Rosario

I started printmaking two years ago and this is one of my early prints and still one of my favourites. Yesterday at the Shipley Alternative Market a number of people commented on it and I realise today that it's not even on my blog... until now.

In 2009 I was in Rosario, Northern Argentina where I climbed many, many steps of a monument to the flag (!) to take in the view over the river. It was good but in the opposite direction the sunlight was catching the blinds in windows of an otherwise unprepossessing apartment block. I loved the pattern of the balconies,windows and the blinds stacked up at different levels, glinting in the sunlight.

As I was working on this print I kept thinking that it reminded me of books stacked on shelves and many people have asked whether that's what it is. To me it doesn't matter what you see in it. I just loved the image and wanted to work with it. I tried it in three different colour schemes and it has a different feeling in each.

This is a limited edition of 12 prints, in varying colours, each numbered and signed and there are a few still available at £40 (unframed). Get in touch if you'd like one!

Bespoke framing can be arranged with my in-house framer if required and we have a range of mouldings and mount boards to chose from.

The Chemical Works

A fragment of old wallpaper

and a staircase in an abandoned works were the starting point of my latest print, the second in a series of staircase prints that I'm working on in collaboration with photographer Simon Sugden.

Countless feet must have trodden these steps. Now there is just a stillness about the place.

Pirate in a box! He could be yours!

Sometimes I find things. Bizarre things, discarded things, unwanted things.

They become part of my stash of interesting stuff until different bits come together as something new such as... tadaaa!....Pirate in a Box!

Pirate: found with broken leg in car park in Batley. Leg now mended. Lived beside large Buddha head in our garden until someone stole it, leaving just the lonely pirate, a bemused West Ham gnome and a big gap.

Turtle: found on Ilkley Moor

Miniature fish-embossed frying pans and other small fish items: from a small bag of Kitsch found on ebay.

Mango box: from my mango box hoard.

Paper fish stuck on box: enlargements from my postage stamp hoard.

Free-standing, moveable metal fish: hand-cut and etched by me many years ago. Found loitering about the house.

No mangoes, pirates or turtles were harmed in the making of this artwork. For the pedantic amongst you, the mangoes were eaten, but a long time before I ever started thinking about putting this pirate in their box.

...AND NOW FOR THE AUCTION!!!!

This Pirate in a Box could be yours! My mad sister Jo and her equally mad husband Rob are having a 'Bring Your Own Art' Party on 24 Aug 2014.

I will be auctioning this off at the party and 20% of the proceeds will go to Macmillan Cancer Support. My friend Steve has already expressed a very strong interest in owning this much desired item. It may be his by the end of the day or it may be yours... 

If you're not going to be at the party and want to put in a bid before the day, just let me know! It will go to the highest bid at the end of the art party day at 4pm on 24 Aug 2014.

E-mail me at jennyzigzag@gmail.com with your bid!

Approx size of box 25cm x 20cm x 7 cm

All that's left

I've recently started doing some collaborative work with photographer Simon Sugden who has a similar passion to me for abandoned and derelict places.

Taking his photographs as starting points, I'm working on a series of prints based on staircases in empty buildings. There's a feeling of somewhere leading up, leading down, not knowing what will be found. Stairs lead us somewhere, but we're not sure where. People have walked these stairs before us. Will anyone walk them again? Who was here? What happened?

This is the first photo that I started with. It's from some abandoned offices in an old building the centre of Bradford.


Initially I played around with repeating and flipping the stairs, multiplying and staggering them to create a confusion of up and down, in and out.

I wanted to combine the stairs image with text relating to the past life of the building but I've not been able to find out what the offices were used for.

Instead, I decided to use documents relating to the past of my own home and the people of its past. They too have come and gone, leaving behind their mark, but mostly unnoticed and unremembered.

I kept the script fairly lightly coloured so it didn't fight for attention with the spiralling of the stairs.

Much of the text is hidden so you notice the words but can't quite work out what it says. Like the people of the past to whom it refers. We get glimpses of their lives, but there's so much we can only guess about them. Just like the life of the old offices.

This is now available to buy in my Etsy shop along with some of my other screen prints & lino prints at www.etsy.com/uk/shop/jennyzigzag

And you can see Simon Sugden's fabulous photography at www.flickr.com/photos/suggys_photography

Thinking of Home and the Chinese stamp

This weekend I was at Joshua Tetley's 236th birthday party at The Tetley in Leeds as part of a celebration of Yorkshire creativity. I took some of my prints, including this one that I made a while back and blogged about previously (see entry Thinking of Home, 1 April 2013).  

A man asked about the print and in particular about the Chinese postage stamp image on it. He is a lecturer in Chinese politics and told me that the stamp celebrates the first anniversary of The Peoples' Republic of China (1949 - 1950). Not reading Chinese myself, it was exciting to learn that and also that he decided to buy it to hang on his office wall!

The Dreadful Project

In anticipation of the première of "Penny Dreadful", a terrifying saga reinventing some of the most terrifying and horrific characters from literature, The Sketchbook Project recently invited 1000 artists to “illustrate a monster, create an eerie scene, or share your greatest fear of something that lurks within us all—in the shadows.”

Here's my contribution...

And yesterday I got the following email from the project:

Hi Jenny,

I simply wanted to reach out to you to send our "Congratulations" on behalf of The Sketchbook Project team! Out of the 1,000 participants from the "Dreadful" Project, your artwork was chosen to be published in The New Yorker! I included here a link to the article, and there are hard copies of the issue all about the city where you can find your artwork on paper!

We can't thank you enough for taking the time to participate, and are excited to see the amazing places you go from here with your art!

Two big thumbs up,

Kate Lewis

Community Manager

The Sketchbook Project

www.sketchbookproject.com

Well! That was a surprise and I'm very excited! Here's the link:

http://www.newyorkeronthetown.com/experience/youre-invited-sketch-with-a-sense-of-dread/#c_0

Open the link, then click the sideways arrows to scroll through the artwork. Health warning: the central blue arrow gives you a preview of Penny Dreadful and it's not for the feint hearted!

Dead frog

Many thanks to my friend Gillian & her little lad for acquiring this dead frog from the pavement! Not everyone would have done it, but some people just know how excited I will be! Shame they couldn't find the head, but just look at the amazing fine bones in the feet, visible through the dessicated skin.

Teapots

Screen print  I created from a photo I took of teapots in a window in Amsterdam...

And this was the photo...

And some shiny kitchen things in the adjoining window...

Age is just another number

One of my friends recently had a significant birthday and invited us all to contribute something to hang on a tree / washing line of life to celebrate. Here's my colourful creation, playing on the number picking game I used to play as a child. This time it has much bigger numbers and words of wisdom about age and life instead of the unkind things that kids used to put inside!

Hide and Seek

The other half of the group portrait project we did last term (see previous entry entitled The Portrait Challenge). This is the self portraits.

In the shadows

The Responses to Art group met at Bradford Industrial museum last month and I finally got to join them. Artist Steve Gumbley is currently exhibiting Shadow Machines and Singing Paintings there. He talked about his work with light and shadow, introducing us to his shadowgraph 'From Horse Power to Hydrogen Power', involving models of all manner of items relating to power, from cooling towers to bicycles, chimneys to galloping horses. He has assembled these on a large, slowly moving turntable with a small, low light source on one side, creating shadows on the far wall. Objects close to the light source project huge shadows, whilst those further away create smaller shadows. As the base revloves, the shadows move in relation to each other, growing and shrinking and interacting in different ways.


We had been briefed to bring with us small items which may create interesting shadows and there were boxes full of wire, paper, small toys and other ephemera for us to delve into as we then created our own shadowgraphs on themes such as Procession, Fairytale and Urban Landscape.  

We then went on to create individual pieces on the theme of power and energy to add, one by one, to Steve's big revolving shadowgraph. Using some of my weird but beautiful collection of hedgehog bones, a few feathers and the bird skull and dead bee that my sister gave me for my birthday (brilliant! Thank you Jo!) I created a fantasy flying creature.

Next Responses Art Group, for anyone who wants to get creative, is at Cartwright Hall this Thursday, 6th March 2014, 10.30am. It's a lovely building with some beautiful artworks. This session will be a response to some of the Indian silk paintings on display there. 

Chillies on a Plate

More mono-printing. This time based on a couple of shrivelled red chillies on one of my favourite plates.

Box of Bones

Many years ago I found the remains of a hedgehog in my garden, just the bones and spines. The rest had rotted away. They were so delicate and yet so strong and each one like a tiny sculptural object. I cleaned them up and put them in a box. 

In this lino print I worked on the different shapes of bones emphasised by the compartments of the box. 

I followed this with some mono-prints based on individual bones. These have a much more lost and other-worldly feel to them.

Hmmm...

Having spent the last few months renovating and decorating, my blog has been sadly neglected. Now I have just gone on to it and discovered that all my pictures have been replaced by no entry signs. Ho hum. Is that because I haven't written anything for so long or is it something more drastic? I need to investigate! Here's a test picture.

...and now, several days later, I have finally finished re-instating all the photos and must try not to delete them all again! Now to start on current work!