I am back in the studio working on the second Bush Boro Book. This time I am using earlier dry point etchings of Australian outback scenes.
Here is the first folio.
These pages were done with using the leaves a second time in the contact printing technique developed by India Flint. I had used them the first time on torn folios placed between wooden planks that were then wrapped with rags and steeped several hours in a bath with iron. Here is their first incarnation.
I tore more paper into folios and used them again but could not keep them in the bath for as long because I needed to get on the road. So they went from a sunny dashboard of two hours to a sunny window in my workshop area sealed up in a plastic bag. Color is less intense but still beautiful.
Because I wanted to stay with the theme of bush and stitching using prints, I ended up pulling out unsold small dry point etchings and then having to print more of them on my new XCut XPress machine. It was so easy and quick to do these.
I could print them close together because I am only using the image part..no borders. Even the one I wrinkled is usable because it will be cut into small images. See below.
Notice that I am still using scraps of the contact printed silks and wools from Beautiful Silks. I think my stitching is improving.
There was a question on one of the printmaking sites I belong to on facebook about stitching into paper. I was wondering how often I have done this and found quite a range of applications in my previous work.
In graduate school doing work that uses the local men’s clothing scraps with my presence among them being represented by the black stitched line.
A book about artist retreats and how exposed we are in the company of like kind.
A book using the words from letters between my mother and myself about leaving home.
Using the stitch to help emphasize the tenuous threads of friendships lost.
Each stitch representing a step on my scroll book about a daily walk.
And scanning in large graphite drawings to use as small prints in a book. Here the red stitching is used as additional interest and color.
I really had forgotten how often I threaded a needle to use as another way to make marks upon the page. It is very satisfying for me and since I come from a long line of women with threaded needles it comes naturally. Neither my grandmother nor mother were all that precise with their stitches and I suppose I also come by that naturally.
The second bush boro book will be bound somehow. I think eight folios is enough for it. I don’t want to do a coptic binding and try to find something more complex as a way of holding all that “bushness” together. I will post when it is finished and periodically show images of new prints done on the press. Next I would like to make some dry point etchings with the intention being to watercolor them afterwards. No stitching involved.