Print Elective.   31st January, 2012.

I started my second elective yesterday.    On Friday we had a chat with Des and Fiona and they gave us a run through procedure and what was expected of us in the Print Workshop.   We also got our project brief 'space' and we got the weekend to think how we might interpret it.
Over the weekend I defined space as 'a continuous area that is free, unoccupied, available, as distance from one another, as room, interval, gap, as stacked, high-rise, multi-storey'.
However as the weekend progressed it became more and more apparent to me that space could mean something else entirely.   After very fraught discussions (being kind here) with two daughters planning a 21st birthday party, I needed head space and the only place to find this in my house last weekend was in the shower.
So yesterday I started to look at this personal space and how I was going to create a visual image from this experience.    I was hoping to convey a feeling of noise, mayhem, and argument outside the shower door and that it stayed there and didn't invade the shower cubicle.   Again how could I do this visually.   Colour was the answer and I looked at the colour wheel and harmony and disharmony of colours.   Other images I considered for the brief were alternative spaces such as the capsule hotels in Japan, rooms made of big cement pipes, rooms made with giant beer cans and pods high in the trees in Canada.

These are some other spaces I looked at for the project.

capsule hotel in Japan

inside the capsule hotel

room pod in Canada

room in a giant beer can in Denmark

I realised after I had picked these images that they were connected to the the shower in the sense that these spaces are also very personal, a refuge or a space to fit one person.

Below are the pictures I took in the shower, looking out and they are what sparked my initial ideas.

Here are the results of my mornings work in print.   The idea started to take on a life of its own once in the print room  and as well as disharmony I started to look at splash.  I tried to convey this through mono print using white spirits.  I hope to revisit this on Thursday and look at other ways to make marks and splash against the glass.

I had a lot of bleeding under the plasters I put on and this was because the white spirit diluted the ink and it got squashed out under the plaster in the press.   In print no 5 I got the affect I wanted by doubling the plaster so it soaked the ink much better.    Des tells me I can rework the others  and I hope to do so next time I'm in the print room.  The last prints are traces left behind on the newsprint I used to soak up some ink residue before I put them through the press.   Didn't bin them because I thought they were interesting in themselves and I just kinda like them.