New beginnings

Small Publishers Fair 2023 was an opportunity to discuss and reflect on recent project work, and as in previous years it offered the chance to gather anecdotes from exhibitors and attendees of the fair on a pre-determined theme of Souvenirs. We were also able to establish further topics and methodologies for development, which were reflected upon and expanded at our subsequent FaceTime meeting. The next steps include the production of three new works for Winchester Book Fair (March 2024) and BABE (June 2024). These will take the form of:

• Souvenirs – a development from the Round Trip book pair
• Plot – an existing book produced in 2022 which has failed to sell(!). This will be re-visited and re-imagined through cutting up, collaging and editing to form a new edition
• Tuesday@5pm – to use data gathered from weekly FaceTime meetings in 2022, to produce a series of small books, using a similar approach to Round Trip.

First steps:
Souvenirs. an email to be sent to friends and family to gather additional content. A spreadsheet to be produced to enable correlation of material. To use a similar process to Recollections i.e. working on a larger sheet size that will be divided and cut into a smaller page size.

Plot. Using the timeline for known book fairs a proposed date for a Making Day will be determined – this will enable us to work together in the same space to re-make the book.

Tuesday@5pm. To find existing ephemera from our homes to use in developing specific subject matter. To produce a spreadsheet and collate data.

Round Trip: Conversation and Continuation

Realised individually and presented as a pair, Round Trip celebrates the time enjoyed on modes of transport each day of our concurrent summer holidays this year. Employing a shared approach to coding through conversational exchanges followed by an individual application of self-determined systems, new processes and themes have begun to be explored which offer opportunities to be continued in next projects.

Presentation at Small Publishers Fair 2023, offered time to talk through ideas and enter into conversations with others around summer holidays and most sought after souvenirs. First stories shared included recollections of travel by train, the avid collection of plastic ice cream spoons as a child, and the perfect jar of honey for looking after the plants! Interested in collecting further stories we determined to invite friends and family to contribute via an email call out. Data gathered will be collated with coding determined through discussion.

Making Patterns: The Process of Collective Realisation

Decision making continued throughout June, with further FaceTime meetings offering opportunities to clarify thinking and confirm next steps.  Materials were purchased and a making-day planned for mid-August to collectively conclude the project.  In preparation for this, the process of production was considered and individual actions identified to contribute to the collective realisation of this project.

In the established spirit of making-days, first activities began immediately with production of interpreted data on different shaped self-adhesive labels alongside social interactions. Colour, pattern, and typewritten makings were added enabling all data to be viewed collectively for the first time. Whilst some elements were successful, others were less so and halfway through the making day changes to the aesthetic and materiality of the final concertina were discussed, trialled, and undertaken in collaboration.

Finally realised, the book offers an abstract timeline of our individual and collective artistic journeys and visualises the similarities and differences in our daily working practices.  The book, 33: Patterns of Making, is shared on The Caseroom Press and will be presented at The Small Publishers Fair 2023. 

BABE: Time and Space

Participation in the 2022 Bristol Artists Book Event afforded time to think about next projects and space for conversations with others. Observations around possible starting points and approaches to making were considered throughout the weekend as current books were viewed, presented, sold, and discussed with each other, fellow participants and visitors to the event. Sharing arts practice and methodology enabled opportunities for reciprocal dialogue, feedback, and alternative ways of working to be freely offered. Inspiration and possible themes for next projects emerged including a consideration of scale and rules/instructions to inform visual outcomes in some way, an interest in things/objects of use, and beginning a project by open-ended making. Notions around two sides of a story were considered with the idea of making two individual books printed on top of each other. We determined to begin a new body of work with a series of visual outcomes produced individaully in response to our kitchen spaces. Alternative surfaces and ways of working will be trialled, the works exchanged and added to in someway and reviewed in the next five weekly FaceTime conversations.

Presentation, Conversation and Next Ideas

Participation in the 2019 Small Publisher’s Fair on 15 – 16 November, enabled the final version of Feast to be viewed for the first time. Presented alongside Recorded/Recovered and Kept (the first two books in the trilogy) enabled ideas about research interests, social history and possible stories of times past from the whole project to be shared with the audience of the book fair.

Alongside talking through something of our own working methodology with interested viewers, conversations were exchanged around the opportunity to organise ideas within books, the documentation of art history, the preferred colour of dinner plates, and the systematic investigation of found colour within vegetables. The theme of the project appeared to resonate with many of the audience, who were initially drawn to both the tiny fragments of china contained within the presentation of Recovered/Recorded and the traditional recipes presented within Feast. Discussions connected to the process, making and realisation of the project also took place, and these enabled us to begin to formulate ideas for our next book.

Alongside talking to others, time at the book fair also enabled us to reflect upon our preferred working styles, techniques and approaches to book making and to consider new ideas.  Dialogue prompted memories of previous ideas around routine and everyday objects which have not yet been realised and to which we could return.  These included documenting belongings or ideas of others through objects we have inherited, or through the passing on of information from mothers to daughters, friends to friends, or teachers to students. We were both drawn to the idea of hand me downs from mothers to daughters and agreed that it would be interesting to present information beyond domestic tips.  We were also reminded of information, which was shared by the assistant of a second hand shop in Oxford, about the previous owner of a typewriter I purchased.  The typewriter was sold to me with used correction papers which document words previously written and may contain an interesting story. We agreed to think around these ideas independently over the next two weeks and discuss further at a pre-arranged face to face meeting in two week’s time.

 

Decision Making, Production and Presentation

A pre-arranged making day afforded opportunities to share and exchange ideas, explore, trial, and undertake part of the production and presentation of Feast together. We selected imagery to represent the key ingredient within each recipe, and explored thoughts around providing something of the context of this book as a typewritten introduction. Drawing upon text written by SB in response to our project within the September issue of Printmaking Today, we were reminded of decisions made in response to cataloguing and location and agreed a short sentence to convey this.  Mindful of the time remaining to complete this book, we constructed lists and agreed timescales for the completion of Feast ahead of Small Publishers Fair in London and began to work through these alongside each other.

Having completed as much as possible, we spent a significant time planning for the exhibition of our research, development and final books within cabinets at UWE from the beginning of December.  We mapped the height, width and depth made available to us in order to get a sense of scale, and re-visited the journey of our project by listing the title of each blog posts written.  These became titles for each of the individual 16 spaces within the cabinet and very much enabled the ordering of the project from start to finish. Throughout this process, we established a system to display starting points, research, documentary photographs, work in progress and final books making use of the wall and base of each section. Once agreed, the contents of each section were collated and recorded with the outstanding tasks distributed between us.

Inventory: A Visual Record of Art, Craft and Design Education

In January 2019, we were approached by RP (a KEPT participant, and President of the National Society for Education in Art and Design) to present at The Hepworth, Wakefield as part of the 2019 NSEAD annual conference in June 2019. Informed by our collaborative methodology, the focus would be to share something of our visual arts practice with delegates, and draw upon this to lead a practical activity around memory, collaboration, communication and sharing lived experiences within Art, Craft and Design education. The invitation presented an opportunity to employ established systems of artmaking in order to collect visual data from a large group of participants, within a new working space, and limited time frame.

From January to May a series of face to face meetings, email  correspondence, and scheduled telephone discussions with P, RP, and MG (General Secretary NSEAD) enabled the content, time frame and numbers of participants to be confirmed. Under the working title of INVENTORY: A VISUAL RECORD OF ART, CRAFT AND DESIGN EDUCATION, the approved proposal stated that T and P will invite delegates to participate in a process of practical art making in response to a series of set questions which seek to investigate art and design education. Value will be afforded to being a teacher, being a student, and objects of significance that connect us.  Working at tables alongside their peers, delegates will make use of given drawing materials to systematically document their individual story on a library card. The resulting cards will be presented as a collective artwork which delegates will be invited to photograph, share with colleagues and develop after the conference. It is hoped that the inventory will be exhibited at a later date.

Drawing upon our established practice of making use of questionnaires to gather written information, anecdotes and stories from participants, we constructed a series of five questions which would inform instructions within the practical activity.  These are listed below, and were sent to delegates within their conference information packs prior to the event.

1A: Are you currently a student of Art, Craft or Design?                                               YES / NO

1B:   Are you currently a teacher of Art, Craft or Design?                                               YES / NO

2A: Select three objects which you use to make marks within your current role

2B:   Photograph the objects and bring these images to conference

3. Identify the discipline which is most significant within your current role   ART / CRAFT / DESIGN

4A: List the post code of where you achieved your first  Art, Craft or Design qualification

4B:   List the postcode of your present role

4C:   Identify the number of miles between these two locations

5A: List the number of years that you have been / were a student of Art, Craft or Design

5B: List the number of years that you have been / were a teacher of Art, Craft or Design

At conference, we presented three of our most recent artists’ books through visual and written starting points, material exploration and realisation.  Links were made to the collection and presentation of data informed by the use of systems, cataloguing and instruction art. Delegates were then asked to make a response to a series of five sequential instructions using only the given materials provided. Value was placed on making a response and delegates were encouraged to interpret each instruction  individually within a limited time frame, and then present their card at the end of conference. 65 delegates submitted a card to the INVENTORY project, of these 43 identified that their current role jointly includes Art, Craft and Design, 7 recorded their role solely within Art, 5 solely within Design and 1 solely within Craft.