Anna Bloom: This belongs elsewhere.

 This is another of the "editorial" comments Schwitters makes in the poem. "This belongs elsewhere. (by the way)", immediately follows the first line. Its as if the poet immediately regrets coming straight out with his love right at the start. So out comes the blue pencil...

Anna Bloom: Beloved of my 27 senses

 "O you, beloved of my twenty-seven senses, I love you!" This is the opening line of the poem, so it's our first sight of the unsuspecting Anna. Over the years I've had lots of thoughts about how to approach this one. Fairly early on, I thought he'd see her when she's out and about shopping. At the market, maybe. The last few days this developed into her eating an apple, so the poor deluded fool can think of her as tempting him.

You only have the poet's word for it, but there is something unconvenional about Anna Bloom. It seems she is gossiped about at the least. Eating in public can do that. Believe me.

Anna Bloom: This belongs in the ashcan

 Another print for Anna Bloom. The poem contains three of these little refrains, "This belongs...(by the way)" where the poet wishes to carry out brutal edits at the very least, or even dispose of the poem altogether. This one I decided to go with a dustbin with a touch of Top Cat about it. For after all, the whole poem is quite comical in its doomed quest.

Who are you, undocumented damsel? (Anna Bloom)

 This is the second of the Anna Bloom illustrations. I had done a simple outline drawing way back when I had the original idea. I've just taken that and made it more blocky. I always liked the simplicity of this one, and the slightly threatening vibe, implying the slightly stalkerish feeling I get from the poem.

I love Anna Bloom red!

 This is the first of the Anna Bloom illustrations. I may tweak it some more, maybe losing the pink background. 

Here we have our tortured lovesick loon desperately caressing his blanket. The drawing "came out of my head," and I even spent time lying in bed trying to imagine what I looked like from the ceiling. But when I was cutting it, Eric Gaskell came and looked over my shoulder and said, "That expressionist painter, that painting..." and I knew instaintly he meant Kokoshka's Bride of the Wind. It's not the same design, but it has the same desperate vibe.

Later on I realised there is something of the Annie Liebovitz photo of John Lennon and Yoko Ono about it, too. Funny how these things are filed away in your head.

Anna Bloom returns

I think it was in 2014 I did my own translation of Kurt Schwitters' poem Anna Blume. I posted about it on the Policy Police blog because that was the locus of my arty stuff back then. I also thought that I should do some illustrations, and had a go at some drypoints, but they didn't really work out. So the project has been lurking among the fluff in my back pocket since then.

It's Open Studios time again and I was looking for something to do, so I decided to revisit it. I can't remember how much I may have tweaked the poem, do here's the text again:

ANNA BLOOM Kurt Schwitters

O you, beloved of my twenty-seven senses, I love you! - Thee thy thou you, I you, you me. - We?

This doesn't belong here (by the way).

Who are you undocumented damsel? You are - - are you? People say, you would - - let them talk, they don't know how the church tower stands.

You wear your hat on your feet and walk on your hands, on your hands you walk.

O, your red dress, sawn with white pleats.

I love Anna Bloom red, I love you red! - Thee thy thou you, I you, you me. - We?

This belongs in the cold embers (by the way).

Red bloom, red Anna Bloom, how can people talk so?

Prize question: 

1. Anna Bloom has a bird.
2. Anna Bloom is red.
3. What colour is the bird?

Blue is the colour of your yellow hair.

Red is the cooing of your green bird.

You simple girl in everyday clothes, you dear green creature, I love you! - Thee thy thou you, I you, you me. - We?

This belongs in the ashcan (by the way).

Anna Bloom! Anna, a-n-n-a, I trickle your name. Your name drips like soft tallow.

Do you know, Anna, do you know yet?

One can read you from behind, and you, you fairest of them all, you are from behind as you are from the front: “a-n-n-a”.

Tallow trickles caressingly over my back.

Anna Bloom, you dripping creature, I love you!

I'm still quite pleased with the translation - it seems to have survived nine years in my pocket so seems worth trying. We've just had the first 4 days of Open Studios and I've got a couple of prints done, but I've been too knackered to post about them here, so they all come in a bunch, like buses.

PS 10th July 2023. Just revised my translation again. I substitute the word creature for animal. It seems to fit better with the love thing. It was brought to mind by my very occasional remembering of the song, "No, John, No". "On yonder hill there stands a creature..."

PPS 31 July. Finally replaced "clothes" with "dress" - there is enough of an implication of clothes in dress. And dress makes more sense vis-a-vis pleats. I think so anyway.

Skinny Woman

 The starting point for this was one of the life drawings I did back in March. It was one of the 3-minute drawings. It's a scribbly affair - working fast to get it done in the time. But I worked on simplifying it, making it more of a line drawing.

The other week I was browsing ebay (great art-historical source) and came across a few prints by Michael Hofmann (b. Chemnitz 1944). He used a technique like this, so I thought I'd give it a try. First I printed an uncut block in black, then a block cut with lines printed in white over the top. Then finally the colours.

My first attempt didn't work out very well. The lines were a bit weedy and the black and the white wood blocks seemed to fight with each other. So I decided to use lino for the uncut black to give a flatter background. Then I re-worked the white block, giving more variety to the thickness of the lines. I'm much happier with the result.