Culture, Craft & Cooking!: Memory Is My Homeland

Wednesday 28 July 2021

Memory Is My Homeland - prints, part 1 of 2

In the spring of 2019 I embarked on a new body of work after having a dream of houses and prints. Tentatively I referred to this work as "The Home Project" and talked about it in early days here. Certainly as time went on the work began to take shape for me in terms of examining concepts of home in relation to place, time and memory. As I began to work on more pieces (paintings, drawings) I re-titled the body of work as Memory Is My Homeland, and a search within this blog will lead you to various pieces within this body of work. After taking a zoom silk fibre papermaking workshop, I decided that I wanted to make prints on this beautiful handmade support. So first things first, I made the silk sheets for the prints and blogged about it here. My idea, originally, was to create a series of monoprints, but for various reasons I was not happy with the results, which I discuss here. Though at the time I thought this monoprint was too bright to be included with the Memory Is My Homeland work, I now disagree with myself and think it belongs.

Red Wellies; monoprint on handmade silk fibre sheet; image size: 9 cm x 13 cm; silk fibre sheet size: approx 24 cm x 24 cm; 2020

After not being happy with a number of monoprints, I made the decision that I would, instead, make linocuts to be printed in small editions and uniquely print each lino on a piece of silk fibre sheet. I had a studio residency at Signal Arts Centre last fall, during which I planned to do all the printing, but then there was another lockdown so I did the printing at home, which I discussed here. Below is one of the Distance editioned prints (image size: 6cm x 7.5cm)

and a unique print on silk fibre sheet. When making this sheet I included strands of green raffia fibre. Since this fibre reminded me of the confusion that telephone wires and relationships could be, I thought it provided an appropriate support for the telephone image (silk fibre sheet size: approx 20cm x 25cm).

Prom Rail, Bray; image size: 6cm x 7.5cm

silk fibre sheet size: approx 22cm x 28.5cm

When thinking about images I wanted to print for this series, I realised I had already cut some linoblocks a few years ago for the Good Morning books that I wanted to reuse, and since the blocks were the same size as this series, there was no need for me to "reinvent the wheel"! I discuss those books here, here and here.

Hospitality; image size: 6cm x 7.5cm