Starting over again.

Fri 9th May 2014

2014 started badly. Returning to Leicester Print Workshop after the Christmas break I discovered the Boschabets I had been working on before the festive season were failures. A single mis-alignment had thrown the whole lot. I had to start again.

My mood matched the weather; grey. The squiffy batch of prints had been my attempt to print names using the initials S, H, and E for the remaining 18 vinyl cut animals made at the start of the Fantastical Animal Alphabet project.

Back on track, and with those three finally printed, I then drew-up, cut and named another 42 Hieronymus Bosch inspired animals. I’d decided to extend the number of letters; the time consuming part of printing like this is setting up the letterpress jig. I have two long galleys with the furniture all set and with the correct page spacing so it is only a matter of dropping in the new names and the correct capital letter for the book and you’re off.

I say ‘only’, but in reality everything takes a surprisingly long time. Cutting the long strips of paper and marking the fold lines takes a day. Setting the six names in Gill 30 point lead type for four letters, so 24 names, takes a day as well. But you do get to use a composing stick, which is a good as it sounds.

I print them in batches of four letters at a time. Each of these print runs takes four weeks including drying time between handling. First the names in two halves, followed by the animals, three at a time. The paper is kept as a single long length for the printing of the names, which are printed using an Editioning Press. At this stage the length of the paper means that its potential to swivel is the big problem.

For the animals the paper is given its first fold in the middle. This is due to the size of the bed on the Britannia press. I have made a cardboard jig with three-square holes into which I drop the inked up animal vinyl. The correct animal needs to go into the correct hole, inline with its given name and the correct way up. Any distractions or loss of concentration can scupper a sheet of paper.

I am now almost finished. Another three weeks of printing will see that part done. I will then dismantle the jigs and put all the type and furniture away. Back at home I have been working on constructing and gluing the book covers. Eventually my Boschabet will consist of fourteen letters.

a b c d e f g h I J k l m n o p q r s t u v w z y x

It is only in writing this that I have realised I can’t spell Boschabet with my letter, which I think, is kind of fitting for a Boschabet made by a dyslexic.

I think I have spoken in the past about being an inveterate list maker. I make lists for the day in hand, the week, the month and the year. I have two-year list, a general one, which covers household, allotment, garden stuff and places to go, things to see. The second yearly list is for art. Depressingly many of the things on this list are on it for a year or two, sometime longer. My biggest failure however is not the finishing, but the doing anything with. I often fail basics like photographing work, or worse not putting them onto my website when I do have the photos. I seem to lack the ooomph, that ability to make the final push to make the idea come to anything other than just being.

I have been contemplating this for many years; do I lack ambition or confidence? I think a bit of both, but mostly I lack focus and disinterested in that part of the process. I only want to make the work, I’m not interested in promoting it. I am work on many things at the same time, scuttling off between home and various workshops, working on different pieces in each, never seeming to reach a conclusion. Or certainly not in a timely manner. In reality one needs time to think, to work out how to do something, to have a few false starts, or to wait whilst something dries, is fired etc. Sometimes I forget how much I do even if it hasn’t reached a finished state in the conventional sense. It exists and I am generally happy. Which is a nice thing to be.