Go BIG or go home

I may have mentioned somewhere on this site that I did a part-time course in printmaking at Gorey School of Art. I’ve always loved prints as an art form and justified taking five hours off on a Thursday to attend because it might be a new avenue to explore with my greeting cards.

The thing is I was always terrible at art. It’s taken me a lifetime to realise that I’m a non-visual creative because we’re conditioned to think that only visual = creative. Anyway, I digress. So for months I toddled into this art course and made a series of terrible mono, woodcut, and lino prints, and even worse etchings then we stumbled upon this technique called collagraph. It seemed to speak to me immediately – a mixture of print and craft – layering and inking materials to see what happens.

I started out with a textured mini t-shirt (maybe A4 size) to see what happened and was pleasantly surprised with the results.

There was great excitement in the print room that day because the textures really came out in the press. James, our tutor, recommended I expand the idea given its success. But I’m very literal and texted him that night to see what were the maximum dimensions of our big press and then this happened….

For several weeks afterward, we tested a variety of techniques – different paper and materials through the press, dampening higher quality paper and hand pressing it. All these tests and advice from the tutor and fellow classmates results in these two framed outputs.

So all in all a success. Stay tuned for more collagraph experiments.