Collage of dragon leaf fern prints (with ink made from rhubarb root)

paper weaving with natural ink sample offcuts

A short film I made about my concertina books for BABE 2021

A rather less productive week as I’ve been pitched back into catching up with work. The week ended with BABE 2021 – The Lost Weekend…. an online celebration of artist’s books to replace the usual amazing event in Bristol that was due to be held this year. Not the same as a real life book fair, but a wonderful chance to take part in some collaborative projects and to watch short films made by lots of other book artists (still available to watch here). I made one about five of my concertina books – illustrating the versatility of my very favourite book format, and showing some of my processes and inspirations – you can view it here).

One of the collaborative challenges set for BABE 2021 was to photograph or trace the backs of things… I made some plasticine prints of the bottoms of flowerpots from my shed. I really liked the bold patterns, and plan to carve some rubber stamps based on these prints. I also printed the backs of some dragon leaf ferns - less successful as a print, so I cut it up and made a grid collage using masking fluid and rhubarb root ink. It starts to look like tiger fur!

Finally, some simple paper weaving using more offcuts of my natural ink samples – I’m interested to see the crossover between paper and textile work that’s evolving as part of this ‘garden residency’.