Pasta Machine Press - flatbed printer!

I had been using my pasta machine press successfully with monoprints in 2016, but after taking a print workshop in the spring of this year at the National Print Museum Dublin, my husband suggested it might be easier if I did some further adjustments on the pasta machine to turn it into a flatbed printer. This is the happy result, and below I will give some steps to converting a pasta machine into a small press!

My pasta machine had a base that was just screwed on, so it was easily removed.

 I planned to do some long prints, with the pasta machine on the kitchen table, so this was taken into account when creating a box structure that the machine could sit in. A box structure is required also to facilitate additional clamping to the table the press will rest on. This is a view of the finished flatbed printer including the 800 micron acetate which serves as a flatbed. Please note that the acetate is not affixed.

A bespoke groove is made into the top side of the box in order to facilitate the pasta machine.

This is the view from the right side of the machine, resting in the box structure. The hole on the side is where the crank fits in, so this side must be on the edge of the table.

This view primarily shows how the left side of the pasta machine is clamped to the wooden structure.

This is the press and structure turned on its side so that the under structure can be seen. The press is clamped to the structure.

This is a view from directly underneath the pasta machine.

A view from underneath; at either end there is a small plank of wood affixed to the structure to accommodate further clamps needed for affixing the structure to the table. At first I did not attach the structure to the table, but doing so saved me from having to press down on the machine while printing.

This picture is a side view that shows how the structure is attached to the table by a clamp.

This is a further detail view of the clamp attaching the slat on the structure to the table.

 This is a side view that shows how the 800 micron acetate serves as a flatbed.

I have found that oilcloth makes a good substitute for felt. It is cheap, has a heavier weight for its thin-ness than felt, and is more useful for me, in that I have been doing long prints and needed an unavailable size felt (two pieces of felt left a seam mark in my print!). Be sure to print smooth side up when using oilcloth to avoid any texture inadvertently appearing on your print.

I have tried to make these instructions as simple as possible, but please comment or message me if something is unclear. I have been doing intaglio prints and embossed prints using this machine, so it is working!

Eternal City - early days yet!

I was in Rome for the second time a few years ago, and did this sketch of the Teatro Marcellus. There was something about it, and I knew it was a foil to my painting that I was working on at the time, Fractured City. So the intention to paint this was always there, the sketch a little kernel for the future.

For Incognito 2017, the fundraiser for the Jack & Jill Foundation, I conceived of three "cityscape" postcards. So  still the painting was on my mind.

I took a printmaking workshop at the beginning of April this year in order to learn the Chine collé technique and quickly did an intaglio from my sketch.

Finally, I unrolled some canvas, quite a large piece (takes up most of the wall in my attic studio) and blocked in Eternal City.

I started to apply metal leaf in the negative areas behind the architectural structures.

I had applied some texture before blocking in the painting, but then decided that I wanted some rougher texture on the older part of the Teatro building.

I will gesso over this scrim burlap and re-block before I get into the meat of painting.

The texture of the columns is mostly smooth rather than canvas.

Intaglio and Chine collé printing

I was out early on Sunday to head into the National Print Museum in Dublin in order to attend a printmaking workshop given by artist Elaine Leader. I signed up for this workshop because the technique of "Chine collé" was featured and I have been curious about this technique since I became aware of it about 20 years ago (I had never heard of it in printmaking classes I had in art school in Toronto). To start the day we were given some pieces of thin plastic (or thick acetate?) referred to as "axpet" (which I had also never come across before). Once I removed protective film from the axpet I could use it as a plate to do an intaglio sketch on. My tool of choice (we had our pick of several  etching tools) was a converted large sharpened nail. I ended up with two plates, the first one, done in the morning a city ruin sketch and the second, done in the afternoon based on one of my stick sketches.

The plate was inked with a dark ink, cleaned and then given a "roll-out" layer of translucent colour. For the Chine collé I ripped two random pieces of a light weight handmade paper. Wallpaper paste is thinly spread on the back of the paper and they must be placed upside down on the plate (so that the glue will adhere to the print paper). The Chine collé is the last thing to do before going to the press as the paste must be very thin and thus can dry out quickly -- make sure your paper has been removed from its water bath and blotted before you prepare the Chine collé paper!

We were printing on lovely Fabriano paper, so it needed to be in the water bath at least 10 minutes before blotting.

This is a close-up of the sticks print, with two pieces of Chine collé.

 Although I had the sticks plate ready to go, Elaine Leader was talking about the embossing technique, and I wanted to quickly try it out. I cut several pieces of sandpaper into "natural" shapes, got my paper ready, and at the press itself, placed the shapes onto the back of my first piece of axpet. A piece of tissue paper is placed between the plate with shapes and the paper, which keeps the paper clean (and in my case, it was a great barrier between the paper and rough sandpaper I was using for incredible texture).

I was thrilled with the way the embossing worked and wanted to see if Chine collé could be worked with it, so I started the process again. 

I thought the workshop was fabulous! I learned so many things in such a short space of time and can now think about how these processes can be used in other works.

Keeping Busy!

I have had a very busy few weeks, getting out and about! A few weeks ago, while my daughter was on mid-term break we made our way in to Dublin The National Museum at Collins Barracks. We thought it would be an awful shame if we didn't get to the special exhibition Proclaiming a Republic in the centenary year! Before going in to that exhibition, however, we noticed a small building dedicated to the yacht "Asgard". This private boat was used for gun-running in the early part of last century, prior to the 1916 Uprising. It was a fairly nice display, the yacht being the centrepiece with smaller historical artefacts, photographs and didactics in display cases and the surrounding walls.

Proclaiming a Republic is quite a huge exhibition, which is incredibly wide-ranging as it takes in both sides of the conflict, social and family issues, the suffragette movement and cultural aspects. I could easily have spent longer than I did (nearly two hours) at the exhibition but my teenage daughter does not have the stamina for museums... Amazingly, the republican flag that was raised at the GPO (General Post Office on O'Connell St (formerly Sackville St) is relatively intact. It was taken down by the British in 1916 but returned by the Crown for the 50th anniversary of the Rising.

At Collins Barracks we bumped into some friends we hadn't seen in awhile, which prompted us to go back into Dublin a few days later to see the VUE art fair that my last blog post talked about. A week later I found myself in Dublin again, at the National Print Museum for the launch of Theo Honohan's book Mechanicsville. The book is an "essay in 11 parts on the character of engineering", which I am finding fascinating and somewhat surreal (though I am not sure if this was the author's intention...). The Print Museum was the perfect setting for the launch, as it was a setting of machines - old printing presses, typesetting machines, paper ruling machines, etc. There were also some artefacts relevant to the centenary celebrations. I thought perhaps this was a draft of The Proclamation.

This was the third occasion I had to see a print of The Proclamation in as many weeks. First, on the day I was dropping off my books to be considered for the Dublin Art Book Fair, I had dropped in to see the Book of Kells at Trinity College, and a copy of The Proclamation was on display in Long Room. The second time was at The Proclaiming a Republic exhibition (above) and now here at The Print Museum.

I was in Dublin again a few days later, at the launch of the Dublin Art Books Fair at Temple Bar Gallery & Studios. My Good Morning books had been accepted into the curated artists' books section of the fair. The launch was pretty packed and there were a lot of art books and artist-made books. The atmosphere was fairly casual with people very interested in picking up and looking through the books. Here is a view of one of the large round tables.

And a close up of a set of my books (all three languages) on the table.

The following day I was back in Dublin, at IMMA for a lunchtime talk. The topic of Wounded Cities was fascinating and led by Professor Karen Till. There were two artists also involved in the talk, including my friend Susan Gogan who discussed her in-progress fictional film set in Berlin.

Though not in Dublin, the launch of the third (re-booted) issue of the Bray Arts Journal, took place at The Mermaid Arts Centre in Bray a few days later. A few of my images were included in the journal, but I was glad that the image of this 2012 painting, Together, was included alongside my poem Waking Dream, written shortly after the death of my Mum at the end of the summer.