Memory Is My Homeland prints - part 2 of 2

This is the second blog to feature linoprints that I made towards the end of last year. I blogged part 1 last week, which can be seen here. The unique prints on silk fibre sheets (that I made last fall during my studio residency at Signal Arts Centre) will be included in my exhibition next spring, Memory Is My Homeland, at Rathfarnham Castle.

This image of a clothes peg developed from my thoughts of living with my Mum and Dad in Bray in the late 80s and early 90s. Living with them as an adult was so completely different than growing up with them as my "parents". We each seemed to understand that there was now a person to person relationship and sharing household chores was part of this new, gratifying dynamic.

Clothes Peg, linoprint on Fabriano Tiepolo paper, edition of 10, image size: 6cm x 7.5cm, 2020

I added some mauve threads as inclusion to the silk fibre sheet when I was making it. 

silk fibre sheet size: approx 21cm x 27cm

In 2017 I wrote a fictionalised account of a specific incident that happened when I and one of my sisters were caring for my Mum the previous year, shortly before her death. Prayers for My Children was published by the online journal, Tales from the Forest, and can be read here. For me the image of rosary beads was a strong one and I cut a lino block with both the incident and the story in mind.

Prayers for My Children, linoprint on Fabriano Tiepolo paper, edition of 10, image size: 6cm x 7.5cm, 2020

I did not use any dyes for the silk sheet I printed the image onto, but I there are small torn paper (acid-free) inclusions.

I loved the gate between our second house in Kerry, near Portmagee, and the field in front of the house. The gate itself was white picket with a blue glass ball on the pillar-post on one side. My husband had dug up two wild rose plants from the roadside hedge across from our first Kerry abode in Kell's Bay and planted them on either side of the gate. When we left there and moved back to Bray a year and a half later, the roses were dug up again, waited for several years in pots and finally transplanted in the garden of our more permanent house now.

Field Gate, Knockeen, linoprint on Fabriano Tiepolo paper, edition of 10, image size: 6cm x 7.5cm, 2020

I added some blue pigment to the silk sheet when I was making it.

silk fibre sheet size: approx 22 cm x 27 cm

One of my earliest memories as a toddler (maybe two years old?) is using the chain fence - that divided the surrounding sidewalk from the lawn in front of the first house where I lived in Toronto - as a swing. For the longest time I thought this must be a false memory as it didn't make any sense to me. When I was in my 20s, however, I passed by the house while on a streetcar in downtown Toronto and saw the exact type of chain fence that I remembered. It was a low barrier, maybe a foot high, made of sturdy chains that curved to small posts at regular distances in front of the gardens of a row of houses. Only a very small child could possibly use this as a swing and obviously I must have!

I put both green threads and torn bits of paper as inclusions when making this raw silk fibre sheet.

image size: 6cm x 7.5cm

silk fibre sheet size: approx 21 cm x 26 cm

lino printing at home

My intention for this year's studio residency at Signal Arts Centre was threefold: to do a daily self-portrait (see blog post here), make a number of unique silk fibre pages (see blog post here), and to create a new series of prints as part of my body of work, Memory Is My Homeland. My initial intention was to create monoprints on the handmade silk fibre paper. However, after doing several tests, which I discussed here, I decided to do linoprints, which I discussed here. Everything was going swimmingly until a second lockdown meant that I was going to be working at home instead of the Signal studio. 

Since I normally work in my home studio, theoretically this wasn't a big deal BUT the road where Signal Arts Centre is located was blocked off due to construction on a nearby bridge and the printing press was still in the studio at Signal. As I had hoped, the road was only blocked off for two weeks, during which time I could prepare lino blocks, cut paper, etc. so that I would be good to go once I retrieved the press. In any case, my home studio is in the attic so any printmaking would have to be done downstairs. For several weeks then, the kitchen was the area for preparing paper and inking the blocks.

It is a short hop down the hall into the living room, where the press was set up. As you can see by the picture, I made a heavy cardboard "window" in which to place the lino block to effectively use the press as a relief printer. The cardboard was large enough to register the paper against.

The blanketed floor of the living room was just large enough to do one edition of ten and a unique print on silk fibre paper for each of the lino blocks in the series. For this image of a telephone mouthpiece I chose the silk fibre paper that contained a tangle of inclusions. Certainly an image representative of both communication and mis-communication.

My initial image of two clothes pegs on the line didn't work on such a tiny scale, but I still wanted to use the image. I decided to re-do it as one larger clothes peg and am happy with the results of this very domestic image. I chose a silk fibre page that had soft mauve thread inclusions. 

I had this memory of swinging on a chain barrier in front of the house where I was born and that I only lived in till I was 2 years old, in Toronto. I thought it was an impossible memory until one day, passing River St on a streetcar, I saw that the chain link barriers were still in front of those city housing units. They separated lawns from the footpaths and were only about a foot high - something a toddler could, in fact, manage to swing on. The silk fibre paper has both Fabriano paper and green thread inclusions.

As well as printing editions and unique prints on silk fibre paper for the new series of lino blocks, I also wanted to print editions for some older blocks that fit with the theme, specifically the two mugs and the teapot, which appeared in my Good Morning/Maidín Maigh/Buenos Días books that I made a few years ago. Details of that project can be seen here.

I also realised that I only had a few test prints of a lino I cut a few years ago, Prayers for My Children, certainly in direct response to an incident at my mother's deathbed and the surprise estrangement from my siblings following her death.  I wrote a fictionalised account of this and it was published here. I think this piece belongs with the current series; the unique print is on an un-dyed silk fibre page with Fabriano paper inclusions.

The kitchen was also a handy place for clean up each day.

Incognito 2019 and other work...

I've got a few things that I'm working on at the moment, hopefully to bear fruit in the coming months. But one of the most pressing things I must do now is actually organise all the artwork I created during my ten week studio residency at Signal Arts Centre. The past few months have also coincided with a new studio being built in the backyard for my husband (sculptor James Hayes) and this currently empty space provided a great area for the photographing of the artwork.

For the past few years I have been participating in Incognito, an annual fundraiser in support of The Jack & Jill Children's Foundation. For this fundraiser, artists create and donate small pieces of art on cards; the cards are exhibited and sold in a Dublin gallery (this year a gallery in Cork is also involved).

There are no signatures on the front of the cards, so buyers do not know whose work they have bought until the work is sold - hence the name of the fundraiser. All cards are sold for €50 with the entire proceeds going to Jack & Jill. This is "Fracture" - a tiny painting that I adhered to one of my cards in 2017.

This is a lino block print that I affixed to one of last year's cards. The rosary beads image of "Prayers for My Children" was inspired by the same circumstances that inspired a short story of the same name, which was published online in Tales from the Forest last year.

In fact, this blog began with showcasing the Big Egg Hunt Dublin! It was a more labour intensive fundraiser, and probably not as lucrative for Jack & Jill as "Incognito", but it was a lot of fun.

At the end of the event, my piece was bought by IBM Legal in Dublin. This is an amalgamation view of my egg, "Wild Roses".

pastel drawings

I have been busy with a lot of writing lately (poetry, short stories, art criticism). At the end of January my short review of William Crozier: the Edge of the Landscape at the Irish Museum of Modern Art (IMMA) was published as part of CIRCA magazine's This Matters Now series. I saw this exhibition a few months ago, and blogged about it here, but you can read the review here. I was also delighted that my short story, Prayers for My Children was published a few days ago in the online journal, Tales from the Forest; you can read it here.

Last week I decided that, even though I hadn't finished cleaning up the studio, I wanted to do some visual work, other than ceramics. I pulled out some chalk pastels and heavy grey paper and began drawing.

As may be apparent from my prints and handmade books over the past year or two (see here, here, and here), I am inspired by my times of "shinrinyoku" (walks in the woods for good health)

and by walks along the seaside where I become obsessed with pebbles at the shore (also see here and here).

I really enjoyed drawing with the chalk pastels as I was able to lay down shapes and colour to effect quite quickly.