Helani Laisk and Jon Webster were the 2011 ANU EASS Ampersand Duck Broadside residents. I tend to write about them together, because they worked in the studio in the same time period, on different days, and they are good friends who went through art school together. However, they are very separate individuals in their art practices and the results of their printing time, despite using some similar processes, are very different and entirely filled with their own personalities. Continue reading
Category Archives: residencies
What are EASS residencies?
Postmark Mail Art: Posting at the end
I love the moment in a residency (says she, with the wisdom of only two residencies) when you realise that it’s ok, everything will be finished in time. Mind you, with both experiences that realisation came quite late in the piece, but maybe that’s normal. Continue reading
Postmark Mail Art: Colour Printing
Pre-amble ramble
The other day I walked into the Principal’s office (where I’ve been stashing my bag of a day) and she asked me what I’d learned that day. What haven’t I learned! The school’s motto, Together we learn, together we grow, is a philosophy I really support, as any of my adult class participants would tell you. I often learn as much from my students as they learn from me. Continue reading
Postmark Mail Art: Literacy Week*
This is the second week of workshops I was asked to present as an addendum to the main postcard project. Continue reading
Postmark Mail Art: Book Week
I’ve finished the first stage of the Postmark Mail Art project; every child and teacher in the school has set their names in type and printed them on their postcards. Now I have to print the backs of the cards with the formal postcard bits and the relevant official school and government logos (I’m using photopolymer plate for this) and then we can do the fun colour printing by hand with all sorts of things like foam and plasticine and found objects. Continue reading
POSTMARK MAIL ART begins
I’m spending this school term (end of July to end of September) working one day at the ANU School of Art teaching typography and a bit of binding, and the rest of the week as Artist-in-Residence at a local early learning school in the inner suburbs of Canberra, the O’Connor Cooperative School. Continue reading
Prime, from Otakou Press
In August and September 2010, I was Printer in Residence at the Otakou Press, which resides at the University of Otago Library in Dunedin, NZ. Continue reading
Printing poets at Otago
Written live from my 2010 residency:
Twenty years ago, I visited Dunedin for a couple of days on a NZ touring holiday and loved it at first sight. I always hoped to get back here, and every time John Howard threatened to win an election, I would joke with my friends and family that I’d move to Dunedin if he did. I was getting quite serious when Kevin Rudd saved the day. Now I’ve made it back, thanks to a brilliant residency opportunity, and I’m telling people that if Tony Abbott wins, I may not go back to Australia. I’m getting quite serious about it. Continue reading