The Winged Messengers exhibition opens at the Hahndorf Academy in the Adelaide Hills tomorrow. All prints are for sale, (all reasonably priced A5 size) with proceeds after commission to be donated to BirdsSA, the South Australian bird conservation fund.
This is the first of a planned biennial series of international print exchanges, initiated by Adelaide printmaker and teacher Julia Wakefield, with the theme of the show celebrating the hope that birds often seem to symbolise. Printmakers from Australia, USA and Singapore have contributed.
This is my print lament, a reduction linocut of sorts. The subject of the print is the Sugarloaf formation at Hallett Cove in South Australia. While I was there drawing, early one winter morning last year, a Nankeen Kestrel landed, perched and watched the sea.
The erosion lines were carved from the lino block first, then printed in pink on Tengucho tissue paper (9gsm). The sky was then cut away, leaving the shapes of the mountain and bird. It was printed again in brown, but on the other side of the paper, creating the crossing lines.
To assemble the final work the printed tissue was torn in half vertically to make two layers, they were placed on top of one another and hand stitched to the thicker rag paper.
Layering tissue paper that's been printed with translucent ink gives the colours a pleasant glow, just as our sky had that morning.
image:
lament (detail) 2014
linocut with hand stitching
12cm x 7cm (paper size: 21cm x 14.8cm)
