Building up a letterpress studio with minimal funds is a slow process that often depends upon luck and opportunity. It’s a lot easier when people are aware that you exist; I get offered type and machines regularly now, but when I first started it was a very different scenario.
What are EASS residencies?
The Gathering, 2011
In early November over 70 bookbinders from all over Australia came together for the first time in 27 years. The first conference was held in Canberra, and this one was too, thanks to the remarkable energy of Joy and John Tonkin along with a subcommittee of the Canberra Guild.
Impact 7: Intersections and Counterpoints
Melbourne didn’t really behave itself for Impact7; I know everyone makes jokes about the city having four seasons in one day, but to turn on its wettest Spring day in 100 years was just showing off, don’t you think? On the Wednesday, while I was sitting at my folio table showing my wares and talking to people, the sky went pitch black and the inside lights started flickering as lightning and thunder raged outside.
Luckily the conference was mostly indoors (unlike the filming session of Winners and Losers attempting to work on the grass just outside the conference) so apart from a wild wet trip over to another Monash campus for an exhibition opening, we all stayed pretty snug. Continue reading
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
Peter McLean & Sky
My second Ampersand Duck EASS Broadside Residency recipient is Peter McLean. He won the residency in December 2009, and for various reasons known to all emerging artists, he’s only got around to it 18 months later. I don’t mind, it’s always worth the wait. Continue reading