New Events for the next few months 1926: INK PAPER PRINT, London Craft Week at the ArtWorkers Guild and LEWES Literary Society

 

Hi Everyone, We're delighted to announce that Ink Paper & Print is back in Lewes for a whole weekend!  The Fair is back at the Town Hall on Saturday 2nd and Sunday 3rd May with the hall packed with amazing exhibitors.  If you're a fan of print, posters, cards, risos, screenprint, letterpress, artists' books, and more, then this Fair is for you! Tickets are £2 on the door or FREE in advance via Eventbrite.  Follow us on IG to see our exhibitors via our daily posts.

Click for Eventbrite tickets I will be having a stand at this event for both days showing new projects alongside books and prints  I will also be showing my work at the ArtWorkers Guild in Queens Square 16th and 17th May  Before then , on Tuesday April 21st I will be giving a talk about my written books at All Saints Arts Centre in LEWES for the Lewes Literary Society more details to follow

More ARTWAVE information and etchings from Glyndebourne production drawings

 see also two and 3 posts down......

I have now found a cache of large colour etchings I made from drawings in the 90's watching Glyndebourne rehearsal , which is going back a bit - which I always intended to turn into some kind woodcut book, and may yet once other projects finished !!! But I have decided to relinquish them - partly as two are from the wonderful  old Midsummer Night's Dream , which I presume may be the same on being shown again in the Autumn season... 

I even made a little magic disappearing book with collagraphs and where turning the page made Bottom's head disappear and then reappear again - oh the simple joys of paper technology! - and I believe there is a copy of it in the Tate's collection, which I find very reassuring among all the cool right-on stuff they tended to collect....

anyway - here are a selection of images to tempt you to come and see, plus other old etchings and collagraphs large and small which haven't resurfaced for some long time....

The operas concerned were Peter Sellars Californian production of Magic Flute with the high priests in saffron robes, Michael Tippet's New Year - not often seen these days, and of course Midsummer's Night Dream which was so visually exciting....

See you soon I hope - it is supposed to be a good weather weekend.....

 

Graham Moss Remembering Day

I am posting up this from Instagram as I don't do it myself - -  so I hadn't heard which day was chosen but I saw him walking down the High Street this morning so he was evidently trying to tell me - 

and this is my act of remembering as his widow suggested that we the printing community all remember him today particularly - see below.

Graham published my first book about Peggy Angus when no-one else was brave enough to take it on and was a very dear friend, ripped from us in an untimely fashion and too soon...

may his generous and creative spirit live on....

please read these lovely courageous words from Helen

what a manifesto to inspire...

If you are accessing this to find out about Artwave please scroll down to the last post...

 

Lewes ARTWAVE 2025

Do come and visit......

Come and see the progress of the new project...many more images made since May....  (see previous post)....come and see why I have turned to horror.....

See why Nabokov is looking so sad

Join in the conversation across space and time, meet Shelley and Coleridge....

                         Still plenty of old stuff too......        www.artwave.org

 

The Fine Press Book Fair Oxford 3-4 May - Updates

 See post below for details of the fair, (and others I  am doing in May) and updates on talks and images...

my divided life doing my own work and writing/speaking about others is hotting up currently!

I am learning so much more about work from the past from doing my new project...

Science now shows that relating to certain imagery can enter our genes and be passed on through generations.   

Menmosyne: Memory Palace: images should be revisited and remembered to keep them revitalised...  new connections are made on the peripheries….

Above are some more images from my Orbis Pictus; Entre Chien et Loup which I will be showing as part of work in progress ... …it’s a work in progress for however long it takes, using a scrapbook format so that it is perfectly fluid until I decide to make it fixed, perhaps in a variety of forms. Victorian themed scrapbooks, often on political themes, show us a way perhaps to deal with our fractious, fast-moving, elastic times… and provide I hope a space to reflect and grieve.

 Mirroring our times I have no idea what turns the project will take, I am moved by intuition, fate and serendipitous encounters.

 Encouraged by discovering Aby Warburg’s Mnemosyne: Atlas project, and Walter Benjamin’s desire to make a book made up entirely of quotations (realised partially in his Arcades thesis on consumerism - which I referenced in my last cartonera – Bonfire of Vanities) gives me reassurance I am on a valid path.

 I am making woodcuts (historic medium of political and popular commentary) of seminal works of art through the ages as ‘engramms’, used and manipulated as a vocabulary or alphabet of images, bouncing off each other to develop a ‘text’.

“History breaks down into images, not stories”   …says Walter Benjamin. 

  “Artists should today craft a mythos as a time capsule warning to our descendants not to repeat our mistakes….like the proposed cautionary folklore and imagery to deter future people from meddling with toxic waste….” Gareth Rees writes in Sunken Lands

This is an experiment in imagery, but not about deciphering meanings …     …“Pictures which are interpretable and which contain meaning are bad pictures…” says Gerhard Richter

Jeremy Eichler writes in Time’s Echo –“….we have internet access to so much stuff/info about the past now – can take virtual tours, retrieve old photos , and writing and yet at the same time we have lost the ability to really feel close to and empathy for the past – we now have research confirming that information retrieved/received digitally is not imprinted or retained in our brain in the same way as that from a printed page or further handwritten notes, we can’t practice active remembrance or commemoration so well now….”

TS Eliot   “where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge, where is the knowledge we have lost in imagination?”

Tim Hyman …”And let us not forget we must hope to find our eventual audience not among our artist contemporaries but in the much less narrowly bounded cultural realms of the future…” 

The way I am using newspapers is ecological and the fact that the original print layer could eventually show through with extreme age I find really exciting – the palimpsest becomes an even more interesting document as I usually choose images or articles to print over which are relevant to the subject matter of my images… as I have done before with my cartoneras where more was left unpainted deliberately. 

Do we really believe in a future?         

“Hope is not a prognostication, it is an orientation of the spirit, an orientation of the heart…..” Vaclav Havel        Beauty is in the Times-Eye of the beholder.    

On the talks front- 

since suggesting my Oxford talk title I have read the new Parenthesis ( journal of FPBA )...and a Peter Koch article discussing what makes a book a work of art or an Artists Book, which is very serendipitous as it happens - in my talk I am trying to bridge the gap between the sort books the PBFA members sell on their stands and the Artists Books being made today, and looking at books ( by women) that I think could be considered Artists Books before the term became current and developed its own categorisation. I am not keen on categories generally so come along and see what you make of it....12 midday on the Sunday 4th May....

And please visit my stand too...  old favourites as well as work in progress.... 

 

 

May is going to be a very busy month...I will be exhibiting at the FPBA Fine Press Fair in Oxford at the Examination Rooms 3-4 May and will post up a flier as soon as we get one . I am also giving a talk again this year...called

Bridging Gaps and Pushing Boundaries: some twentieth century British Women Artists and Book Arts.

It will include some wood engravers, and Pearl Binder, Kathleen Hale, Betty Swanwick, Olive Cook, Barbara Jones, Rena Gardner and others associated with book arts..

17^th and 18^th May I will showing at the Art Workers Guild where I am a brother as part of London Craft Week… go to artworkersguild.org to see what is going on and how to book for the special talks and tours of the lovely building

And on the 24^th May I will be taking part in Ink Paper Print in Lewes Town Hall with a stand
.

At all these I will showing work in progress - as well as some old favourites – what will be my scrapbooks as part of a project called Entre Chien et Loup: Orbis Pictus...an Encyclopedia of Images for Twilight Times.I have cut lots of woodblocks over the last few months and am currently printing them up to see what I have got but it is an ever evolving project and I am just going where it leads me – further details and images in due course.as it unfolds.

New archive of older work in progress from former website and an important Save the Date

 New Year new resolutions - I am in process of adding images of all my books from Gawain onwards from my previous website to the archive slot below my profile...this may take some time! I appreciate your patience! 

Work from 2007 and onwards will appear within the archived blog thread as usual.

I have also now included an easier contact form below the blog archive.

Many thanks to my brilliant and patient technical advisors!

The dates for this years Fine Press Association Fair at the Examination Rooms in Oxford 

are 

3-4 May...not so far away now the year has turned.... I will be there exhibiting.

More information to come over the next few weeks..... but keep scrolling through the Blog Archive too for recent events... in due course I will add reference dates/links to projects and books illustrated in the Blog Archive and list into the ArtArchive for the years 2007 - 2024

meanwhile , my New Year card courtesy of William Blake...

OUTSIDE IN AUCTION

 Welcome if you have been directed here by Outside In - I am writing an introductory piece to the work I have put into the auction ( such a good cause ) - hopefully you will have seen the images of the work I am putting in on their auction website...... the words below are an extension to the descriptions already their and explain my collaboration with poet James Simson and my trajectory from Painter to 'Bookmaker'...do scroll back and see pictures of other work I have done over the years......

James Simpson , a poet, and I met at Schumacher College over twenty years ago on a poetry and bookbinding course; over the week we soon realised that our own creative work and inspiration came from the same wellspring and sources, almost uncannily so …and we decided to keep in touch and work together on projects. We instinctively have conversations which no-one else would understand, he understands my primitive early scribbles straight away and he is the poet I wanted to be as a child before I was forced to choose between words or images (art education being what it was in the sixties).

I went to the Slade straight from school, where my A Levels in English Lit and History were frowned upon, and I fell between two stools - the ‘avant guard’ and the lovely old painting tutors  for whom my predilection for egg tempera was ‘not using proper paint’…. Nobody taught us anything much anyway but I met lovely people and it was fun.

Unfortunately for me crossing the boundaries of painting, sculpture and even printmaking (… and woodcuts for heaven’s sake – it was the age of silk screen!) was also difficult…sculpture postgrads smuggled me in to use the bandsaws and useful equipment for my non-rectangular paintings on gesso and my curved box frames.

By the 1990’s a two year commission called Rituals and Relics as Artist in Residence on the South Downs, enabled me to work sequentially, pushing me towards returning to my childhood passion for making books, now officially designated Artists Books ( so that was now ok then! )….making my art in any way I wanted and enabling me to keep groups of work and ideas together; each work was a project , and turning the pages…however unorthodox the book and its presentation, existed materially in time and space ......

My, possibly seen as 'old-fashioned, way of working' is an important statement in a digital world. I agree with Tapies, a wonderful Spanish/Catalan painter and bookmaker I admire. He talks about a logo-centric tradition he opposes, the illusion of the transparency of the word - the Catalan mystics like Ramon Lull thought the book-as-an-object was a dialogue between images and word .  Tapies was against dematerialisation and conceptualism - which he thought started with Gutenburg's printing presses and also the development of perspective in painting, and began to dissipate the material surface of book pages and books as objects, and of paintings.

 William Blake, another of my heroes, attempted to overcome this  disjunction/division of the graphic into 'letters' and 'drawings ' with his 'illuminated printing'. Urizen, the demi-urge - has a brush/pen/burin ....drawing lines in an open book, writing the text with one hand while illustrating it with another. I have James to help me!  Paul Klee invented alphabets; Brassai embraced graffiti; surrealists made automatic drawings..... making Artists Books continues ( in many forms) but I work like a painter/printmaker, or an alchemist, with very dirty hands...trying to make gold out waste and recycling. 

I use organic materials wherever possible, most of the last decade’s work has been very climate crisis orientated, I and it (the work) try to walk lightly on the planet. James and I share these concerns and all the philosophical ideas around it. I do not ‘illustrate’ his poems but through constant dialogue and sharing of work in progress we try to extrude the works between us. I enjoy collaboration...it keeps me on my toes and inspires me.

We have projects planned for years ahead but making by hand takes a lot of time….I often hand-cut his texts…but it is ‘slow poetry’ like ‘slow cooking’, a statement that the work is worth taking time over - that art and poetry are important in our frantic world.

Lewes District ARTWAVE 2024 7th - 22nd September

I will be exhibiting for all three weekends of ARTWAVE 
7/8th   14/15th  21/22nd September  11am- 5pm
Carolyn Trant Studio, Lewes Con Club, 
139 High Street, 
Lewes BN7 1XS

     venue 34 in the brochure, Lewes Trail map

Billed as ...woodcut mayhem, freaks and wonders, fat cats and creatures great and small...images from the Circus book can be seen on the post below.... I will also be showing new prints done for the show as part of my preparation work for my next book and a selection from my usual prints and artists books. 

www.artwavefestival.org    for all other details

BABE at UWE Bristol 29/30th June

 I shall have a stand at this always wonderful event - I am in one of the printmaking studios again - 

I shall be showing my very new book The Amazing (F)lying Circus limited edition book - only 13 copies (they take a very long time to do)...13 seems a suitably evil number...as it says on he cover Something Wicked This Way Comes....

I am reviving the art of the Victorian thematic scrapbook in a suitably scurrilous manner ....

I will also be showing more large woodcut books....

https://www.bookarts.uwe.ac.uk/babe2024/

Next exhibiting Event - INK PAPER PRINT fair Lewes Town Hall Saturday 25th May

 

I shall have a stand at this fair 

(formerly at Towner Eastbourne ) 

and showing new book The Amazing (F)Lying Circus

                                                        note on for one day only.....

                                                        more images to follow....

OXFORD FINE PRESS FAIR 23 SATURDAY /SUNDAY 9/10 DECEMBER

 

JUST REALISED I HAVE BEEN SO BUSY MAKING THAT I DIDN'T POST THIS UP

last copies available here at Oxford…

AND OTHER FAIRY TALES

THE FALCON BRIDE

MHARBNA

THE RHYME OF THE REDDLEMAN’S DAUGHTER

plus tunnel book version

SOME LIGHT REMAINS

INFERNO celebrating 700 anniversary

small version plus larger cartonera street version

THE UNTENANTED ROOM v large version

plus new

THE TOWERS FALL

also available

cartoneras – Ship of Fools, Fool gets Sick, 

Map of Lost Cuckoos, Bonfire of Vanities

small books – The Magic Rabbit, Family Album,

Jeus d’Enfants, Brighton Belle….collagraph books

Pastoral...celebrating 200 years of Blake’s wood- 

engravings with 17 of my own woodcuts

SHIP OF FOOLS – woodcut concertina book

hand-cut and printed woodcut ‘Tarot’ packs or sets of prints ,

 on ecological themes – earth air fire and water

THE LITTLE CIRCUS IN THE FOREST

triple layer hand-cut shaped concertina book

with 22 woodcut scenes

in slipcase also containing digitally produced text of the 

poems 

by James Simpson which inspired the project

hand-bound by Rachel Ward-Sale

Wonder at Fitzroy

 My Wonder Box exhibited at Fitzroy House - an old Gilbert Scott private lending library - is an extension of my Window of Wonder in the High Street - see previous post....

It is called The Untenanted Room - from The Little Bookshop at the end of the World...and it invites the viewer to consider further the whole idea of cabinets of Curiosities in 2023. We are now in a crisis - being reminded that we are just part of the natural world, not onlookers viewing, and collecting, displaying  curiosities to be marvelled at, consumables to be collected.

We are part of a marvellous universe that is all around us if we know how and where to look, but which is in dire need of protecting and being encouraged to flourish,

My box celebrates the beauty of decay - a natural part of the life-cycle - whilst reflecting on the emptying of the living world, the dessicating effect of numbering and categorising of all parts of it - including us, people, tribes of all kinds... with old photographs of dead specimens papering the outside of the box.

The texts are from a long poem sequence The Untenanted Room by James Simpson, with whom I have worked for the last 20 years on many Artists Book projects. 

The exhibition is open weekends from 12 - 4 from 30th September until Saturday 28th October

Wonder Windows

.... here are some fabulous photos of my window and setting up alongside Emma Carlow in the next bay...taken by Catherine Benson for the press release and the project

@catherinebensonphoto      thanks Catherine!

LEWES ARTWAVE - OPEN STUDIO - WINDOWS OF WONDER TRAIL and WONDER BOX, FITZROY HOUSE

 

This year I am opening my studio again for Lewes Art Wave , with usual studio clear out and new bargains surfacing, plus lots of cartoneras and prints

first three weekends of September - 10.30- 5pm, disabled access, (bar in afternoons from 2.30 and lovely garden)

CON CLUB 139 High Street Lewes BN7 1XS

( I love that excess)

I am also exhibiting in a shop window - the right-hand window of the old Sussex Stationers at the top of School Hill. no 34 and 35 - on the corner with Walwers Lane; this window used to be full of books so it is great to be showing my Artists Books there as a Window of Wonder in an installation of ecological books, a bit of a trip down memory lane, with texts from poems by James Simpson from our last nearly twenty years of collaborations.

This will be up throughout September and up to 28 October

And I will also be contributing a WonderBox to the event at 

Fitzroy House - 10 High Street Lewes, in the precinct 

- I hope you can read the poster above but look up 

windowsofwonder.co.uk

for more information