Day 5
Today I started to chisel out the final large (40x40cm) AH Walter Benjamin line woodcut for the feuilleton. This is the most intricate piece, but I have more experience now, and it's going quite well. I still need to find a way of "pressing" in the printing process; I really need a large and heavy roller of some kind. If only I had my Dad's old garden roller....
Day 4
Today I was able to try out the paper I am hoping to use for the Feuilleton. I embossed a couple of manhole covers, and tried printing a "woodblock line print" and some rubble. It turned out pretty well. The paper is thick enough to not tear when embossed, and holds the shape well, but also accepts the printing ink too. I also realised that I can do a "roller print" of the "blue" shapes from the AH WB on the outline shape. It's not very clear on the photos, but looks quite good in real life.
I also made a couple of small (10cm squared) woodcut blocks of AH Self-Portrait, which I felt would be a nice motif to use on the feuilleton.
Day 3
Another day of not much happening. I couldn't go to the studio as I had a puncture on my motobike, and an interview. I did go and see my friends Jess and Xavi at UntitledBCN, a local "vanity-gallery", to talk about their thoughts on trying to get permissions from the local council for this project, but they are on holiday! I've sent them a message on FB.
Day 2
Does anticipation count as an activity towards breaking the boundaries? Because apart from showing Susannah the sample piece of paper I have bought, I didn't do anything today apart from looking forward to getting the WB Arcades Project book. And it's not even going to be sent from Amazon until the 9th September.
Breaking the Boundaries: 4 weeks to go. Day 1
So far I have done quite a lot of planning, thinking and making for my BTB project, and I decided that it would be useful to work on it a bit more systematically. So every day from now until Sunday September 25th I'm going to blog a little about what I have achieved that day.
So far I have written a background for my project:
docs.google.com
This was mainly written in conjunction with James Kowzac (well.. I used a lot of the notes he wrote for me during our first online discussion.) and it needs academic referencing and some further explanation.
At the hairdresser's this afternoon I wrote a few notes:
It's amazing how a project can swing from brilliant to hopeless and back again. Deciding to carve the lines of the Walter Benjamin (WB) Abstract Heads (AH) was brilliant - but the result that I printed on 40cm x 40cm paper was really poor - and the strange shape of the work really off-putting. I wanted a newspaper shape, but thought that 40x40 would be more arty, but realise now that there is something fundamental about a "portrait" shape for a newspaper. I've been looking for a source of newsprint to make the feuilleton but getting nowhere fast. The language barrier is definitely one of the boundaries that need breaking here! Still it was suggested that I check out a couple of shops that sell paper, and I duly went along to Raiman. Here is discovered that they have all sorts of paper, including a very nice recycled sheet of 90cm x 64cm. Folded this gives me 64x45cm which is a very nice shape and size for an arty newspaper, though somewhat larger than the old Broadsheet papers. I'm hoping the photos of the audience opening the feuilleton will look fabulous with this size, and it gives me plenty of room to do an outline AH and then to put something at the bottom. So this might not be the 40x40 design I was thinking about after the Torres-Garcia exhibition (I'll need to get you up to speed on that later) but we'll see how it goes.
Along with the Feuilleton I am going to have a small (A4) piece of paper wrapped around the rolled up newspaper. This will serve two functions; it will recall the similar piece of paper wrapped around newspapers at the time WB was writing notes for his Arcades Project (and which he used to scribble notes on!), and it will enable me to print some "instructions" for the audience in different languages. (I like the idea of using Google Translate to do the Japanese and Chinese translations to provide a really bad translation, in the way that instruction manuals used to be).
In terms of reference material for this project so far I have:
Groundworks - my first attempt at embossing street ironmongery and printing with pieces of found paving and bricks.
AH WB (Canvas) This is a series 2 AH the three blue shapes of which informed the sclupture and feuilleton. 
From Abstract Head Experiments June 2011
AH WB (Sculpture)
Feuilleton
Outline Print
Frames
I also have a pile of old picture frames which I have painted black and blue. I need some to be orange, to keep the colour scheme in tact too. These are to be placed around the area of the WB Memorial Gardens to highlight some of the mundane but interesting sites, giving them the same importance as any other work of art.
Remains ( see film) [and I have just ordered a copy of "Arcades Project" by WB.
WB talked about playing in the rubble of a building site.... need to expand on this.
Finally, I feel that I might like to put some WB quotes on the Feuilleton, but this might detract from the "artwork" nature of it, and in any case, I'm not sure how I would physically print it on.
So far I have written a background for my project:
docs.google.com
This was mainly written in conjunction with James Kowzac (well.. I used a lot of the notes he wrote for me during our first online discussion.) and it needs academic referencing and some further explanation.
At the hairdresser's this afternoon I wrote a few notes:
It's amazing how a project can swing from brilliant to hopeless and back again. Deciding to carve the lines of the Walter Benjamin (WB) Abstract Heads (AH) was brilliant - but the result that I printed on 40cm x 40cm paper was really poor - and the strange shape of the work really off-putting. I wanted a newspaper shape, but thought that 40x40 would be more arty, but realise now that there is something fundamental about a "portrait" shape for a newspaper. I've been looking for a source of newsprint to make the feuilleton but getting nowhere fast. The language barrier is definitely one of the boundaries that need breaking here! Still it was suggested that I check out a couple of shops that sell paper, and I duly went along to Raiman. Here is discovered that they have all sorts of paper, including a very nice recycled sheet of 90cm x 64cm. Folded this gives me 64x45cm which is a very nice shape and size for an arty newspaper, though somewhat larger than the old Broadsheet papers. I'm hoping the photos of the audience opening the feuilleton will look fabulous with this size, and it gives me plenty of room to do an outline AH and then to put something at the bottom. So this might not be the 40x40 design I was thinking about after the Torres-Garcia exhibition (I'll need to get you up to speed on that later) but we'll see how it goes.
Along with the Feuilleton I am going to have a small (A4) piece of paper wrapped around the rolled up newspaper. This will serve two functions; it will recall the similar piece of paper wrapped around newspapers at the time WB was writing notes for his Arcades Project (and which he used to scribble notes on!), and it will enable me to print some "instructions" for the audience in different languages. (I like the idea of using Google Translate to do the Japanese and Chinese translations to provide a really bad translation, in the way that instruction manuals used to be).
In terms of reference material for this project so far I have:
Groundworks - my first attempt at embossing street ironmongery and printing with pieces of found paving and bricks.
 |
| From Groundworks |
From Abstract Head Experiments June 2011AH WB (Sculpture)
 |
| From Abstract Head Experiments June 2011 |
Feuilleton
 |
| From Abstract Head Experiments June 2011 |
Outline Print
 |
| From Abstract Heads Experiments August 2011 |
Frames
I also have a pile of old picture frames which I have painted black and blue. I need some to be orange, to keep the colour scheme in tact too. These are to be placed around the area of the WB Memorial Gardens to highlight some of the mundane but interesting sites, giving them the same importance as any other work of art.
Remains ( see film) [and I have just ordered a copy of "Arcades Project" by WB.
WB talked about playing in the rubble of a building site.... need to expand on this.
Finally, I feel that I might like to put some WB quotes on the Feuilleton, but this might detract from the "artwork" nature of it, and in any case, I'm not sure how I would physically print it on.
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