SNU. CMYK photo etchings. CMYK and Magenta/Yellow Prints

ASU2. Prints for Jesus meets his mother. Intaglio on dry and wet paper. 

ASU2. Prints for Simon of Cyrene helps Jesus carry the Cross. Relief prints on dry and wet paper. 

ASU2. Doodle collagraph plates for Stations of the Cross depicting Simon of Cyrene helping Jesus carry the cross and Jesus meeting this mother. I have changed the viewpoint in this collection of collagraph plates which is not finished but goes to Veronica wipes the face of Jesus. Two plates i have left on my desk at uni i had shellacked them to see how that changed the way the card printed but did not have time to print them. And the others are also not printed, again lack of time. Our viewpoint changes our understanding and this leads into another project connected with shoes and walking in someone else's shoes. I have mentioned this earlier in connection to my SNU project little red shoe. The link between the two projects is understanding, understanding how one is always related to another. Isolation is perhaps a constructed space and our capacity to empathise and relate to another is what breaks both our own and others isolation.

ASU2. SNU I am in a bit of muddle now because some things physically follow each other but time wise do not. So the casting and visiting of churches to see representations of the stations of the cross overlapped with printmaking for both ASU2 and SNU and how to write that with out going all over the place i don't know. I guess this is why i've been asked to separate the two modules so that my markers are not having to untangle a mass of thread but have a clean line to look at. It is hard. 
It seems to make sense to follow the last images with the bronze cups but they didn't come till later as there was a wait, the investing and pouring. And during that wait. I printed some collagraph plates, that were really just doodles but came out quite nicely, for the Stations of the Cross ASU2 project. I had an idea that i wanted to make fourteen plates, at first i thought copper etchings, and then i decided to make them on old train tickets. In fact neither of these things happened as time ran out and covid19 hit. In the last week before lockdown i was able to cut to size (train ticket size) and cover with hard ground fourteen copper plates but i have not worked into them. I thought that i might make the train ticket collagraphs but my concentration was shot in the first few weeks of lockdown so i haven't had the time or mind space. Both these projects will happen but most likely not until next year perhaps in the run up to easter 2021. 
The prints that i made from the collagraph doodles were cut from chocolate bar card and printed on an off white paper with prussian blue ink using wet paper and dry paper one plate inked as relief and one as intaglio. Making these samples was preparation for printing the rail ticket collagraphs, how to ink and print and what images worked, and how to cut into the card to take some of the shiny surface off to create an image. Learning also that with printing you have to make the picture face the opposite way to the way that you want the print to be. This is a mind game. 
I also made plates of a photograph of myself at age 19. I had put in a proposal for one of the MA student-curator's exhibitions called self love and wanted to make a CMYK etching from this photograph to see how it differed from screen printing CMYK in look and process. I submitted a proposal which was about looking back at my teenage self with the kindness and love that was missing at the time. I wasn't sure i'd been accepted until i was invited to the artist's meeting. Unfortunately the curator decided my work did not fit with the vibe of her exhibition and messaged me to say so. I had had doubts too but was frustrated that she didn't look at the work before rejecting it. The rejection brought out a rather feisty side of me that was very much part of my teenage self's mode of protection. This feistiness also met with the Jesus story in quite a fun way. It allowed me to reconnect with a wanton rebelliousness that wasn't uncomfortable at all. 
The CMYK etchings involved going through the same process on photoshop as i'd gone though before with the screen print except that i only did half tone, as the comparison was not between two kinds of photoshop filters, but two kinds of print process. So then four plates were made and coated with photogravure ink and aquatinted and etched and then the  fun and games of setting up a jig and inking four plates simultaneously and printing them one after the other on the one piece of paper, held still by the press rollers, began. I made a set of all the colours combinations, my favourite being the magenta and yellow, as well three full prints in CMYK. I got good feedback from the print technicians which made my heart glow and felt nice for the teen me too. Going back in time I re-found parts of myself that had got buried and lost re-meeting teenage me, after years of mothering and other life had buried her deep, has given me access to parts of me cut off by responsibility and wanting to fit and be liked. 

ASU2. SNU And the first glass in and out of its box and the extra slush wax casts ... the samples that didn't get made into bronze casts. And the glass that got broken during the mould making process leaving me with a shell (the mould) and the broken parts of itself that will no doubt get used and used again. For the time being i have not washed off the dirt from its journey to what it is now, i think it has a poetry all of its own. 

ASU2. SNU. Perhaps i just have to carry on along this track and post pictures and words that i i hope make some sense to a reader and which act as a file of what i have done that may be a staging post, before writing the term up in a way that leaves out the thought process and emotion tho they are so much a part of my creative process feelings and thoughts are harder to mark than a bullet point document. I'm writing now in a muddle aware of learning outcomes but struggling to know what fits where and with whom. So to keep it simple. Here are the plaster moulds the three part mould piled up with the two two part moulds on top and the three part mould with one side removed so the inside can be seen. Of course a photo is not so much fun to see as a hands on experience of touching and handling but such is the life we are living. The black rubber straps by the side of the tower of moulds are bicycle inner tubes used to tie the moulds tight so the casting material doesn't leak out. They were kindly donated to me by Jess the print technician when i mentioned i needed ties and didn't know where to get some.