new mushroom prints

I started doing some mushroom prints again this week, and I think it is time they became properly a part of my finished work, instead of just something I play with.  I was thinking before that I had to turn them ‘into’ something, but with the way that I am working at the moment, maybe I don’t have to.  They can be presented just as they are, a visual record of a natural phenomena.  Plus they are circles! (more or less).

This one is particularly beautiful with it’s soft swirls. Must be very small spores indeed.

These recent prints have a particularly strong contrast between the fluid outer shape and the more sharply defined black hole in the centre which shows where the cut stem of the mushroom was.  They reminded me of satalite images of  arctic sea ice. There is always a black circle over the pole because the satellites orbit around but don’t actually cross the pole. A blind spot in the data.

The sea ice image is updated every few days, along with other similar images and graphs on a site called Cryosphere Today.  Have a look if you have an interest in what’s happening in the earths polar regions.  I look at it every fey days, but some would call me obsessive.

and meanwhile, wood engraving

Regular readers will know, that I use this space mostly for some random musings, some disconnected photos and the sharing of images relating to some of the ephemeral art I make outdoors with found materials.    Now and then I do like to bring the discussion round to good old fashioned pictures on pieces of paper.  I call myself a printmaker after all, and I have been busy making prints and other work on paper – they just don’t make it to the blog so much.  Earlier this year I had the opportunity to do a wood engraving workshop at Megalo print studios.  I’ve been meaning to post something about this for a while, but somehow I kept getting put off .  In brief, wood engraving is a form of relief printing that makes use of hard end grain wood, sanded to a high polish.    Because of the qualitys of the wood used, and the fineness of the specialized tools, wood engravings can achieve incredible detail and accuracy of reproduction for a relief print.  Instead of telling you all about the workshop, I’m going to suggest you go and visit Ampersand Duck’s blog, since she was there too and has already given a blow by blow account, and with pictures!

So now I’m right into wood engravings.

 

This was the second engraving that I did – showing a campsite among the rocks in Namadgi NP.  My project this year is in part about the human presence within ‘nature’.  Wood engravings tend to be small – this one is perhaps two inches long, so probably about the size you see it on your screen.

I quickly became interested in finding my own wood to use, instead of pieces that had been machined by someone else from timber that I knew nothing about.  I wanted to see what could be achieved using the humble sticks to be found on my walks.  After collecting, cutting and much sanding and polishing, I become somewhat attached to these little pieces of wood.  I began to think about printing them just as they are, without doing any carving at all.

 

Now I hope you can see what I meant in a previous post about circles referring to elements of nature.  The prints are like little windows into another secret world – especially when you hold it in your hand on thin seemingly fragile Japanese paper.  This little block (about an inch long) then got an image carved into it before printing again.

Right now I’m late for a class, so I’ll leave it at that – more about engravings and circles later.

mushroom print figure

I recently found a huge, almost diner plate sized mushroom.  It was finally time to try something I’ve been thinking about for a while – since doing a lot of mushroom prints last year.  Using a simple paper cut stencil between the mushroom and the art paper underneath, then this striking image was created.  The figure is a little over six inches high and positioned on a large sheet of paper.  No pigments or traditional art materials are used – the image is made up entirely of mushroom spores.

prints for sale

You may have noticed that I have added some new links on the side bar. I’ve been getting myself organised and started a profile on etsy.com. Etsy is an online market place where artists and makers can sell any item that is handmade. So if you are interested in purchasing my work you can find it at petermclean.etsy.com. For the moment I am having a look at some of my old screenprints and other prints and putting them up on etsy. I’ll be uploading more items regularly so go and have a look!

into the studio – and back out again

Leaves featured pretty heavilly in my ephemeral work durring autumn, but have been featuring less frequently lately. They have, however, been making their way into the studio more and more. Leaves have been getting drawn, drawn on, printed on, and printed with!

And then after that they sometimes make their way back out of the studio again – altered, yet still simple leaves, taken back to the source.

recent prints

I thought it was time I put up some images of some prints lest anyone should think I had abandoned traditional practice altogether. I don’t think I will ever stop wanting to make prints, no mater what else I might also want to do as well. The last few months I have been working on a series of etchings. So far I have only used two copper plates, created using a relatively simple technique which nonetheless creates intricate results. By arranging portions of these plates on the paper and using simple masking techniques, a series of compositions can be created and figurative elements added. As you can see, empty spaces are an important part of these prints too.

the right place for art?

Part of my work with the art out and about projects and chalk drawings has been about placing art back into the context of the ‘real world’, ie not a specific art world context like a gallery.  Not a new idea of course, nothing ever is.  Well it is one thing to do this with ephemeral work, which isn’t really an art object anyway, but what about works on paper.  So I have been thinking about taking some of the woodcut prints back to the source of the images. In this case a plantation of pines in Fyshwick.  I wanted to install them there, and had intended to paste them onto some old concrete structures.  This turned out to be more of a technical challenge than I had imagined – pasting onto the rough concrete simply wasn’t going happen with the glue I had – so a work still in progress.  I still did some photography of the prints at the site, and then started using the concrete walls as a surface for drawing on – hopefully informed by the site – again a work still in progress.

Wrapped on a tree…

…and on the ground.  This print did end up pasted onto a flat slab of concrete on the site – amongst the faded old porn images someone else had left weighted down with sticks.

I started some drawings in the main concrete tank structure – a figure rising from the soil, seemingly associated with the mysterious mound of soil – again left by others unknown.  The barbed wire a reference the the fact the site was originally built as an internment camp for German citizens during WWII.  As it happens the site never was used for this purpose.  The pines were planted after the camp was dismantled in the 50’s.

more silhouettes

Today I made a cut out silhouette from a large gum leaf I collected from Namadgi National Park a few weeks ago.  Then got carried away photographing it against various backgrounds I had to hand.  This is just a small sample.

leaf silhouette on a woodblock print from this semester

and an electronmicrograph of wood structure…

and on a drawing from one of my sketchbooks.

Mushroom Prints

I mentioned earlier that I’ve been doing some mushroom prints.  They are easy to do – just pick a mushroom, cut the stem off and place the cap on a piece of paper gills side down.  Cover the mushroom with a glass or bowl – this keeps the air inside humid and also reduces air movement.  Leave it for 6-12 hours and the spores will drop from the mushroom and form markings on the paper that match the pattern of gills.  These patterns and the colour of the spores vary – some look best on light paper while others have white spores that look best on black paper.  These attributes of the print can in fact be used as an aid to identifying the species of mushroom. More info here.

this is one of several I did yesterday, quite small at only a few centimeters across but the detail is exquisite.  Not sure what artistic purpose I’ll put these to yet – maybe a little book.  I first heard of mushroom prints through the work of British artist Chris Drury. He has used mushroom prints occasionally in his works on paper, though he mostly makes site specific works in the environment.  Well worth taking a look.