Documentation: Weeks 7-8 Stamps

The linocuts used for this piece, which I this week made into actual stamps.

Documentation Weeks 7-8

After my research for the printmaking workshop/exhibition, I'm still interested in bees and paper making. A couple of weeks ago I was trying to find some steel honeycomb (which is used in the bottom of the laser cutter, and I've also seen it in the base of food cabinets in cafes...), and after hours of searching online and going to different hardware shops, I found one place in Newmarket that sold it... 

in 3 metre panels, shipped from overseas, at $1200 each.

Not going to happen.

But, in this same shop, a sample of a sort of folded cardboard panel caught my eye. And I thought maybe I'll just MAKE some honeycomb.

I first tried it with yellow pages, but the paper was too thin to be able to see and work with the folds. So I picked up a piece of scrap card to experiment with. The result was this little test:

Admittedly, it annoys me that it's not geometrically spot-on; but hopefully I'll find a better + more accurate technique for folding and gluing.
I was surprised by how much I liked the effect of the bits of writing that are visible in the honeycomb cells. Hope to push this idea...

Above: displayed with an embossed etching of bees in honeycomb

EIPW 2015 exhibition at George Fraser gallery

Bee on the Frame I (Etching: ink on paper, laser-cut perspex, handmade frame polished with beeswax)

Bee on the Frame II (Screenprinting frame, photo-emulsion)

An edition of 12 mini prints - gifts for the visiting printmakers who attended the EIPW in January. These were made with the stamps cut by the laser cutter (from hand-drawn images scanned into Illustrator) and water-based ink.

It was so exciting to get free (free!) reign of the laser cutter during the EIPW in January. Using it to cut and engrave several hand-drawn honeycomb patterns, I was thrilled to realise that the bed of the laser cutter, too, is honeycomb patterned. How perfect; the connection was too good to be true. A mechanical, man-made structure, and the most efficient pattern is found in nature - the least possible perimeter so that bees use less energy+wax. Common sense creatures.

We also worked out, with a lot of trial and error, which settings could burn into lino - a mechanical linocut! - and I made several little laser engraved and cut-out bee stamps. 

Next time I’ll use the other 3D cutter as it has a ‘stamp’ setting, which gives slanted edges to the engraved parts. (Next time I’ll also have to pay for it, unfortunately!)

Sculpture on the Gulf 2015

Images from the EIPW2015 trip to Waiheke Island

(In which James Wright gave us a lesson in how not to talk about our art.)

Virginia King: Garden of Shadows, and information from the catalogue (I loved the tent form, but think this would have been heaps more effective without the embossed WW2 poems on the ground and the silver ball in the middle. Too much!)

Gold leaf on rubbish bins: made me think of the hungry bin compost bin, originally designed to be recycled from old rubbish bins when they were downsized in 2001