Image 1: Poster for Material Process, using part of one of my Fundamental drawings
JUNE Art Crit North Cumbria – Material Process – Exhibition | Kendal Museum
Material Process:
Artwork from a north Cumbrian collective, curated with a creative focus on materials and processes. Explore their varied contemporary approaches to ceramics, glass, paint, printmaking, sculpture, and digital mark making.
The People’s Gallery, Kendal Museum / 8th June – 1st July / Thurs-Sat 9.30-4.30 / admission free
kendalmuseum.org.uk @kendalmuseum
Artists:
Anne Waggot Knott, Dorothy Ramsay, Laura M R Harrison, Catriona Archibald, Susan Young, Jane Corbett, Steve Meyfroidt, Amy Story, Leo Ponton
Image 2: Exhibition space just before the preview evening opened
Back to a town I lived in some years ago; a return for the June exhibition slot at Kendal Museum Gallery, as part of a group show by members of the North Cumbria Crit Group. We’re a band of about a dozen artists working across a range of media, which this show demonstrated through its careful curation to the theme of “Material Process”.
I showed a small part of my recent Fundamental body of work (also shown recently in Penrith’s Gallery 4a), along with a new set of four monoprint drypoints, the first successful ones from my new etching press!
The prints came about after I noticed shadows falling through a window onto a wooden chest that we have in the living room. I made quick sketches through the day from different viewpoints, and some photographs as well. When I reviewed the sketches later, it was the geometry that caught my eye, particularly when looking at the chest head on.
Image 3: Sketches in A3 book
I sketched out some ideas and found a very simple composition of three stacked arrangements of light and shadows on the top of the chest that I was excited to develop, possibly as an etching. Little did I know that by chance I would come to acquire a new etching press a couple of weeks later!
To explore the geometry, and the different planes of perspective involved in the situation, I made a software drawing machine that allowed me to tweak various aspects in the search for interesting compositions. Once I had the machine built for the original shape of the the top of the wooden chest, it was easy to make it draw different shapes, so eventually I ended up with four related drawings.
After trying to make a physical drawing from these compositions, using different pens and different papers with my pen-plotter, driven from the software I’d built, I decided that maybe printmaking would be more successful. Once more through the experimental loop, trying different techniques, different types of plate material, different ways of using my pen-plotter… until eventually I found that drypoint on aluminium is not only possible with this process, but actually quite exciting!
Video 1: using an Axidraw plotter to make a drypoint plate
Image 4: One of four drypoint monoprints from my Shadows series
Image 5: Exhibition view of four Shadows drypoint prints
Image 6: Bonus exhibition view of work by Jane Corbett
Image 7: Bonus exhibition view of work by Dorothy Ramsay
Steve Meyfroidt 