A return to London Zoo on Saturday, 26 years post-publication of 'The Monkeys' Dream' showed us monkeys enjoying the freedom of the 1960s landmark aviary. We joined them. Other animals now also have new green spaces. The possibility of eye contact, that had first drawn me to draw animals in what were mostly confined spaces, still exists. 

Now that their natural habitats changing more dramatically, come and turn the pages of 'Everything Changes' in progress at the Oxford Fine Press Book Fair this weekend. 

Leonie loved to see the architecture of the aviary again and, of course, Lubetkin's now empty modernist Penguin House. Turn the pages of her colourful homage to the new town of Milton Keynes and other books inspired by cities at the fair. 

 

So disappointed not to be able to make it to this fair. Alfie the dog is too unwell to travel.

Some p's & q's Press books that began with drawing in the museum and works in progress for 'Everything Changes' will be shown by me at Thame History Fair on Sunday 20th October, 10-4pm at Thame Town Hall. 

The exhibition 'Write-Cut-Rewrite' at the Weston Library, Oxford cheered me up. Don't expect to see anything like these sellotaped or stapled pages at Ludlow, but Christina Rossetti's cutout line of poetry makes her book look so elegant, it seemed to me that I was now allowed to make changes to a book at any stage. 

This scraped-away, once-utopian etching, created but not printed for 'The Monkeys' Dream' was changed with chine collé for a section of 'Everything Changes' entitled 'Fire-Flood'. I had to design it to slide into an envelope for this very tactile book. With other pages it will now also fit into a concertina spine to create a second version of the book. The title page is a work in progress. I was inspired at the Ludlow Fair by Sarah Amatts work. Suminagashi will be part of both versions of a book to be published in 2025. 

 

Here is an invitation to turn the pages of our books, copies of which are behind glass in The British Library Treasures Room. There will be single prints from Printess and the 'p', more books and new work in progress. 

Everything Changes II

I began from the outside, with this book (to be shown at the UK Fine Press Book Fair in Oxford, 9 & 10 December 2023) working with the materiality of print to express what I am learning about change.

Invited to make a book for 2020 about Magellan’s quest to circumnavigate the Earth, “Everything Changes” by Cicely Herbert was perfect and also worked for the times we were living through. Her playing with mirror images had inspired this small book in 1998. Magellan exchanged a mirror for enough fish for ten men when they landed in Rio de Janeiro. I began to see translations/transactions as altered mirrors.

Contact with, and news about the ‘wild’, led me to scrape away rainforest from an unprinted etching plate- the utopian last plate for “The Monkeys’ Dream” (Rocket Press 1991). Part of this etching will be one of the extra pages I slide into the spine of this 2023 version of “Everything Changes”. Ideas start here in the letterpress room and also at book fairs (Ludlow). 

 

Everything Changes

The next 'Storm of Stars' prints will probably be more like these monoprints...

Collagraphs from the experimental stage of prints for “A Storm of Stars” were crying out to be reworked and they made the centre pages of “Recovered Vol. 3” unique.

Artist/tutors Peter Freeth, Anita Ford and Julia Wilson at the amazing much-loved Camden Institute, encouraged experimentation including my first soft-ground etched collage. Printmaking became even more experimentally tactile during a residency (at Simpson School in Milton Keynes) working directly with scrap, and because it had to be safe for young participants, water-based inks.

This double page is from “Printess & the p”, still on show at the British Library. In the right-hand corner of this page is a section of squashed sacking - my first ever collagraph. The ‘lamp’ above is printed from foil, the silk dress on the linen-press is darkened with printed carborundum-coated lace and I drew into polyvinyl adhesive, and used it to coat card, embroidery wool, sheepskin and dehydrated peas and carrots. I made “gravy” from epoxy resin and for the bed; cut various vinyl wallpapers. Now, aware that everything changes, I am trying to carefully use only what is still in my studio.

Here is 'Recovered' Vol 3: the final book in the series of book works (each in an edition of 10) where dreams of the future have been expressed through hats and print. 

It is now ready for the much-anticipated Oxford Fine Press Book Fair. The prospect is so exciting - to see again beautiful books, prints and ephemera from some of the world's finest presses - over 100 stands. The fair takes place at the Examination Schools, 75 - 81 High Street, Oxford. 

£5 fee covers both days, a catalogue and lectures on Sunday. 

Saturday 5th March 11am - 5pm and Sunday 6th March 10am - 5pm. I hope to see you there! 

 For a small 'Open Studio' event this week - outside and inside my print room at Essex Road.