Lost - final prints

With many thanks, I received an Agility Award from the Arts Council of Ireland-An Chomhairle Ealaion in the fall of last year for the research and creation of a new series of monoprints Lost. While I began research immediately, the prints didn't start taking shape, ie, I wasn't satisfied with the results, till the beginning of March this year (2023). I have previously posted finished pieces here, here and here and now I will show the final works in the series.

My parents fulfilled their long-cherished dream of returning to Ireland in early June 1983. Since I had grown up with them saying this every year since I could remember (they had emigrated to Toronto in the late 1950s) it was actually a surprise to their children that they actually finally did so. 

Taking a break from packing up their home, monoprint, ink on Japanese mulberry paper, 12.5 cm x 18.5 cm

In the early years, Christmas was an occasion for song, monoprint, ink on Japanese mulberry paper, 18.5 cm x 12.5 cm 

I have many good memories of my best friend's parents who really did treat me like one of their own always making room for me at meals and providing me with a place to sleep when I was homeless. They were also great fun at video film nights, card nights, birthdays and other special occasion celebrations.

 

They were just like second parents but also good friends, ink on mulberry paper, 18.5 cm x 12.5 cm

Although I had lived in several other houses in Toronto in my early years, it was the house on Kingswood, in The Beach area of Toronto, where I spent most of my growing up. The front porch featured in many of the games we played with neighbourhood kids in my childhood. It was also a great place to sit inside on a muggy or stormy summer in the city night and still have a connection to the outdoors.

Young friends described it as a big house, but with twelve occupants, the three bedroom/one bathroom didn’t seem large at all, ink on mulberry paper, 12.5 cm x 18.5 cm

The Toronto skyline has certainly changed a lot since this memory of it from the late 70s/early 80s, before I realised it wasn’t always going to be my city, my home.

Even though the ferry ride took only fifteen minutes, from the islands the city always seemed distant, ink on mulberry paper, 12.5 cm x 18.5 cm

This is the penultimate print from Lost series of contact monoprints and a tribute to my great friend, Jay Dampf, who died far too young, several years ago.

On the long bus journey of the first art school trip to NYC, he brought home-made instruments and led everyone in song, monoprint, ink on Japanese mulberry paper, 12.5 cm x 18.5 cm

I had nearly finished the series when I realised I never posted any in-progress/technique images! So here is the aftermath of making a print for this series. It took many attempts to get this one right (more than any other print) before I was finally happy with the image of mother and child.

She hoped I would smile at the person behind the camera, monoprint, ink on Japanese mulberry paper, 12.5 cm x 18.5 cm, 2023. 

more from the "Lost" series

I am still working away on my Lost series of contact monoprints. So in addition to what I blogged about here and here, I am posting more in the series. Because the process can be very random, I can never be quite sure if the print is successful until the final lifting of the paper away from the plate. Sometimes I may have either over-inked or under-inked the plate so I put the print to one side to study if there is anything I liked about it and perhaps make more attempts with the specific image. I have limited myself to three tools for mark-making: a sharp pencil, an eraser and an old credit card. These three tools are giving me crisp sharp lines, soft blurs and sharp areas, respectively. I am very happy with my choices! All of the works are the same size, 12.5 cm x 18.5 cm (or 18.5 cm x 12.5 cm if they are vertical images), printed on Japanese mulberry paper.

Many things went missing from the shared studio

After thirty years abroad, they never regretted their return home

Despite the isolation, we made the place our home

There were only a few occasions when the whole family was together

The kitchen window offered a great view of visitors in the back yard

"Lost" series continues

I have been happily working away on the Lost series of monoprints, a new body of work which I first spoke about in detail here. In addition to being happy with my work, I was delighted to receive the recent news that an image of my "breakthrough" print (the rainy bus image included in that first blog about the series) has been chosen to be included in the spring issue of the US literary journal out of University of Pennsylvania, The Penn Review. In the meantime, here are some more images from Lost.

The kids could play at anything in the back yard, monoprint, ink on Japanese mulberry paper, 12.5 cm x 18.5 cm.

When I was going through the rooftop archives, it was interesting to see that I had attempted, in the late 1990s, to use the gate in front of the house where I lived in Kerry as an artistic motif. I don't think my use of it was successful at that time but it is an image I have come back to. (Look here to see some of the image of the gate from the rooftop archive.)

The gate in front of the house led to a huge field, monoprint, ink on Japanese mulberry paper, 18.5 cm x 12.5 cm. 

Of course, I have used this image before in more recent work - most notably the small linoprints on silk fibre sheets that I made for Memory Is My Homeland (a search of this blog using that title will bring about works in progress as well as a virtual tour of the exhibition at Rathfarnham Castle, Dublin, in 2022).

Field Gate, Knockeen, image size: approx 6 cm x 7.5 cm, sheet size: approx 20 cm x 26 cm, 

It really is just a blink of the eye, monoprint, ink on Japanese mulberry paper, 12.5 cm x 18.5 cm. 

The friends of 1975: where are they now?, monoprint, ink on Japanese mulberry paper, 12.5 cm x 18.5 cm. 

"Lost" - beginning new work

Although the sorting through and purging from the archive of rooftop portfolios and rolls has taken up a lot of my time these past few months, I have also been busy with some new work. In the autumn I received the delightful news that I would receive an Agility Award from The Arts Council/An Chomairle Ealion for my proposal of a new print series Lost. As often happens with new work, I certainly had moments of confusion and despair as nothing seemed to be working the way I imagined. I finally had my breakthrough moment in early February when everything worked as planned and I knew for certain that indeed I had chosen the right medium (contact monoprints) from which to create this new body of work. All of the works are the same size, 12.5 cm x 18.5 cm (or 18.5 cm x 12.5 cm if they are vertical images), printed on Japanese mulberry paper, which is both strong and delicate. The pictures are about memory and refer to lost moments, lost country, lost time, etc. I decided I wanted the titles to give a bit more information about the story behind the image, at least as a starting point.

Even on a rainy day, the bus might be on time

When I was a teen, I went on an amazing government-sponsored youth project, Educanada, which brought teens from all over the country to the capital to learn a bit more about their own country so there were day trips to Montreal, Quebec City, Upper Canada Village near Kingston, as well as local Ottawa tours of the Parliament Buildings, Rideau Hall (Governor General's home), national police headquarters, National Art Gallery, Museum of Civilization, etc. It was great! The thing that really stood out for me, though, was seeing the log booms floating in the Ottawa River past Parliament Hill. It has been many decades since the industry has transported timber this way, hence my inclusion of this image in my Lost series.

Log booms used to float down the Ottawa River past Parliament Hill

This image portrays a memory of my childhood playing with my little brother in the backyard of the house in Toronto’s east end. 

We used to play cowboy games in the back yard

On my first visit to NYC (back in the mists of time when I was at art school in Toronto) one of my friends, who shared a hotel room with me, was dramatising a teenager on the phone and giving me an art history lesson at the same time; I vividly remember that pop art was the topic so I decided to reference Roy Lichtenstein in my title. 

Well, Brad, let me tell you…

I did not meet my grandparents till I was about 9 years old when my family won a St Patrick’s Day competition from a magazine-type tv show in Toronto (as a matter of fact, the show was called "Toronto Today"). The prize was to bring two people over from Ireland for a holiday if you were picked as having the best reason to do so -- 6 of my siblings had not seen their grandparents since they emigrated and 4 of us, Canadian-born, had never even met them -- so we had a pretty good reason to win! I remember before meeting them that summer that I had been incredibly jealous of my friends who had grandparents and especially those who had a grandparent living with them. So when I met my Oma and Opa my adoration was unconditional. Letters that I have from them attest to the fact that they felt the same way. When my grandmother died in 1980, one of my letters to her along with the goodbye card I made for my grandparents, after that first meeting 11 years beforehand, was found in her purse and returned to me.

Although we only met a few times, they loved me and I adored them

I was born into a large immigrant family