printing in amsterdam

Revolving sunlight

2012-01-14T13:47:00.002+01:00

V&A museum, London, last week.

New work

2012-01-11T10:31:00.008+01:00

Vienna

2012-01-02T15:08:00.011+01:00

Lithographs by David Lynch

2011-12-14T08:51:00.003+01:00

Adam Fuss

2011-11-16T14:39:00.002+01:00

AGA at the Makers' Festival, Amsterdam

2011-11-07T10:06:00.012+01:00

July, a beach in Wales

2011-10-07T09:28:00.005+02:00

working

2011-09-06T16:02:00.004+02:00

JuliaBlaukopf.com, 2011

Visiting the Netherlands from Philadelphia and New York is photographer and social artist Julia Blaukopf - see some of her work and diary notes from her visit to AGA here: http://juliablaukopf.wordpress.com/2011/08/24/amsterdams-grafisch-atelier-amsterdam-creatives/.

Julia has been photographing artists at work all over the world and will be showing some of her recent work as projections at HxBxL Project Space in Enschede (opening Friday 16th September at 5pm).

Julia has also spent time in Ghana working as a photographer with Women in Progress, an organisation that empowers women through a sustainable business of clothing production called Global Mamas. 'I visited the bead-making region there, mountain villages, as well as the big city of Accra - the women there work tirelessly and it was a privilege to be able to photograph them at work and draw inspiration from them. My time there now seems like a dream of momentary encounters and glimpses', Julia writes in her book 'The Rain Parade'. It's a world away from the bright lights of Amsterdam city centre.

The Green Cathedral

2011-08-25T09:08:00.002+02:00

Dutch artist Marinus Boezam made De Groene Kathedraal between 1978 and 1987 - he made a wooden maquette (on show in Haarlem) of a cathedral floorplan but with trees in place of pillars. He made this for real in Almere, first as a replica of his plan and second as a reverse image in a forest.

Today

2011-08-11T12:44:00.004+02:00

Jude Macklin

2011-08-02T10:01:00.008+02:00

this could not have been

2011-07-05T17:31:00.004+02:00

'Originality is for people with short memories'

2011-06-28T13:47:00.002+02:00

Grayson Perry's god Alan Measles is a small 50-year-old teddy bear - read his blog here: http://alanmeasles.posterous.com/ I especially loved his eight tips for curators and artists after visiting the Venice Biennale.

Inwards and onwards, FOAM until 1 September

2011-06-24T10:06:00.007+02:00

Delusion

2011-06-13T12:44:00.000+02:00

Robbie Cornelissen - Studio Vertigo at Utrecht Museum

2011-05-20T15:32:00.010+02:00

Stephanie Kratz

2011-05-17T18:06:00.001+02:00

Opening

2011-05-12T20:29:00.002+02:00

Uplift

2011-05-06T14:53:00.001+02:00

Animal sunrise

2011-04-28T18:24:00.001+02:00

Press go to continue

2011-03-08T14:02:00.005+01:00

Some Dutch hobbies

2011-02-04T14:25:00.005+01:00

it's behind you...

2011-02-01T18:41:00.000+01:00

Amsterdam old and new

2011-01-31T09:27:00.007+01:00

For JLR

2011-01-17T12:35:00.011+01:00

Images from the Plantin-Moretus Museum in Antwerp and letterpress printing on a cold December day at Amsterdams Grafisch Atelier.

The station today

2011-01-13T16:47:00.001+01:00

Images from my recent show 'Mapping the Body'

2010-12-23T10:05:00.005+01:00

Winter leaf

2010-11-30T12:41:00.000+01:00

the French Arndennes

2010-11-17T09:06:00.003+01:00

Inside the whale

2010-11-10T17:32:00.009+01:00

The Liege-Guillemins railway station in Belgium was designed by the architect Santiago Calatrava. It is made of steel, glass and white concrete. It includes a monumental arch measuring 200 metres long and 35 metres high. The building cost €312 million when it opened in 2009.

Erik and I took a detour to take pictures here on our way back from Blanchefosse on Monday. It was freezing cold autumnal weather and we just caught the last half hour of sunlight before it disappeared behind the hill.

Exposure, Antony Gormley in Lelystad

2010-10-19T12:39:00.003+02:00

Haarlem

2010-10-10T13:03:00.003+02:00

Olafur Eliasson

2010-09-30T11:38:00.007+02:00

See Olafur Eliasson's exhibition at the Museum Boijmans van Beuningen in Rotterdam (website in English here). It's a series of dark rooms with installations of dark pools of water with intense beams of light shining on them, sometimes from a different room. At first it's difficult to know what's going on; then you hear some creaking floorboards and realise that your walking is causing the water to ripple inside the huge shallow pools which is in turn reflecting shadows on the walls.

He says in his gallery leaflet that he's often written about as being interested in science and the environment but that what he's really interested in is people.

His effects on us were many - confusion, surprise, thoughtfulness, delight, humour - some people were laughing, others sitting in quiet contemplation of the reflections, others jumping up and down on the floorboards to make a bigger wave. People were also talking to each other, trying to work out what it was all about.

Studio shadows

2010-09-22T10:18:00.008+02:00

Thanks for attending the opening on Friday

2010-09-14T11:25:00.009+02:00

Thanks to Paul for these black and white images from Friday. The event was well attended and interesting contacts made. Siobhan's talk on sickness in art was well received and thought-provoking. Siobhan asked us to consider Susan Sontag's book 'Illness as Metaphor' and John Donne's idea that 'the greatest misery of sickness is solitude'.

My etchings of individual organs, such as my 'Gold lungs' or 'Red lungs' (lungs are central to life, like trees), are about finding beauty in nature, and poignancy in their separation from the body - still-lifes of what you may feel is unappealing and perhaps terrifying, especially when it goes wrong.

The etchings will be there for another 4 weeks - ending on Friday 8th October - if you would like to meet for a chat or guided tour please contact me on Comments (below each blog) or my email address on the blog, being careful to leave your email address in your message as it is a 'no reply' service.

Hanging day at the studio

2010-09-09T18:36:00.004+02:00

Some last-minute adjustments to the prints...

Erik putting the glass up in front of the prints...A whirlwind of a day...and we have more to do tomorrow before the opening at 5pm! Wish me luck!

Two days to go...

2010-09-08T11:09:00.004+02:00

Some more publicity for the Mapping the Body show here on amsterdamart.net (look under 'Exposities en berichten' in the left-hand column).

Just two days to go until it opens on Friday at 5pm. Still a lot to do - like actually hang the work!! Erik and I are doing that tomorrow.

I did the final touches to the prints yesterday at the studio - adding the titles to the prints, and making a list of which ones are going in the show. I'm just waiting at home for the rain to stop before I can venture out into a wet Amsterdam with my large package of screenprints that I need to get to the studio...without getting rained on...argh...

Deep water

2010-09-04T17:26:00.003+02:00

'The spine
drops its hook into the dark
of the scan
at the Cobalt Unit...
When the radiologist counted down you thought I'm flying -
your rick-rack bones opening into pinions
every joint ratcheting out
to wing-tips that floated on streaming black
while the same blackness streamed
between your ribs.'

From 'Deep Water', published in 'Rough Music' by Fiona Sampson, 2010

The film equipment

2010-09-03T10:59:00.003+02:00

The poster has gone up on the door at AGA.

I managed to set up the video projector and dvd player for my film yesterday with Erik the technician. It's a short film, about 9 minutes, on a loop, in black and white. We had to fit a temporary shelf across the the ceiling to accommodate the machines so we could get an fairly well-centred projection of the film at the end of my exhibition of etchings.

Also, made the final selection of the work that is definitely going in - my most recent etchings using X-rays as images. We will hang it next Thursday, the day before the show opening!

Photoetching

2010-09-01T17:44:00.002+02:00

I've just been asked about one of my previous posts - what is all that stuff about photo-sensitive film and plates and tests?

On the left above, you can see a zinc plate which has been treated in a special way by attaching to it a thin coating of photo-sensitive film. The film goes a darker blue when it has been exposed during the photography process and later hardened in sunlight. So, it transforms from a gel-like substance captured between two layers of clingfilm-type stuff to a hard surface of dots and lines stuck to a metal plate.

On the right you can see a number of prints, each piece of paper shows three tests at different exposure levels in the light-box. This picture is too small to see the difference but when you see the prints for real, you will notice a gradation in the amount of light and shade in the print - this is where an infinite round of choices can be made by the printmaker - more light, more dark, what does the print need? What feeling or idea do I want to put across to the viewer? Dark and moody; light and analytical?

You will notice that I have been careful to expose the same part of the picture so that a properly direct comparison can be made between the different exposure times. Just a tiny sliver of the complete image is displayed here.

Today at the studio

2010-08-30T18:18:00.008+02:00

Find information about the show here on the AGA website.

Had a mad day at the studio trying to sort out which work will go in the show. That's the moment when you go through your prints and realise you've forgotten some of them; which is a relief because it means I had more work than I thought. Plus I needed to straighten up a few edges where the prints hadn't come out quite straight. Lots of measuring and careful blade work. And trying not to cut myself and get blood all over the place ;->

And then there's adding titles and signing them. It all takes time, and especially the titles which can be tricky - not too obvious, not too obscure, not a cliche, try to be original, but not too original - everyone has helpful advice. And if there's a group of prints in a series like these are, the titles should relate to each other in some way.

Torso

2010-08-29T19:00:00.002+02:00

This is an X-ray which I am trying to print as an etching this week at the studio. Quite a lot of time is spent in Photoshop trying to prepare the photo into a negative film which can be exposed in the exposure unit for etching. It's a different exposure unit to the one used in screenprinting - apparently they use different kinds of light. This is news to me and I'm not sure what this means, so I must remember to look it up.

I have been having a lot of trouble preparing photos for the exposure unit. It is a new machine so we in the studio are just getting used to how it works and especially what the right exposure times are for etching. What this means is I have to do a lot of test exposures through the film to get the right amount of both black and white onto the final print, and get the subtle hazy tones in between those extremes.

It turns out X-rays are the most difficult photo to get right. What has been happening during my test prints is that I lose a lot of the detail and tones - it's difficult to get all the white ribs to show up on this torso.

I am also having a lot of difficulties with the light-sensitive film which is a very flimsy sticky layer that has to be attached to a plate of zinc - imagine the patience that's required as the film floats around all over the place while I'm trying to lay it flat...and without any bubbles...onto the plate. The air bubbles are difficult to get out with the squeegee without tearing the delicate film...to add to the difficulty this is done under yellow light, and the summer heat in the room makes the film behave strangely as well.

Good job the door to the dark room has to be closed otherwise quite a lot of cursing might be heard...After many test prints, I have managed to get three good prints of this torso for the show. It has taken the best part of 2 weeks.

'Guy has a broken foot'

2010-08-28T12:49:00.004+02:00

Huh - how funny that I saw this picture on the way back from the library - after yesterday's blog and excitement about X-rays. This poor man has broken his foot and is apologising for his shop not being open - giving disappointed customers the ultimate evidence for his claim (though I suppose he could have got this picture off the internet like me...).

His name is Guy which in English is another name for man. So he is everyman. As are the X-rays I am using for my etchings which are anonymous, but also paradoxically personal - the recording of an ultimately deeply personal intimate space inside someone. I am struck by how similar we all look in them.

I know we are all very familiar with X-ray images (I saw one on a T-shirt this morning), but really, how odd it is to be able to look inside the living in this way and take a snapshot. Imagine how fascinating and exciting it must have been to see the first X-ray. The first person to be X-rayed was Roentgen's wife - her hand - and she subsequently died of radiation sickness (or so I have read, though this is not recorded on Wikipedia so perhaps that bit is still unconfirmed). Roentgen was raised in the Netherlands, moving to Apeldoorn in 1848 from Prussia. There's a picture of her hand here - it's incredibly moving to be able to see it, all soft and fuzzy at the edges, with that big Edwardian stoned ring dating it. When she saw it, his wife Anna Bertha exclaimed: 'I have seen my death!'

Thinking about how to represent the interior spaces of the body

2010-08-27T18:42:00.003+02:00

I've just been re-reading Susan Sontag's famous book 'Illness as Metaphor' in the library. For some reason it has been consigned to the book stack here at the central library so I had to order it. How can such an important iconoclastic book be hidden away off the shelves?

She is so spot on in her analysis of how illness is thought about in society - and her writing is as fresh as if it was written yesterday. The book was written during the diagnosis of her own breast cancer which caused her to think about why people who are ill are made to feel bad about it by all the taboos people believe in. As if it's not bad enough to be ill, you also have to deal with people's ideas and unspoken, unthought through fears about your illness. Like the taboo of actually saying the word 'cancer' - like it has some sort of magic power to infect when the word is spoken. This makes it so hard for people with the illness to talk about it. Instead of naming it, people say 'the C word', and even then, only quietly with a mysterious look.

People with cancer get the feeling that they have something shameful that they must not speak about - this was illustrated recently by the 'outing' of the 70s TV and film star Farrah Fawcett - the press made a horror story out her diagnosis of rectal cancer. Not only did she have to deal with the disease, she had to deal with ideas about it being printed on the front page of the tabloids - as if she was somehow repugnant or to blame or shameful. What she had was a mechanical failure in her body (this is how cardiac disease is regarded as Sontag points out, but why is cancer not regarded similarly?).

I've been thinking about these ideas while I have been using actual X-rays and CT scans to make etchings. One of the things that happened to me when I had the images on screen was that, after looking at them, their strange blue beauty, I felt a strong instinctive feeling of reluctance to edit them or mess about with them in Photoshop - they looked so pure and wondrous exactly as they were - when I had been expecting to 'work on them' in some way - to make them into art.

I also thought, these moments of a life are captured right here - before any diagnosis has been made - so I do not know (and neither does the patient at that moment) whether the picture actually shows illness or not. This also gave me pause for thought.

So I decided not to do too much to them in Photoshop - they have had minimal cropping and editing to keep the integrity of the moment clean.

Then, after the plate is made - when it comes to printing it - this is another moment of interpretation. How much ink to leave on the etched plate? Think of Rembrandt, the special touch that makes light flash in the dark ink. What colour to use - black and gold are my choices for this series of etchings - these colours add different meanings to the image, and it's my choices which make it my work rather than a simple X-ray shown on a doctor's light-box.

So, I am very aware of something when reading Sontag's book - she writes 'My point is that illness is not a metaphor, and that the most truthful way of regarding illness...is one most purified of...metaphoric thinking'. Think about the mechanical failure of the body, the illness itself, not the ideas about illness. So the last thing I want to do in this show is to add another metaphor to illness - I don't want to make it look beautiful, like the Romantic Poets did to tuberculosis (think 'loss of circulation' not 'pale and interesting') thus adding extra burden to people who are ill - but what I do want to do is nudge people to think about the body that they exist in, stand in, sit in, as they look at the work. The body's various grumblings and gurglings as it goes about its business, that we mostly forget about.

And yet, and yet...how do we do that - sweep away the metaphors around illness and the body when we think about these things? As sentient human beings, don't we need metaphors to understand things? I suppose what she wants to do is sweep away the bad burdensome metaphors, the ones that make it hard for those who find themselves suddenly 'in the kingdom of the sick'. I guess I'll find out more when I get onto the second half of the book.

About the body

2010-08-27T09:53:00.004+02:00

Studio pictures - getting ready to print

2010-08-26T17:03:00.005+02:00

Tuesday in Berlin

2010-08-06T13:55:00.006+02:00

Monday in Berlin

2010-08-04T10:47:00.008+02:00

Sunday in Berlin

2010-08-03T10:24:00.006+02:00

Saturday in Berlin

2010-07-31T14:01:00.003+02:00

A dog's day in Brussels

2010-07-15T14:10:00.008+02:00

New fossils

2010-07-09T09:16:00.006+02:00

Kevin Dalton-Johnson

2010-07-01T09:31:00.007+02:00

Kevin at work on a linocut at AGA studios this week. Kevin is exploring linocut as a way of working on his paintings and sculptures, building up layers on the surface, having been pointed in the direction of printing to find new extra textures.

His work explores and challenges our ideas about historical and contemporary images of the slave trade and black masculinities, seeing his ancestry as something to be proud of - he sees his ancestors of having suffered but also, very importantly, as having survived. See more of his work here.

food for thought

2010-06-25T09:14:00.003+02:00

'...the human cochlea comes from the jawbone of early fish. So, we listen to Beethoven with mechanisms designed for life in the depths of the sea, originally an organ used for eating...' (from Richard Gregory)

Zaha Hadid - Architect's Pavilion, Gashouder, Westergasfabriek, Amsterdam

2010-06-18T09:39:00.006+02:00

Ghost image remover

2010-06-11T09:34:00.007+02:00

Saturday market

2010-06-07T14:24:00.002+02:00

For LB

2010-06-03T12:27:00.003+02:00

More images here.

Making history

2010-06-01T17:12:00.004+02:00

Reflex Gallery, Amsterdam.

Artamsterdam event yesterday

2010-05-31T14:47:00.006+02:00

Ghost image

2010-05-28T17:07:00.002+02:00

Thank you...

2010-05-25T08:44:00.005+02:00

...to everyone who visited or worked on the Open Ateliers this weekend to make it a success. We had over a thousand visitors. For upcoming events and shows please visit this blog. If you want to see more of my work, I have a show coming up in Amsterdam in September and hopefully others before the end of the year. Details will be posted on this blog, but let me know via email if you want to be added to my mailing list.

In Amsterdam today

2010-05-20T15:46:00.007+02:00

then

2010-05-08T17:47:00.002+02:00

Images from Queen's Day last week

2010-05-06T13:39:00.007+02:00

Acid bath

2010-04-27T11:16:00.004+02:00

Dreamtime

2010-04-23T11:24:00.006+02:00

Some recent experiments in etching.

Alone

2010-04-06T11:29:00.001+02:00

Eden

2010-03-25T09:03:00.008+01:00

Go here for more.

Songs from the cold seas

2010-03-22T12:13:00.007+01:00

Humlebaek

2010-03-18T09:33:00.005+01:00

Rug sandwich anyone?

2010-03-17T18:52:00.005+01:00

The Black Diamond

2010-03-16T11:23:00.005+01:00

Pictures from Copenhagen all this week

2010-03-15T09:43:00.006+01:00

Who is in the zoo?

2010-03-09T16:43:00.004+01:00

Show this Saturday 6th March

2010-03-04T08:03:00.008+01:00

In-visible. The book on the table. The book in an intimate space. Artists' books, fabric books, book as installation, book as a concept. Hand-made boxes, 3D objects, printed papers, photography, graphics. Five artists, one studio. The new show is opening, or the 'start' as Harry calls it, this Saturday - find details on this website.

New feature

2010-02-26T15:28:00.003+01:00

I've just added a new feature in the right-hand column - an information panel about artists' books - something I'm just getting interested in and finding out about. I did a bookbinding course last year with Marja Wilgenkamp up in Hoorn in the north of the Netherlands and have now made about a dozen books from my prints and artist proofs. I learnt how to sew them by hand with a Japanese binding using different coloured thread though red is my current favourite.

Let me know if you have any links you want to add and I'll keep updating it as I find new things. Contact Marja on the website link above if you want to know about her bookbinding courses.

Blood is both red and blue

2010-02-18T15:03:00.001+01:00

Tiny landscapes

2010-02-16T11:25:00.003+01:00

Woof woof

2010-02-12T10:59:00.004+01:00

On persistence...

2010-02-08T13:22:00.003+01:00

'Try again. Fail again. Fail better'. Samuel Beckett

Open browser

2010-02-02T17:15:00.005+01:00

A stolen afternoon in Rembrandt's house

2010-01-28T10:06:00.008+01:00

Paths

2010-01-25T10:53:00.002+01:00

The journeying boy

2010-01-20T11:31:00.003+01:00

What to do on a cold day

2010-01-15T12:19:00.001+01:00

Working

2010-01-12T18:02:00.001+01:00

An artist spotted on Keizersgracht today.

Among the ruins

2010-01-11T12:10:00.002+01:00

The canals are frozen

2010-01-08T16:06:00.006+01:00

Walking to work yesterday.

Pools of snow on the ice.

Shadow play.

You can see in this picture where the ducks are standing on the edge of the ice.

A new day, a new year

2010-01-05T12:04:00.005+01:00

Happy Christmas!

2009-12-25T11:08:00.011+01:00

This Christmas morning in Amsterdam.

Sneeuw

2009-12-18T11:52:00.006+01:00

Overnight snow

2009-12-17T12:53:00.005+01:00

Wings of desire

2009-12-16T17:37:00.007+01:00

'The uglier, older, meaner, iller, poorer I get, the more I wish to take my revenge by doing brilliant colour, well arranged, resplendent.' (Van Gogh, letters, 14 September 1888.)

December reflections

2009-12-02T12:04:00.005+01:00

Monday market

2009-11-30T12:39:00.005+01:00

The residents

2009-11-25T18:01:00.006+01:00

This is a small selection of images taken this afternoon when I visited the Rijksakademie Resident Artists 2009 show on press day. The show is open 28/29th November, 11.00-19.00. Sadly no printmaking going on here, and not much drawing to see (it's fair to say the making of beautiful things is not in fashion) - in fact, it's highly conceptual which means there are quite dismal and disappointing rooms displaying ripped up plastic, boring found objects, logs of wood and scattered paper. Above are the few works I did find interesting - including videos by Istvan Ist Huzjan called 'The De Bruin-Heijns' and another called 'The Eye of the Storm'.

More street art

2009-11-20T15:55:00.001+01:00

Eddy

2009-11-17T14:37:00.004+01:00

In the light

2009-11-13T16:26:00.003+01:00