Print might or might not have an 'inferior' tag - though I'm not really sure how many people take much notice - but so, by all accounts, does illustration.  Is it that illustrators in the main have a master or masters?  Is it that they have sold their souls to commercial enterprise?  Is it true that they're considered second rate in some way?  Does anyone really care?  I mentioned to an artist once that I didn't understand that they were so very different, fine art and illustration.  He gave me a look and said "They just are".  Ok.

I only mention it because another of my regular stopping-off points in Bath is the delightful Rostra Gallery (previously Rostra and Rooksmoor) and their current exhibition is of works by Graham Carter - one-time (or, more probably, still an) illustrator, whose style remains definitely illustrative.  Son and I thought it was all great - though my own snobberies showed through when I reached some works and thought, in disappointed mind-tones: oh, gicleé, what a shame. 

Above is a small selection of Graham Carter's work, but there were shiny metal pieces and sculptural pieces and all sorts.  Some of the drawings in particular reminded me strongly of a very favourite illustrator, Shaun Tan. 

I like Rostra Gallery a lot, at least partly because it shows an enormous number of prints (that would be original prints, natch.  Or as some call them - ha! aren't words fun? - fine art prints) and plenty of craft (oh dear - another loaded word), much of which I would have no problem taking home with me, if I didn't (sometimes) remember how full the house is.  Need more walls. 

It had never struck me that print might be considered an inferior art form - for all I know, it might be a well-known opinion if you've been through art school? - but I was reading back through Laura Boswell's studio diary blog the other day (still haven't made it back very far) and came across her regretting this but accepting the bias as just the way things are seen.  Oh.  And then I remembered back to college where I first took printmaking.  I was in a ceramics class when the tutor of the sculpture class was saying to our tutor that theirs were the only two fine art subjects (being taught at the college).  I wasn't impressed (it was the 'exclusive-us' tone of the comment) but put it down, at the time, to the tutor who was speaking likely having a bit of a thing for the other one.  However, maybe it was genuinely how he saw things?

And then there's the hierarchy of print methods.  Laura again - she is a lino and a woodblock printer, and suggests that some people out there consider her chosen trade akin to potato printing at infant school.  That one struck home - there is no doubt that the public can tend to say, dismissively, 'lino?  oh yes, I remember doing that at school'.  End of subject, really.  Within the printmaking world it's mostly thought of as a learner skill, I think, although the excellence of top practitioners would surely be recognised.  

Then collagraph - I cannot credit the person who said this because I was browsing and didn't take note of her name, but she said that in her (school art?) world, the very word collagraph encouraged others to downgrade their opinion of a work of art accordingly - and she knew that 'proper' artists came up with alternative names for collagraph, just to avoid the perceived stigma.  Which is a little bit lowering but presumably just one opinion from a good wide range.  Luckily there would seem to be enough excellent printmakers out there to champion every print method, from monotype to linocut to collagraph (not to mention all the rest) and, in spite of many colleges and universities shrinking or dispensing altogether with their printmaking facilities, print seems to be retaining plenty of popularity elsewhere.    

Well it's been a bit of a slog to get to this point, but I think I have two sets of collagraphs ready to frame up.  One has four miniprints in it - that was the altogether more straightforward one - and the other has nine and it hasn't been an easy journey.  Quite apart from the hassle built into the collagraph process in the first place, there was everything else as well.  Colourways, what images, which ones to leave out, the overall order - all have changed on a regular basis.  Only two days ago I was persuaded that I needed something new to make the whole thing work, so I cut two new collagraphs (I only needed one, but just in case...).  I knew, really, but I'd allowed myself to fall into a too-late-now, no-time-to-make-it-better, it'll-have-to-do-as-it-is mindset.  I'm glad I was pushed into doing the extra plate, though - it made a real difference.  And even at the last hour I was changing the colourway of one last print, but now I'm done (I think - still might change the order they're in).  Here they are (unstuck, unframed) - poor light in spite of all my best efforts.  I'll put better pics on the website later.  If I get better pics.   

Pretty much the same walk, different impressions:-

plenty more edge weeds - pineapple weed, hawkweed, ribwort, nettles, dock, tansy, oh lots of others - but less obvious now than before, perhaps because there are more flowers everywhere;
a fabulously cobalt blue building to make your eyes ache (I'm sure it wasn't blue before) but with a soft, powdery feel that made it seem wrapped in felt or velvet, or perhaps sprayed with bright blue flock;
lots of net curtains.  I always want to try to draw them, but definitely from a photo - I shan't be camping out with a sketchbook outside someone's front window;
A thick-looking curtain, surely made from some heavyweight, dull-coloured cotton, with an interesting tear in it - but on (slightly) closer inspection (neither am I approaching people's front windows to peer in) it seemed instead to be an ancient net curtain, dense with dust;
a tomato plant, heavy with ripe fruit. on someone's front windowsill;
half of the final page of a chapter or a paperback book - with books on my mind at the moment, after the fair, I almost collected it with the intention of seeing what it might lead to, but I decided not to - surely there will be other discarded half-pages from books in the future?
pansies, though very dainty so maybe violas, (and, later along the street, roses) so pure a white that they surely glowed at night;
surprisingly quiet seagulls;
jackdaws squabbling mightily;
a little arch under the railway line, filled with jungly growth and looking very inviting and interesting (but I know it isn't really);
acid green (something like hedge lonicera) with dark red (japanese maple).  The shapes (plain oval against deeply cut) also contrasted nicely;
when I got back home, the wild roses in the garden were looking pretty picturesque too (thankyou to the birds that presumably planted them).  It could almost be summer, with just a little more sunshine.    

The straightforward across-on-the-M62-and-up-the-A/M1 journey to Newcastle cannot really be described as interesting.  Crossing the Pennines is always good, especially this particular time with the horizon silhouetted stunningly against a lovely early morning sky (why does a low sun in the morning look so very different to a low sun in the evening?  Or is that an illusion?) but I always forget how very wide Yorkshire is compared to the western side of the Pennines, and how relatively flat and featureless the route north is (I'd rather go up through Cumbria and then across on the 'B' road next to Hadrian's Wall - definitely a feature-full trip just about all the way).  Still, there were little landscape thrills, such as shiny bright fields of rape against a backdrop of dusty purple cloud, and a fleeting glimpse of Durham Cathedral, not to mention some amazing skies and an astonishingly broad strip of rainbow touching base in the field next to us on the return journey.  Due to some slapdash route planning just before I left, I missed the Angel of the North on the way up, but really, we needn't go into that.

Enough to say that I made it to the Baltic on the south bank of the Tyne and checked in for their first Artists' Book Fair.  A very enjoyable two days meeting lots of new book artists (and a few old acquaintances) and talking with them; meeting visitors who'd never been to such an event before and talking with them; meeting all the lovely organisers and staff associated with the fair and talking with them (you always talk a lot at book fairs).  It wasn't overly busy but it wasn't overly quiet either and I think everyone there had a good time.

One of the pleasure of book arts is how different everyone's work is - book arts is very much an umbrella term.  I'm only going to pick out one artist this time, whose work was completely different to anything I had seen at a fair before - Marie Marcano, whose experimental calligraphy was just fantastic. 

I didn't get enough of a look at the rest of the Baltic on this visit, though I did make a brief trip to the second floor library where the Book Apothecary, a Travelling Museum of Books, was on show.  I was (being just a tad keen on books) most taken with the curving wall of oldish books in the window - there were some fascinating tomes there, and I would happily have spent a few hours (or days) deconstructing the wall, leafing through any number of its building blocks and putting it all back together, perhaps short of just one or two of the most covetable bricks...

It really doesn't need saying, does it, that I didn't do all the preparations that I meant to, before the fair - making more stock of old pieces and perfecting the latest book - but it didn't matter.  Today at least, I am going to do nothing at all.

A quick plug for the Baltic and the Festival of the North East for this next weekend.  I shall be driving up very early on the Friday, but as long as the weather doesn't produce fog or torrential rain or (I'm sure it's possible) snow, it should be quite a nice, quiet and pleasant journey.  I know there are plenty of people up and around a lot earlier than I normally am, but not too many, surely...

EVENTS, WORKSHOPS & EXHIBITIONS INSPIRED BY ARTIST’S BOOKS  

In collaboration with artist Theresa Easton, BALTIC hosts a series of events, workshops and exhibitions in June, inspired by artist’s books as part of the Festival of the North East.

LEVEL 1
ARTIST’S BOOK FAIR AT BALTIC
Friday 14 & Saturday 15 June 2013 / 10.00-18.00
BALTIC becomes a marketplace with over 30 exhibiting stalls by book artists from across the UK and beyond, including presentations from The Sunderland Book Project and North East Photography Network. Lucy May Schofield is also on hand to deliver a dose of Bibliotherapy with her wooden mobile library box. On display in BALTIC Library are presentations by graduate students from Cleveland   College of Art & Design and Book Apothecary: A Travelling Museum of Artist’s Books.

LEVEL 2 / QUAY

NORTHERN BOUND
Saturday 1 – Sunday 23 June 2013
Participant groups from across the region demonstrate the art of bookmaking using printmaking techniques and themes close to home such as identity, learning between generations, social history and storytelling. This exhibition runs until Sunday 23 June.

LEVEL 2 / LIBRARY

BOOK APOTHECARY: A TRAVELLING MUSEUM OF ARTIST ’S BOOKS
Saturday 1 – Sunday 16 June 2013
Book Apothecary presents Archive, a site specific installation by Dawn Felicia Knox which explores the taxonomies found within the current collection of artists’ books. This presentation runs until Sunday 16 June 2013.

DON’T JUDGE A BOOK BY ITS COVER 
Friday 14 – Sunday 23 June 2013
Creative book installations and sculpted book work by graduate students from  Cleveland College of Art & Design. This presentation runs until Sunday 23 June 2013.


LEVEL 1 / WORKSHOPS

CALLIGRAPHY WORKSHOP ADULTS
Friday 14 June 2013 / 10.00-12.00
£27 (£22 concessions) / Book online
Led by Dr Manny Ling, this taster session will introduce you to the fundamental principles of the art of calligraphy. All materials provided.
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BOOKBINDING WORKSHOP (ADULTS)
Friday 14 June 2013 / 14.00-16.00
£27 (£22 concessions) / Book online
Deirdre Thompson will introduce traditional methods of bookbinding that can be used to make notebooks or for binding your own artist’s book

BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art, South Shore Road , Gateshead , NE8 3BA
Tel + 44 (0) 191 478 1810 E: info@balticmill.com
FREE ADMISSION Open Daily 10.00-18.00 except Tuesday 10.30-18.00
Nearest Metro Stop: Gateshead .
Quaylink bus service available from Gateshead Interchange and Newcastle City Centre.

So I'd 'done' Henry Moore and moved on to Julia Atkinson's 'Retrospection'.  Her work included plant portraits in pastels and charcoal, which were fine enough but left me untouched; discharge screenprinting (not quite sure what that means) which also didn't make me care; a single print, 'Bamboo Garden', a linocut on a veritable stack of various sheets of paper which (surprise surprise, a linocut) did please me.

The rest of her work consisted of photo collages (here's one, though the one I liked even more, of those pavement panels of squares of glass which presumably let light into cellars, isn't available to show here)

and inkjet prints (two of the many - the second one, Graffiti 5, has pastel over the top)

and her visual connections assemblages (below is Bones - that central, marbly circle is a wasps' nest, though I don't know how she made it flat).

Although I liked the assemblages, and felt an urge to go out and start my own visual connections collections, they puzzled me slightly.  Are they a form of sketch book? A visual indication of a compulsive urge to collect?  A sort of school project?  I wasn't sure if they had some kind of a point that I should be getting.

I had to laugh (and then look round guiltily) when I went in to this particular exhibition.  The introductory panel began 'Julia Atkinson takes photographs of surfaces and patterns that the less observant would pass by' ... given the number of times you come across groups of arty types drooling over someone's photos of rust or rotting wood or railings, I'd say it was almost one defintion of artistic.

The third (free, in the entry gallery) exhibition was of oil paintings by Charlotte Sorapure.  The panel said something along the lines of  the pictures looking familiar themes but then the viewer would see something to throw them off balance.  Maybe.  There were a few with a sense of menace, but fairly obvious menace.  Maybe the more subtle efforts passed me by.  Some I rather liked (Into the Night, below, and the unseen brass instrument player - I'm not prepared to commit on what sort of brass instrument - from 'Ballyhoo', below that), but mostly they weren't my sort of thing.       

And now I'm back in the north, thinking of all the books I haven't yet made for Newcastle's Baltic Artists' Book Fair and wondering vaguely if I will, and thinking too of the collagraph project I'm quite urgently keen to finish off.  Busy week ahead. 

Of course, while I was in the vicinity I visited Bath's Victoria Art Gallery.  It's all changed a bit, and although that really boils down to entering the main room via the little side-gallery, it feels surprisingly different.  Not claustrophobic exactly but very much less open to the world.  I've signed up to their new  year-long exhibition pass because I'm likely to go to most of the shows but  I don't really like the new system - it gives it a not-for-all feel, something a bit too exclusive, whereas before anyone might have wandered in and discovered something new and exciting.  The main collection is still free and some smaller exhibitions in the side room will be too, I'm sure, but while you might make your way in off the street on a whim, I'm not sure how often that whim would involve you actively choosing to go upstairs.  Perhaps I've got it wrong and there will still be plenty of open-access shows.  If not, though, I reluctantly understand.  The pendulum swings and nobody can run an art gallery without sufficient funds.
 
There were three artists showing this last week, of whom the best known was Henry Moore.  He's a bit like Lowry - no, no, wait a minute, I'm not talking similar style - in that most people might think they know what his work is like, and I wasn't sure, being the idle viewer that I so often am, that I'd do much more than stroll round and move on.  I know he's a Great Artist, but I've never paid him attention or been 'drawn' to his work.  However, I really took to some of the drawings.  There was a selection of prints from his Reclining Figure album, one of which took my fancy because the (inevitably) sculptural woman looks as if she is another species that truly belongs in the landscape, as if it's her natural environment and she's at home there:    

And another of which reminded me so much of Giorgio de Chirico:

There were some fascinating sketches of shell forms, bones, and the connection between them and his sculptures - I came away liking Henry Moore more and perhaps with a little more insight, so that can't be a bad thing.  As for such sculptures as were there, I found myself thinking all the time of Michael Ayrton.  I got quite involved in following up his work (I do that) whilst writing an essay for art A-level, including an abortive trip while in London for the day to where one particular piece used to be (in Postman's Park), only to discover upon getting home that the City of London had moved it more or less round the corner.  Bah!  Better preparation needed, obviously.

There was a handful of photos of Henry Moore working, and given my general lack of interest in him I was surprised and a little spooked by how very familiar he looked - until I remembered the lifelike model of him in a portrait sulpture exhibition at the Holburne last year! 

One show down, two to go.

Wow, what a lovely week that was!  Beautifully warm but with a nice fresh breeze and rather cool nights - I'd call it perfect summer weather, though I allow that others prefer it hotter and a lot less breezy.  Each to their own. 

I spent the week soaking up summer in Wiltshire, at my parents, though I pitched up en route (see pic above ) in south west Oxfordshire (as it is these days).  I'm currently following up on an obsession or three - Wiltshire's chalk landscape and ancient monuments, plus the Ridgeway - and Uffington's white horse and environs seemed a great place to start the week.  And it was great - the lanes round there are so empty that you can stop the car, get out and hear nothing but countryside, and beautiful?  Oh yes!  There were coolly dappled lanes and gently basking lanes and every single one was bordered with a lacy froth of cow parsley, dotted with the richer creaminess of may blossom and set off nicely with the acid green and soft copper of early summer leafy growth.  If I could have moved in locally, there and then, I think I would have.   

Wiltshire is my county and has plenty of its own white horses, but I'm sure no one would deny that the Uffington horse knocks them all dead.  It's amazing and it has Wayland's Smithy and the Ridgeway thrown into the package too.

The whole week was full of sun-soaked landscapes and ancient stones (I made a trip back to Avebury) and preposterous hillocks (and back to Silbury Hill) and I had an altogether self-indulgent and wonderful time.