Learning Curves

Talking with my mother this evening I realised that in both my paid work and my creative work I am immersed in hugely steep learning curves. I spend six days a week in intensely challenging and rewarding learning environments.
In both the planning office and the print studio it feels like there are quite high stakes riding on my ability to learn fast and produce high quality work. No wonder I've been quite tired and a bit cranky lately.
Sometimes I just don't have the energy to wax lyrical about the good things I've experienced and even less energy for finding a good humoured irony to describe the inevitable disappointments and challenges of working at outer edge of my abilities. Sometimes I have to fall back on my policy of 'if you can't write something positive, beautiful, witty, informative or hopeful then don't write anything'. Sometimes blog posts never leave my imagination or have a chance to expand out from a scribbled sentence in my journal.
Just so you know I may or may not get round to posting about:

• an account of my visit to NorthArt Gallery and the Bookworks exhibition which is on in Northcote, Auckland until 3 October.
• the story of the runaway Ossi cat (now returned to the lap of luxury and catnip treats)
• a review of The Book As Art, my pick as the book-about-artist's-books book of the year
• the full body book I'm working on
• the paper bag proof subscription series
• my new mp3 player (another steep (though short) learning curve but so very very good)
• Spring Cleaning Day at TKPT (7 October, do come along and help if you are in town!)
  
• Deep Economy, electric cars and sci fi novels
• local body elections
• Magnolias, kowhai and port wine trees
  

If you like, you can use the comments function to vote for which of these posts you would most like to read, which might help motivate me to write it.

Never argue with a poem that knows what it wants

A certain amount of reinventing the wheel is surely inevitable when one is learning an ancient craft without an expert teacher by one's side. I know I shouldn't feel embarrassed about not knowing things that become obvious as soon as pointed out. I appreciate that making mistakes is a time honoured way of learning. I am, in fact, exhilarated by the process of figuring things out for myself and I'm a courageous asker of questions to all and sundry. But heavens, last Friday was a slow clamber up the old learning curve.

I decided to work on my printing project first and my cleaning project second, which meant that only two drawers of lead type got the vacuum this week. It was lovely to don the printer's apron and set up the etching press in the relative cool of the morning. My two tone experiment worked like a dream so registration became nothing but a bad memory. But I just couldn't seem to get a crisp, even quality to my prints.

Rightly or wrongly I do have a tendency to blame my materials or equipment when things don't go my way. Irritatingly, the scrap paper I had fished out of the recycling bin at work seemed to take the ink much better than the nicer cartridge paper I was planning to use- something to do with the smoothness of the surface I think. I ended up with a lot of prints but none I would bind since the ones on marked and creased scrap paper look better than the ones on clean paper.

It's not that I don't like the imperfections, I think they look edgy and interesting as well as ugly and dirty. I can imagine circumstances in which I would use prints like that, for example in works relating to punk, protest or peripatetic* discomfort . But I want to be able to choose where I use that effect, not just impatiently tolerate my beginner's incompetence.

Expert advice arrived after I had started cleaning up and pointed out a couple of variables that either I hadn't thought of (adjusting the felt) or given enough attention to (pressure). So maybe it's not necessarily a paper problem that's causing my prints to look like crap. These are all factors that require further testing next time. One sensible thing I did manage to do was take copious notes on each print about what I was doing to produce such crap images.

On the other hand, it's amazing how much better the printed text looked as soon as I folded the pages into vertical quarters. On the flat paper the words are, well, flat. In the mountains and valleys of an accordion fold the words march along full of rhythm and energy. The text stands up proudly and somehow manages to look crisper. It's as though the poem is rejecting the passive structure I had been planning and is demanding to be housed in a much more dynamic book.

*My newest best word... means itinerant.

Throw off Friend

I taught my first letterpress class today. Given that a year ago I was a complete novice, stumbling without guidance up a trial and error learning curve so steep that I should have had crampons and a rope, offering to teach might seem arrogant. But I am going to be leaving Te Kowhai (and Whangarei, and New Zealand) soon, and we want to make sure that my hard won knowledge does not all leave with me.

I had two keen student, both passionate printer-artists with a genuine interest in letterpress. I did no planning or preparation for the class other than decide to lead them through the whole process of composing a few words, locking in, proofing, printing and cleaning up. We managed to complete all this, with a cup of tea as well, in under three (pleasantly exhausting) hours.

Because I was self taught for nearly six months before Jim and the other printing posse adopted me, I knew what bare essentials to focus on for achieving a half-decent print without endangering themselves or the equipment. Some of the things I glossed over (like make-ready) will no doubt come back to haunt my students, but they are experienced enough at relief printing on other kinds of presses to figure it out (I hope). And I will always be email-able.

Among the things I did emphasise was the importance of the throw off lever. The 'throw off lever is your friend' I said, demonstrating its wonderful ability to make or withhold contact between the platen and the type. In the storm of printing jargon I was throwing at them, and with the need to co-ordinate three limbs in different movements and rhythms while balancing on the fourth, they both forgot the name of the lever and took to calling it 'friend'.

I feel sure that Ruth and Jeanine will keep letterpress alive at the Quarry after I am gone. They caught the exhilarating buzz of simultaneously pumping the treadle, sliding the papers, throwing their friend on and off, laughing, talking and admiring their text. Printing on a platen jobber is an exciting addictive activity. They can look forward to fumbling their way to making fine prints, hopefully without all the mistakes I made on my way. I feel relieved to know that my beloved Arab press and the cabinets of type will be used, maintained and appreciated.

I also feel a delicious melancholy to be leaving my friend the Arab. I have never bonded so closely with a machine, never felt such strong sentiments towards an inanimate object, never anthropomorphised a chunk of metal, the way I have my sweet Arab. He has sometimes infuriated, often frustrated, mostly pleased and regularly thrilled me. He has engaged my body, my mind and my soul in a collaborative, creative process. He has inspired new directions for my work and my life that were unimaginable until I stood in front of the feed board, placed my foot on the treadle and spun the fly wheel. The Arab has given me a bigger life than I knew and now I am throwing him off to go live it. All I can leave the Arab is some new friends to engage with, and I have found him two with enough passion and enthusiasm to keep his wheels spinning.

User Profile on Upstage

Click on the photos to enlarge, so you can read the text on these screen shots from the live performances of User Profile

I seem to have a persistent attraction to the steep learning curve. I am always putting myself into situations where I have to learn new things through total immersion in order to publicly achieve high goals quite quickly. And then, having (at least superficially) got the hang of that thing, I move onto the next challenge. I admire anyone who spend years mastering their craft or becoming expert in their field, but I have finally come to accept myself as a dilettante*.


This 'insatiable craving for novelty' is one of the few things I have in common with the narrator of my poem, User Profile. The poem is the object of my latest dabble, in cyberformance, which involves typing in the lines of the poem which appear as text on the screen and in a computer generated voice, and clicking on different icons to change images on the 'stage', play sound recordings and move avatars around like actors. The audience can type in comments which also appear as text, but silently, so it's a very interactive form of theatre!


Earlier this week I did four live online performances of User Profile, as part of the Upstage Festival 090909. Online performance proved to be challenging, exciting and fun. Here are some of the screen shots from the performances. If you click on the photos to enlarge them you can read the text. The words in bold are being spoken by my avatars, and the light coloured words are the audience, commenting throughout the performance.


The images I used are all from my collection of vintage sci fi novels which I scanned and edited into backdrops and avatars. At the very last minute I had some help from Mem, to upload some sound effects (from FreeSounds), and the spooky space noises were a great hit. In fact I had great feedback in general, and even got asked to do an encore of my second show. Hopefully someone recorded one of the performances as video, that I can post/link sometime, so you can see and hear the whole thing.


I also managed to see most of the other performances in the Upstage Festival, which were all quite different, although there was a tendency towards the absurd/dada/advante guarde, which made my little story seem quite conventional by comparison.


*Dilattante, is of course a pejorative term, like bureaucrat, another of my careers. Along with my attraction to novelty, I seem to have tendency towards despised identities such as wowser, feminist and greenie (though this latter has suddenly become fashionable which is quite disorientating).

Exhibition at Hamilton Girls High School

Artist's books on exhibit at Hamilton Girls High School
(NB click on any photo to see enlarged details)

Although I've never curated before (other than my own work), I'm always up for the steep learning curve, so I offered to curate an exhibition of artist's books at Girls High towards the end of my Residency. With the help of my #1 Open Studio girls we got the show up today, and looking pretty good, if I might say so myself.

Human Rights themed books from Year 10 Art students

The exhibition consists of some of my work and many books created by students during my time at school. My contributions include Deep Time Writer's Residency, a tunnel book that I made to fulfil the school's commission as part of the Residency. I'm also showing various works in progress as photographs or as actual books such as my Residency journal and some 277 million years of painted scrolls.

Deep Time Writer's Residency, a tunnel book (more about this one in a future post)

The largest work in the exhibition is a collaboration between me and the students who've been coming along to my Open Studio sessions. We've made a lantern book with an abridged version of my favourite poem that I've written during the Residency, If Jellyfish Wrote History.

Jellyfish Lantern Book

The girls and I have spent several weeks folding 100 paper lanterns, some with the words of the poem, and some decorated to represent jellyfish. It's been a fantastic project and a dozen or more girls have contributed at least one or two lanterns, with a stalwart crew putting in many lunch hours of origami with me.

Isabel, Deahna and Aleisha have been loyal Open Studio participants since I arrived at school, and helped install the exhibition.

Other Open Studio regulars have their own book projects included in the exhibition. Of special note is Cheri's Tale by Jessica Imswary and Aimee McGregor who have worked very hard to complete their lengthy manga comic. Their good-humoured collaboration and mutual commitment to meeting the exhibition deadline has been outstanding.

Jessica and Aimee spending yet another lunch hour making their comic in my studio.

A spread from Cheri's Tale by Jessica and Aimee

Almost half of the student contributions have come from several Year 10 art classes taught by Jennifer Fernyhough and Nellie Ward Wallace. These classes made artist's books as their major project last term, using previous social studies research into human rights as their content. The intense subject matter (the Holocaust, Apartheid, slavery etc) and the devotion of many classroom hours has produced some very powerful and moving artist's books.

Jews in the Holocaust

Most of the other student books on show were created in Year 9 &10 English classes that I worked with for just 1-3 sessions. Hundreds of girls have made little books with me over the past 3 months and it was certainly difficult to choose just a few to include in the show. Almost all the books have original content: poetry or stories and illustrations which provide a light, playful contrast to the intensity of the human rights books.

Lots of little books from junior English classes and Open Studios

The school's senior students have been immersed in end of year assessments for most of my tenure, but I did get to work with one Year 13 extension English class. They made some wonderful books, represented in the exhibition by Baily Stewart's stunning 'A film guide to Psycho'. As with the best artist's books it is impossible for a photograph to do Baily's work justice: it harmoniously combines a variety of structural elements with a limited colour palette to powerfully convey her analysis of the classic film.

A film guide to Psycho by Baily Stewart, Year 13

The exhibition is up until 24 November and members of the public can view it during school hours. If you are in Hamilton please come to the Atrium in the Administration Block (the big glass building accessed from Ward Street). I'm sure you will be impressed.

Isabel Brooker made this scroll as an independent project