the local hospital. It must have been about 9.30 or 10 by then. They gave me some tablets and I can not remember now how I slept though I think I did eventually get to sleep. The pain in the nerve in my left leg continued on and on. This made it extremely difficult to find any position comfortable and of course they had those funny pillows that are seemingly full of air. One gets used to ones own pillows!.
The next day the 'doctors' came around on their ward rounds and repeated all of my details and case notes in front of me. They seemed to conclude that I was a case for "pain management". I wasn't too sure what that meant except that perhaps the doctor who was a pain management specialist, who I had been seeing previously in their 'out patients' department, might be contacted and come along to see me. It was all a bit vague. I think it is awful when you are in hospital in that you become powerless, like a child. You are dependent on others doing things for you. Of course, they all seem to mean well and promise to do this and to fetch that but they rarely return or seem to carry though ones wishes.

I got the impression that they were overloaded with work. I could not get to see the particular pain consultant, I don't know why even though I tried to find out.

As I lay there, in pain, it seemed to me that really all that would be done now is that this pain consultant (R), would just increase my dosage of the new drug he had recently put me on and that there was no real reason for being in the hospital as far as I was concerned.
I tried to get R. to come and see me, but got nowhere. It was frustrating as I just wanted to get discharged. But all to no avail so I resigned myself to the fact that I was in there for another night. That turned out to be just as well because I had a terrible night and couldn't sleep because of my pain and discomfort.

The team of nurses who were on that night shift were a more mature bunch than the previous nights which may explain why one of them the charge nurse gave me sleeping tablets at about 1 am and again then when I woke at 4 am. Having an old woman sleeping opposite me who snored exacerbated the situation but eventually I got to sleep.

The next day I waited again for R. to appear but no show. However it seemed to be on the cards officially - that I would be released. Some doctor or other must have signed some bit of paper that made it all OK. Eventually I was able to leave at about 2 pm.

Time for another picture as a form of relief from all of this hospital administration.





It's by Mimmo Palladino, I can't remember where I came across it. Its a print and I dont know its title or its technique. What has just occurred to me is that I have abook called Mimmo Palladino's complete graphic works - so it is probably listed in there. I shall look sometime.

I came home from the hospital still in heavy pain but of course being human, I hoped that it would lessen. And the hospital had given me a huge amount of tablets.
These were mainly paracetamol, which apparently is supposedly good for neuralgic pain. I have only taken it when I absolutely needed it.

This being on top of my usual medication. There are loads of these paracetamol tablets left now in my kitchen drawer.

Amazingly by Friday morning the heavy nerve pain in my leg lessened - I was almost afraid to believe it or to tell another soul in case it came back. I admit that I did touch wood several times.

having said all of this - this episode has rendered my left leg weak and I now have to get around with a crutch. I need to sit down as much as I can and keep walking and standing to an absolute minimum. This was the case with my situation before this "episode" but now this policy HAS TO BE ADHERED TO.

Heres what's really been going on with me lately

For the last 5 to 6 weeks, my condition (scoliosis) has really "escalated" for want of a better word. I have been in a lot more pain in my lower back and my leg nerve pain has been having a "field day".

Then about 3 weeks ago or just under that, it hit the high notes of extreme pain in my left leg. The whole "friggin" length of it. It was unbearable and I was beside myself with the pain. That started at about 11 in the morning. I was in tears an just kind of groaning/shouting in a caveman like fashion by about 1 o clock and C. said "maybe you better call the doctor” so I did.

When I phoned my doctor I got a message telling me that the "system" had changed i.e., now us patients were to phone something called "NHS Direct". This is a nationwide service, with a national phone line. I explained my situation and they said they would pass on my case to the doctors there and I would be phoned back. Weird huh............ By about 3.30, still in an absolutely miserable state with the pain, I decided to phone them back and had to explain my case again. It was getting to be like when you phone Epson or Applemac to try to get something done, and you get a different person each time and you have to repeat your details and so on. But given that that’s absolutely frustrating enough if you are trying to sort out your printer, well I mean when you are in the state I was in with like nerve toothache down my left leg...well it was farcical in a kind of sick surrealistic way.

Trying to cut the story short by 7.30 pm, I got to see a general practitioner at the local hospital. This was in the "NHS Direct" GP area (only for those with appointments!) I only had to wait 6 and half hours for that though. Like so that was great wasn't it.

I kid you not, I explained my situation to this bod and he banged my leg here and there with a rather nasty looking all metal hammer and his final conclusions were that "really there isn’t anything that I can do for you"

WHAT..........................

I burst into the most deep guttural tears of disbelief and despair. I had not really cried tears like that for years and years.
Upon which he proffered that perhaps he could phone his colleague an orthopedic specialist, and we could see what he thought.

This chap, whose name I cannot remember came along fairly quickly, he had a mumbling session with the other guy, asked me a few questions. Said that I should be admitted he'd have me x-rayed straight away which wouldn't take long and get me up to the ward as soon as possible so that I could be given some pain relief. And sort of asked if would that be alright with me. Ha Ha Ha.....from one extreme to the other. The oddest thing too, was that while all of this was going on, my pain level went down just the tiniest bit on the Richter scale, though it was still pretty awful - its just that it wasn’t at "screaming" level anymore.

So there I was, with one of those prisoner like, white gowns put on, that tie at the back, and hoisted onto a metal trolley.

I am actually quite tired now so will continue this tomorrow.

Meanwhile here’s a picture to cheer us all up

I came across this image, a monoprint by Gail Bos, which I find to be delightful.



I found it on the website of Monotype Guild of New England

Works on Metal by Anne Beresford

Just loved this piece, which I came across recently, by Anne Beresford. I did have an email from Anne, following my enthusiastic response to her works on metal but due to yet another computer crash, this has now "disappeared" !!.

It's that Sarah Hopkins....again....now Where have I Heard that Name Before ??

You You You You You You You You You You You You You You You You You You You You You You You know when you keep coming across a name of a person and you can't always figure out how you know of it, or where you came across it before, well Sarah Hopkins was a case in
point.
Earlier this year I came across her "again" on Facebook. I had had to join Facebook previously, in relation to accessing some information on an arts opportunity and had an account there for a while before I actually started "rooting about" on the website.

Being a printmaking "nut" I looked that up and hey presto came across the "I love Printmaking" group, which is where I came across Sarah. There are a few printmakers on there making work that I like and this piece by Sarah is one that I particularly like. Its a collagraph, apparently, just glue and cardboard she said when I asked her about some technical info. It turned out that we had both been previously invited to be in an exhibition in Spain, which eventually had its funding pulled, so that show never happened in the end.

Having said that the guy who originally invited us Jaime Rodriguez did co ordinate an alternative exhibition at a place called Casa Duro in Asturias, which I did participate in. The website called "Kaosart", is, I find , a bit chaotic, in that for example iI could not find a link to the exhibition we were in . It was called Semantica. This project was mentioned in an earlier post in my blog.


p.s. I have just realized that the "I Love Printmaking Group", is only accessible from within, i.e., you have to be a member to see it.

Anika Murray

I recently came across Anika's work and rather liked this piece of hers in particular.

Douglas Pierre Baulos

I came across Doug (i.e., Douglas Pierre Baulos) on Flickr a fair while back.

I quite liked his work; some collages were very appealing as well as some of his drawings. There were two of his installations that I particularly liked. Anyway so here is my favorite - there is no title for it nor any details.

From looking through Doug’s c.v. there is some link going on with Cambodia, as he has shown there on and off, over the last 4 years.
He has also exhibited in China.

Other than that it’s all the US of A, which let us not forget is one big vast continent. Douglas teaches, lives and works in Birmingham, Alabama.
His artworks are in some pretty good public and private collections including the Museum of Modern Art, New York.

It’s difficult in a way to pick on any thing that the work is “about” in particular – for me it seems to be about the flux of life. Love, loss, death, memory and possession to name but a few of its aspects.

The Importance of Communication

Hooray because my blog is back online. It's purely by chance that I discovered this to be the case. It was taken off line on the 3rd of April for a "spam check" by Google. The email or notice from them, said that it would be checked within four business days. However the actual amount of time was more like nine days or seven business days. BUT I suppose I ought to thank my lucky stars given that some Blogspot users have had to wait a month or so.
Going through this experience has made me realize how important blogging is to me. I mean there are phases where I don't post to my blog but thats usually because I am really caught up in making work for a specific goal/exhibition etc. I really do appreciate that this facility i.e., Blogspot, exists and is available to me.



Thing is that even if there was a charge similar to what Flickr charges for an annual album/account - I would be OK with paying that. That costs about £15 by the way. In actual fact, I would be more secure , if that were the case because then I would know that it could not suddenly be removed from me. I would "own" it.

Part of the reason that I am saying that it's important is because for this past four days my spinal condition has been horribly exacerbated in terms of pain levels. Gawd only knows why ??!! Maybe it's something to do with the fact that I did some printmaking at FDPW on Monday Tuesday and Wednesday of this week. On each of those days, I was only there for about two hours - I was not physically capable of any more than that.
In the course of my various applications eg "hard ground" and applying liquid ground, I used turpentine and white spirit as well as car spray paint. I did wear a respirator mask. Although I felt that some of the fumes did penetrate etc, none the less. I had a bit of a headache and dryish throat on both Monday and Tuesday evenings. My sinuses were also affected and still have not gone back to their usual 'stuffed up' level. In fact my nose is still kind of sore.

I ordered an aquatint screen which has been dispatched today from McClains in Oregon USA. I think using those chemicals and their subsequent effect on me as well as my frustration with not being able to get an aquatint in my etching pushed me towards putting the order in for it. The total cost including the postage is about £55 odd. That's $109 US dollars.
When you consider what it is - it's quite expensive but I did look into it and it's pretty difficult to generate one yourself.

I have also this week been in contact with one of the staff at a company here in the UK, about buying an airbrush. I want to use it to apply the Lascaux acrylic resist etch aquatint liquid. After our short correspondence - I now know which one to buy ( there's a huge choice) and the compatible compressor - I am just waiting for the chap I have been in contact with there, to confirm his opinion re. the compressor. There was some mention of 'low pressure' and as I have never even used one of these I want to make sure that its OK for the airbrush model he recommended. That's going to be an outlay of £265-00 eeeeek.......but if I wait until they get one at the print workshop it could be a long long wait and well I just want to be able to get on with things myself. One advantage of not being able to go out and about is that I don't spend money in that respect so...............

I have always mainly spent any money I have had, on art books and art materials anyway. I once bought a book for £80, in a bookshop in Cork Street, London. I am trying to remember the name of the shop ...no it won't come. The book is a monograph of Mimmo Palladino's graphic works. Of course he has lots of print technicians to help him - how nice that must be!!

The closest I came to that, was when I was on a residency at Lowick Print Studio in Cumbria and I had the lovely Emma Grover to help me.

She does some excellent printmaking herself, I liked her work, the minute I saw it. I remember being at the biennial of the Printmakers council in London in 1999 and we both got an award presented by the then Secretary for Arts and Culture, Chris Smith, for our works in that exhibition. Lowick Print Workshop is sadly closed down now - such a shame -it was a beautiful print workshop. Those eight weeks I spent there were one of the best times I ever had. And thanks to Birna (who I am spending a fortnight with, in Iceland - this coming August) for encouraging me to apply.

Who would have thought a chair could look so ethereal ?

I came across this image of a print of a chair by an artist called Sarah Watson, a few days back. It's a sugar lift with spit bite. The latter is a process that I have never had a go at but would love to. I really wasn't taught anything much at Wimbledon School of art where I did a postgraduate printmaking course. There was an overemphasis on theory and practical print studio practice was severely lacking.

Actually the other day I was thinking that maybe I could do 'spit bite' of a kind, by dropping the saline etch solution on a degreased aluminium plate. I have recently been trying this process out to see how I got on look at my print studio blog (which is tucked away behind this one).
Getting back to Sarah Watson it seems she and a couple of printmaker buddies have just set up and opened a print workshop in Richmond Virginia - called Studio 23. I came across one of these buddies of hers on Flickr called Beth Noe and thought her work looked interesting as well although she also doesn't appear to have much of her printmaking on view on the web. Maybe they will put some of it on their blog once they get a bit more settled in there. I wish them luck!!

Denise Walker - exhibition + Univ. of Glasgow

I was just talking about printmaker Denise Walker in my print studio blog, yesterday and lo and behold - I receive an invite to her private view. It will be taking place in a couple of weeks time. It was she, who got me started doing some woodblock printmaking about this time last year. In my print studio blog yesterday - I was saying that whereas I had been making wood blocks where I removed the line which then printed white on black (as it were) Denise got me doing it more in a way that I am happier with - i.e., "positively".
Subsequent to her input last March-April, I did not actually do any wood cuts until I started them last week. This was mainly because I was working on my installation for the Dalarnas Museum in Sweden.
I had been considering doing woodcuts or to include that technique in part, but ultimately worked mainly in intaglio (etching and collagraph) as well as a small amount of inkjet chine colle.
Denise's exhibition will feature recent large woodcuts. I will probably be overwhelmed when I see them firstly by the content and then by her technical brilliance . What a gal - I mean to have both !! I will take my camera along and take a few photos and post them on here.

I found another image of hers today on the net which is from her website (which is currently "closed for lunch" for updating. I guess that jpg or gif escaped from the fold and made a dash for the "great white web" or where ever pixels float off to when they want to get away from it all!!

Printmakers from Brazil

This is a print that I was given by my friend Paula Torres. We studied experimental printmaking at what was then called the London College of Printing. That was around about 2000. I thought of Paula as a very unique person. She sometimes used to sing in the print studio, in an unusual voice - it was maybe spiritual or folk songs but very soft like an angel. She is very far away from me now. But I often think of her and wonder how she is doing and if she is still making art. The last I heard she had had an exhibition, in Sao Paulo. She used to go into the "favellas" (slums/ shanty towns) in SP, and do drawing workshops with the children - I remember her as being very caring about people and fun and generous.
In 2001, I think it was, myself and Paula collaborated on a double exposure project organized and coordinated by an artist in Germany called Hael Yxxs. That project was called INTERLAP. The idea with it was, that artist one e.g., me, would shoot a roll of slide film on a 35 mm camera, which I did. I would then rewind the film back to the beginning. Then I would post it on to artist number two, in this case Paula in Sao Paulo, and she would take photos which would be on top of the ones I had already shot. If you click on INTERLAP you can see all the works - only about 20 or 25 in total.

I gave Paula a print - I cannot remember what I gave to her and then she gave me a print. This is a silkscreen. It is called "She". It is one of those prints that IS BEST viewed in it's physicality because the 'grey' colour is actually silver metallic.
Paula used to work in many of the printmaking techniques although I cannot remember seeing her work in relief.



I have also posted a print which another Brazilian friend gave to me. I cannot remember if I gave her one in return but I that is what I would usually do with a special artist friend.
It's a relief print - I think it's lino. The title is "Buto Retrato el Mascara" I hope I have written it correctly. You can see more of Rosana's work on her blog.

Print Studio Update - more on WOOD block