January 2013 Ice pictures

Yup, it's ice picture making time again. Been experimenting with using boiling water which means that I can make the pictures in warmer conditions at around -3C. Which is more likely to be a temperature I could regularly encounter here in blighty, rather than the -5 to -8C needed with cool water.

the pictures below were made using the usual ice technique but also sprinkling with snow, which is currently very dry and powdery...

Walk through the autumn garden

Got to spend an hour or so in the garden this afternoon. I hardly went into the garden this year - not a mistake I will ever repeat again. No matter how hard I am working daily nature connection is vital for a happy soul.
So walk with me down the garden path. It's a dull late autumn day but it's mild and very quiet and we have the place to ourselves...

What happened?

What happened?
What happened to this blog?
What happened to all those sharing posts way back in the early days? You know, the rants about being an artist, the trying to get shows, the frustrations and joys of making work.
What happened to the excitement and innocence of that?
What happened to blogging?
Where have all the sidebar friends gone?
Why does everybody use their blog to make money?
What happened to the community that I was a part of?
What happened to me?

I got older.
I got sidetracked.
I got busy.
I got tired.
I got isolated.
I stopped making meaningful work.

I got scared.

I got complacent and then frustrated.

I got a business. And a business partner. And an office.

I got told something life-changing and I'm waiting to see if it's true (not illness)

Mostly, I got self-conscious.
And a lot more boring.

I thought my blog should be the place where I show work 'professionally.' And I couldn't be bothered to create a proper website. But the thing is, I think that I am discovering that I don't like professional. I prefer heart and soul. Honesty and gut reactions.
I have so much to tell you, so much to say. Even more to show you. All that damn beauty out there, all the stuff I want to make.

I think I'm going to start blogging again. Properly. Like in the old days......

Rain Painting

new Rain Paintings

Make Lemonade....

There is some silly quote about life giving you lemons so make lemonade. I say when life gives you days of rain, make rain paintings...

This is a lovely blog by artist Sam Brightwell

http://sambrightwell.com/surfacing/

What is going on....

....in my life?

well, I'm curating The Library of Lost Books

designing websites

drawing.

beginning a new business

avoiding any exercise (and eating crap)

using Facebook (despite my avowal never to)

tweeting The Library of Lost Books, (but not enough)

spending money

dreaming about my summer holiday (Lake Como in Italy)

reading Robert Crais - over and over

dreaming bad dreams and waking up nervous

you?.....

Working for the next two days on stuff for the artists book fair in Leeds. I think this is my 5th year at the fair.

I always end up spending my profits on coffee and other artist's books! But it is worth going for the discipline of making - without this regular event I think that I might never step away from the desk job and back to the art. Also, I get to spend time with Catherine and other artists which is lovely, and rare.

I'll post what I have for this year's fair later on this week, today, it is all about printing, collating, glueing, folding and (accidentally) staining my fingers with tea...

Ice - A Passage Through Time by Hal Gage

I'm not the only one to love ice....

Chapbooks

I have been print-making all day.

I'm making some chapbooks to sell and raise some money for The Library of Lost Books.

They are made from pages taken from a book called I Codici e le Arti a Monte Cassino published in 1870, which makes the paper I'm printing on 142 years old!. It was a Birmingham Library skip find of course, and in pretty bad shape when I got it.

The prints are made by cutting images into erasers.

The book has a working title of A Pagan Chapbook.

Pages drying on the clothes airer. Sophisticated studio practice!

Ice pictures

Finally, it is cold enough for me to make some more ice pictures. These are going to be made into little books, which I will exhibit in Leeds in March.
This picture shows the original inspiration for the ice pictures - the desire to capture somehow the beautiful frost patterns made on my shed-cum-studio windows

This is an image of the ice crystals taken inside the shed.

A couple of days ago I painted a blue square on the window,

you can see the ice crystals growing over it now.

And this is an ice painting. The crystals of ice make
patterns into the wet ink. Made outside at 6am this morning.

All the paintings made this morning.