Signal studio residency: making silk fibre paper

In June I had taken a Zoom workshop, with artist Tunde Toth, on silk fibre papermaking (which I blogged about here) and immediately knew I planned to make more of the paper for my printmaking when taking up studio residency at Signal Arts Centre come autumn. Well, that time came fast enough and I spent the first week (plus a bit of the second week) focussed on making silk fibre paper. One of the first things for me to do, then, was set up a work station: spreading a clean table cloth over the table, having water bottle spritzer filled, iron to hand, scissors, ruler, bag of silk fibre, parchment paper roll, small dry brushes, pigments, and strips of Fabriano paper that I planned to use as inclusions.

I had the ruler to measure the sheets of parchment, as I wanted the finished pieces to be large enough to show off the paper and to carry a small print in its centre. I had two types of silk fibre: "carded coccoon strippings" and "throwsters". I actually don't know which is which, but one is like angel hair and the other is more like cotton batten. The process is simple - pull/tear the fibre to form a shape on the surface of the parchment.

If one is using "inclusions" (i.e. elements that are not silk fibre) - in my pages I decided to use small, torn pieces of Fabriano paper - 

they must be sandwiched between layers of fibre.

Sometimes I used a mix of silk fibres (with inclusions of paper)

and for other pages I used just one type of fibre, again here I added the paper inclusions.

Though it is hard to see in this picture, I included some really soft coloured fibres in this piece.

This piece is made of a sandwich of one type of fibre with paper inclusions. It is at this stage that pigment may be sprinkled/flicked onto the fibre with a small, dry paintbrush. This is an enjoyable process, but you have to be happy to give away control, as the effects of the pigments are full of randomness (going through the processes of flicking, spritzing, and ironing to mix at their own inclination).

When the "sandwich" is complete, the next step is to spritz the entire "page".

Cover with another sheet of parchment and gently, with the palm of your hand, rub the water into the fibres. It will be apparent what areas are wet. Turn the whole thing over and rub on the other side too, spritzing a bit more if necessary.

On high, but not steam, heat iron lightly. It is the water and heat that releases a natural glue, serecin, from the silk fibres, which binds the fibres together to form a paper. As you can see from the photo, I am only lightly holding the iron, allowing it to glide slowly on the surface with its own weight. You can actually hear the water sizzling!

When finished ironing (about 5 mins) peel back the top layer carefully. If the paper still seems too wet, iron some more, but if it is mostly dry, carefully peel the whole page from the parchment.

It can finish drying on a clean piece of paper or blotting paper. This is a finished sheet of textured, undyed, silk fibre paper, with Fabriano paper inclusions. It is ready to be printed on.

I had enough silk fibre material to make 20 sheets of paper, so I experimented with colour pigments, different inclusions, and also set up another table with blotting paper to place damp but finished pieces on.

Here are some of the finished pages using different pigments and in the yellow piece on the left I used a dry, fibrous green inclusion.

binding the chapbook

 

In my previous blog, here, I discussed the preparation for binding and gave links to all my blog posts relating to this chapbook. With everything ready, the next step is simply to bind the books!

In creating a traditional poetry chapbook (less than 40 pages) I also decided to bind the book with thread (as opposed to stapling) and use a very simple saddle stitch with three holes in the spine. I have made a diagram of the thread journey below, where A, B and C represent the spine holes. The solid lines with arrows represent the direction of the thread on the exterior, and the broken lines with arrows represent the direction of the thread on the interior. Just as a reminder, the pages should be placed inside each other, as per the right side of my diagram.

This image shows the start, the first threads going into the centre hole. Please note, that though a large-eyed, fairly strong needle is necessary to hold 6-strand cotton (embroidery) thread, the needle should not be a fat needle, as used in leather binding as this will expand the binding holes and there is more risk of tearing the paper. Leave a few inches of thread outside the spine hole in order to tie a knot when the thread finishes its binding journey.

The thread appears in the centre of the chapbook.

The thread then follows the interior route to the bottom hole B (in fact it does not matter whether it goes to the top hole or the bottom, but just choose one consistently).

On the outside spine, the thread takes a long journey to the top hole C and goes to the interior back to A and out again to the exterior spine. Here one ensure that the long spine thread is in between the entry and exit threads before tying a simple knot or two. This will ensure that there is no floppy long thread on the spine: the exterior binding will appear the same as the interior except for the loose threads at entrance and exit points. 

On my books I decided to leave these threads at about 6 cm as a design feature, first tying knots in the thread ends to prevent separation of the strands.

Preparing to bind the chapbook

By request, my husband (artist James Hayes) made me a beautiful (all-powerful, almighty, awesome) awl for my birthday this year. He even made a holder for it to protect the sharp point -

and to protect me from the sharp point! I used to have an awl but it went AWOL some years ago, and last year when I did a lot of bookbinding I resolved to get another because I was fed up using pushpins! With the founding of Precariat Press in the spring of this year, I knew I'd be doing more bookbinding, so getting a new awl was mandatory. So when this gorgeous tool was made specially for me, I swooned!

Once I had decided on the concept, design, cover image & printing, the poems to be included and the layout (all of which I discussed here, here and here) the final step was to collate and bind. Collating all the pages together into booklets also required a lot of folding with my trusty bone folder.

I had a second mock-up book (from which I made corrections) and I measured out where the 3 binding holes would be placed and, after punching these holes used the individual pages as templates for the final books. I had decided early on that I would be doing a traditional 3-hole chapbook bind.

Once binding holes had been punched in all the chapbooks (it is an edition of 50), I was ready to start binding. I had picked up 6-strand cotton thread in a colour to match the cover some weeks ago. In next week's blog I will discuss the journey of the thread to bind the chapbooks.

Signal studio residency 2020

I started my third studio residency at Signal Arts Centre last week and already I feel very much at home in the space, despite arriving masked and chatting to people with coronavirus protocols in place. I had residencies in the studio in both the fall of 2018 and the fall of 2019, so being here is becoming a pleasant annual habit. I blogged about the work done (or started) in both those residencies here and here, and as with those residencies I decided beforehand what my focus would be during my time in this studio. But first things first: after a simple tidy and sweep, I rearranged and covered tables to correspond with how I intended to work. I saw that one of the previous tenants had put the long mirror horizontally behind one of the sink areas (there are two) and I thought this would be a convenient spot for my daily self-portrait, a work warm-up for me. Since I don't actually need two sinks, I simply covered this sink with a wooden board to create another surface area.

I have use of the portable press till the end of the year, so it got its own table between the larger window and the sink that I would be using. My focus this year is to be on silk-fibre papermaking - a process that I learned a few months ago in zoom workshops provided by artist Tunde Toth. I blogged about this workshop here. I planned to make some paper and use it for monoprints related to my current body of work Memory Is My Homeland, which I have blogged about here, here, here, here, here and here.

So I started work well before lunchtime. This is my first self-portrait of the week, done with watercolour pencil.

As I knew I would not be ready for printing this week, and always feel that I should do at least three different things in the studio daily, I brought materials to make collage cards. Thinking of my recent work on Aos Dara-Umha Aois Combined Symposium, which I blogged about here, here and here, I created a collage card based on my memory of the saplings and ferns at the entrance to Tomnafinnoge Wood.

By the end of the week, I had used up most of my silk fibre supplies, but happily so. I made a number of sheets that are raw in colour and I also made some sheets using dry pigments to give intense colours.

Here are some of the sheets fully drying on blotting paper. I look forward to printing on them soon!

Aos Dara - Umha Aois Exhibition

I previously discussed the Aos Dara/Umha Aois combined symposium in recent blogs here and here. For this year's symposium the artists were charged with being inspired by Tomnafinnoge Wood and working individually in their own studio, but it was really nice when all the work came together for an exhibition at The Courthouse Arts Centre, Tinahely, which is near to the forest. The symposium was organised by Niall O'Neill and Róisín Flood who also curated the exhibtion.

For this year's symposium, James Hayes decided to truly combine the spirit of both symposia - he participated in last year's first Aos Dara event, and has been involved with Umha Aois since 1995. He experimented with creating ink from oak galls, found in the forest, and created a video recording the process. In addition, he carved a piece of oak to create a woodblock whose image was that of oak leaves and galls and displayed a print created from that woodblock. Hayes also displayed "Gateway", the carvings he created at Tomnafinnoge on last year's symposium.

Maeve Hunter exhibited a number of felted items and photographs of the items interacting with the environment of the forest. I was particularly intrigued with a felted pair of shoes, which one could easily imagine wearing on a quiet stroll through the woods.

Of the various works I created (using a variety of materials: graphite, oilstick, watercolour, acrylic, etc.) I chose two of my favourites to frame for the exhibition. The acrylic collage "Saplings" is on the left in this picture and the graphite drawing "Lightning Tree" is on the right.

Holger Lonze has been involved with Umha Aois (Experimental Bronze Casting Symposium) for many years and displayed a bronze sculpture evocative of growth.

Dave Kinane, who has also been involved with Umha Aois for many years and was on last year's Aos Dara symposium, created works which again truly combined the spirit of both symposia. He created a bronze age toolkit with which to work two pieces of green wood from Tomnafinnoge into beautiful sculptural forms.

Kinane hafted bronze axe heads and chisels,  made on previous Umha Aois symposia, using ancient traditional techniques.

Niall O'Neill, who is one of several founders of Umha Aois and co-founder of Aos Dara with Róisín Flood, displayed a number of his smaller bronze sculptures in this exhibition. O'Neill is known for his large public sculptures and his large sculpture from last year's Aos Dara still stands at Tomnafinnoge Wood, along with work by Flood, Kinane and Conleth Gent. I blogged about last year's here and wrote about it for CIRCA magazine here.

On the Art Centre's stage, Conleth Gent displayed three sculptures made from wood found at Tomnafinnoge and an additional wooden sculpture which he modified purposely to belong with the group. To hear Gent, Hayes, Kinane, O.Neill and myself speaking about our work and O'Neill and Flood discussing the symposium, have a look at video made by The Courthouse Arts Centre in case the exhibition could not go ahead due to Coronavirus, here.

 

Orla Whelan at Rathfarnham Castle

 A few weeks ago - before Dublin lockdown! - I went to see the Orla Whelan (no relation, as far as I know) exhibition, A More Immortal Atlas, at Rathfarnham Castle. This is an Elizabethan fortified house, not a "castle" per se, but a wonderful "fortified house" and a great place to show art. I am partial to the exposed brick, creaky floors, and curved walls anyway, but the juxtaposition of contemporary artwork - Whelan's abstract and colourful forms - with an historical background is such a pleasing visual experience. Here A Melancholy Moment (or Magic Carpet) placed near the majestic fireplace in the dining room allows one to dream of roaring fires, comfort, and colourful carpets of olden days...

I have seen several exhibitions at Rathfarnham Castle and admire the sparsity of display, such that the room in which the new artwork is displayed never gets overwhelmed or lost. One always notices the beautiful room itself while looking at the art. Still in the dining room, this is A Powder of Moments.

I like the way the contemporary art seems to slip in to the rooms on false walls and you have to creak along the floorboards to get a closer look. This is known as the saloon or long gallery room; the ceiling paintings are on panels commissioned in the early 20th century by the Jesuits, owners of the house at the time. Previously, in the 18th century the ceiling panels held mythological paintings. 

Whelan had several pieces that used veneer crafting to create patterns similar to her paintings. I thought the repurposing of an old leaf style table worked well in the context of this historical drawing room.

 

The exhibition continues, through the curved doorway, into the smaller Corner Room. Appropriately, the works in this room are smaller and feel cozier. Seven works of the same size are grouped together and given numbers to go with their collective title Moon Valley, Dew, Death. All of these are painted in oil except one, which is delightfully crafted in veneer.

On the opposite wall one lone piece, of the same series and title, begs for contemplation. The abstraction takes shape in my mind and seems to reference the past religious ownership of the building leaving its mark in perpetuity. It bears an uncanny resemblance to modern stained glass windows with a sensation of light and otherness.

Aos Dara/Umha Aois Symposium 2020 Part II

I started writing about the Aos Dara/Umha Aois combined symposium, in which I was a participant, last week. Details of the symposium and my preparations for work can be found in that blog here. As I had the paper prepared with graphite already, I began drawing with my trusty Staedtler eraser, as per my proposal. I was glad to have some green graphite, because after being in Tomnafinnoge wood, I did not want to limit myself to dark, grey works. However, I was  very pleased with this drawing and the subtlety of the green graphite on the tree worked. I did several other drawings on graphite, which I was not happy with, so of course, I am not showing them! (They'll be binned soon enough.)

My original intention, when preparing several sheets of paper with black acrylic, was to paint images in white only. However, as I mentioned last week, the colour of the forest so impressed me that I didn't think such a minimalist approach would work. I really liked that image of the lightning tree and got out my oilsticks to do more justice to the colourful tree.

When I make collages I tend to tear the paper into shape rather than cut. This facilitates a certain amount of unexpected results in the intended shapes as well a beautiful deckled edge, showing off the original colour of the paper (in this case, a creamy white).

Another image that I repeatedly used as inspiration, was that of the small mushrooms which could be seen in networks growing from mossy, fallen tree limbs, and I even spotted a circular Faerie Ring of small mushrooms. While I definitely did not think my graphite, and black & white acrylic drawing experiments with mushrooms actually worked, the jury is still out on the collage.

The acrylic collage that I thought worked best was Saplings. I had experimented with this image several times in other media, with always problematic results, yet I kept on working on it as I really liked the image of trees and ferns that could be seen at one of the forest entrances.

I was guaranteed that one piece would be displayed in the group exhibition, but I chose two to frame as I couldn't decide whether I preferred the sombre Lightning Tree or

the colourful Saplings. I brought both of them to the gallery and said they could choose either. Happily both pieces will be in the group exhibition that launches on Culture Night 2020.