Red Plate Press
  • Home
  • About
  • Portfolio
    • Prints >
      • tumbling the gradients
      • the stone remembers
      • vezels
      • between sun turns
      • a boundary bureaucracy
      • rights of way
      • exitblurring
      • Constructure series
      • WE WILL BREAK YOUR CHAINS
      • Hits!
      • Anew A New
    • Books >
      • Here, Others
      • Engulf Deplete 1 : Water
      • vezels (book)
      • between sun turns (book)
      • a boundary bureaucracy (book)
      • rights of way (book)
      • exitblurring (book)
      • Curses
      • How the news travels
      • The Locational Series - #3 'the action of water'
      • The Locational Series - #2 'build me a city on a low dune''
      • The Locational Series - #1 'at dawn'
    • Installations >
      • Build me a city on a low dune
      • 'The Action Of Water' - 130 Vicar Lane, Leeds (2017)
    • Commissions >
      • Robert Thornton
  • Residencies
  • Contact
Wells Book Arts Center residency
Aurora, New York state
April 2017
I was fortunate to spend 10 days as visiting artist at Wells Book Arts Center at the invitation of director Richard Kegler. The Center is part of Wells College, a liberal arts institution in the town of Aurora on Cayuga Lake in upstate New York. It's a very peaceful location overlooking the lake, ideally suited to a period of reflection and working on new ideas, and the Center itself is really well-equipped.

I used the time to work through a new idea that's been with me for a while. How can I depict response to place only using text, but arranged so it also represents that landscape - or a composite of landscapes - figuratively? Or, semi-figuratively, at least. I'm interested in how apparent this is to anyone but me. A mentor of mine last year suggested I might think of such work as "traces".

Wells Book Arts Center.
Picture
The studio space made available for me, featuring a Vandercook Universal 1.
Picture
View from the Greyhound bus en route from NYC to Ithaca. The journey suggested starting points for texts and language to work with: fog and murk; leaf-less trees, spiky and skeletal; diffused, pale light.
Picture
First colour: opaque white. One forme, set in Optima, moved along the press bed in four positions.
Picture
Second colour: blue gradient. Type set at an angle using triangular furniture.
Picture
Third colour: texts 'written' while setting type.
Picture
Third colour down: vertical texts and borders/ornaments.
Picture
Fourth colour: Oblique Gothic used for colophon.
Picture
Picture
The final piece: 'exitblurring'.
Picture
The print was also adapted into a book form on heavier weight paper.
Picture
Picture
And finally... do you want to watch type being dissed? Of course you do.
Cayuga Lake, from the college campus.
Picture
The student press room.
Picture
View of Cayuga Lake from my accommodation. The different bands of colour in the lake were striking. Sitting here with a coffee each morning, the weather moved slowly northwards up the lake.
Picture
Opaque white ink reacting to Mohawk eggshell white paper. Representing that fog and diffused light.
Picture
Light bands moving along/across background texts.
Picture
Borders from the Bixler Letterfoundry.
Picture
The Center has a fantastic type archive with unused type from years past ready for new projects.
Picture
Fourth colour: title, colophon and more ornaments arranged into bird-like patterns.
Picture
Picture
The final piece: 'exitblurring'.
Picture
A simple concertina form, each with a different cover (produced during press wash-up).
Picture
Picture

Acknowledgements
​

This trip was a follow-on from my Autumn 2016 visit to Chicago and Wisconsin where I attended the annual Hamilton Wayzgoose and was hosted by Starshaped Press as artist-in-residence. Both trips were funded by a grant from the joint Arts Council England/British Council Artists' International Development Fund. Thanks also to Richard Kegler, Director of Wells Book Arts Center and Heather Buechler, current Victor Hammer Fellow at Wells, for their help and good company during the residency.
Picture

Proudly powered by Weebly