Making collagraph plate: 4 hours
Printing plate: 1 hour
Transparent blueprint memories: 3 hours
Last week I felt that I had no direction, and I was struggling to figure out where to begin. So I decided to make a small collagraph to get back into printing. I thought about the themes I wanted to explore, which got me thinking about my home, a place that holds so much of my life. It is more than just an architectural space - each room, piece of furniture, door, window, step, closet, all hold memories and take me back to the place I spent my childhood. Although it is no longer the home that I live in, it can never stop being the home I grew up in, where I formed my first memories.
This process of connection between home and childhood led me to create a blueprint of my house. Through this blueprint I made a collagraph, but I also used it to pinpoint certain memories that happened in specific spots of my house. I created a visual guide to recall memories that I had forgotten or buried. I was amazed at how quickly these memories came back when I was looking at a specific spot on the blueprint, so I created several layers of memories on tracing paper that overlay the blueprint. I think this process was very helpful, and I should move deeper with it, thinking more specifically about the objects within each room.
Next, I plan to continue printing and freewriting about home and memory. I think it would be beneficial for me to make drawings and studies that could eventually become prints. I want to think more about why the connections between objects, place, and memory are so strong for me, and about where I make the most connections. Through these thoughts I hope to learn more about myself and my intent as an artist so that I can make better decisions about the work I am creating. For this next week, I'd like to do a lot of sketching and begin working on my next plate, while also editing my first one.
You're doing a lot of great exploration and experimentation. All I can really say is, keep going.
ReplyDeleteThe prints look great, but what really fascinates me at this point are the blueprints, which are great documents of memory and information. A while ago I did a long collage series for a book (over 60 collages/pages) for each of which I did a lot of research, collecting paper stocks, and drawing diagrams. The materials for each collage was kept in its own folder, in a big stack in my studio. Eventually I assembled the collages and displayed them, but I never really liked them as much as I liked the research version in its file folders. There's something really attractive and interesting about seeing the process of thinking and planning in action, and I definitely encourage you to keep working this way.