Spike Print Bursary

The Peter Reddick Bursary at Spike Print Studio, 2022-2023 was a transformative experience for my practice for many reasons… some hoped for, others completely unexpected. I enjoyed the year immensely and have loved being part of a wider print community at Spike Print Studio. I’ve developed skills, found a way forward with my practice post-MA, and have begun developing a new syntax and vocabulary (almost literally) for my practice that will keep me happily occupied for many years to come.

Continuity post-MA

I joined the UWE Multidisciplinary Print MA with the aim to change my practice from being a graphic designer who printed and made artists books, to working as an artist using print and artists books as a medium. A week’s residency at the Cabin in Bucks Mills proved to be a pivotal part of this, but although I’d had my eureka moment (or rather a week) I needed to consolidate this into a new way of working. I came out from the MA with a head full of ideas that I hadn’t had time to explore…

The Peter Reddick Bursary gave me the time and space to first try these out, and then to keep experimenting, learning and developing. It’s very easy to lose impetus after doing a print degree, especially once there are no deadlines or expectations to fulfil. The energy to keep going has to come from within. I decided early on that I needed to book regular weekly time at the studio, and then turn up, and print, whether or not I had any idea of what I was going to do. Weirdly, the ideas always turned up when I did, so the strategy seems to have worked.

Another early decision was to let myself play for a year, and not to have any outcomes in mind. I gave myself the time and space to try things out, even if I knew they would take a long time and might not work. If I was being glib, I’d say that the resulting body of work after a year is a series of glorious failures. There’s something in all of them that doesn’t quite work. But each one showed me the next step to take, or another method to try. At the end of the year, my pile of glorious failures has become a stack of ideas for artists books, and part of a messy practice-as-research for a PhD. Watch this space.

Processes

I have spent most of my time working with letterpress type and the Vandercook press – particularly using Spike’s collection of Caslon type in many sizes. I had been developing methods of printing type on curved lines – which I call non-linear letterpress printing – during the MA, and developed this process further by learning how to set and print smaller type on curves (small type has a tendency to fall over). I developed ways to allow these lines to overlap randomly, and other methods to get them to print exactly where I wanted them. I spent time pressure printing with beach plastics from Bucks Mills, ending up with a method that is slightly unorthodox by putting the plastics directly on an inked plate rather than above the paper to be printed, and then also printing the ghost image, and that achieved some interesting results. I experimented with different inking techniques, layering of type, colour and papers, and using the clean rollers of the vandercook to take ink from type before printing. I’ve been making triptychs and an animation to show things changing over time. It’s safe to say I’ve left the Fine Press values of the ‘book beautiful’ far behind, but I feel that I’m starting to print work that has an emotional weight, communicating on a number of levels.

 Membership of Spike Print Studio

I am used to working on my own, so becoming a member of Spike Print Studio was a real pleasure. I tend to lay out work on the Random in the kitchen area as I print, so that anyone making a cup of tea can see what I’ve been doing. This has led to all sorts of conversations, feedback, and recommendations for reading, which was really helpful. All the members were so welcoming and friendly and it didn’t take long to feel part of the Spike gang. It’s also been very interesting to talk to other members about their work – people often ask each other for feedback and opinions – and I have learned so much from these conversations. Thank you Spike Print Studio!

Find out more about Spike Print Studio: spikeprintstudio.org