Anna Bloom: Tallow trickles caressingly over my back

 This is the 18th and last picture for Anna Bloom. It is number 17 in the series, the penultimate line of the poem. It is about pain. It is about the pain of his unrequited love. But also the pain that is preferable to doing something about it. The pain of being a martyr to his own passion. A kind of grandstanding, I feel.

I definitely need to go back through these and make colour blocks for about 12 of the 18 prints. Red in the first half, pivoting through the single blue and turning green in the second half.

It has been a very interesting process. Going through the poem line-by-line, searching for some cue for my visual interpretation. Schwitters was one of those artists seeking to create a Gesamtkunstwerk - a total work of art - so everything links together for him, visual, auditory, tactile. Maybe he sought to appeal to the "twenty-seven senses" in his art.

I've also got to think now about producing this in book form. Both an "art" book and a "book" book. We shall see how this progresses.

Anna Bloom: from behind... from the front

The one where our man gets excited that Anna is a palindrome.

"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”."

I felt that the poem definitely hits the bottom of the pit of creepiness here. This takes the "simple girl in everyday clothes" and turns her into a child. I definitely got a slight Rolf Harris vibe in translating that I at least hint at here.  

In the picture I see him utterly worn out by his obsession. Looking at her name in a mirror. I think when it comes to colour, I'll shade the bits outside the mirror in green...

Anna Bloom: I trickle your name...

 Here he is, alone, playing games with her name. "a-n-n-a" he says. His fantasy seems to be moving away from the real, flesh-and-blood girl, and becoming focused on her name.

Tallow was a poor man's candle. It didn't last long, and it smelled. Along with the cold embers, this is a clue that our man hasn't got much by way of material resources. Perhaps he doesn't have much to offer. Maybe she's really way out of his league.

Red bloom, red Anna Bloom...

 

I had mostly cut this last weekend, so it waited all week to be printed.

This line is the reason I translated Anna's surname. The pun is there in the original German, so it needed to be included. Puns are things loved by oh-so-clever young men. It gives you the illusion that you can see things others are just too ignorant to spot. A subtle precursor to the logically faulty Prize Question.

I felt the bloom ought to be a rose. The flower of love and all that. The rose here is taken from my original drawing, but back in 2014 I had imagined Anna from the front, her eyes closed and her nose/mouth obscured by the rose. I like this better. I think it emphasises that Anna isn't party to our poet's fantasy.

Coming just before the pivotal Prize Question, it's the last of the red pictures. Before everything turns green.

Kind of Blue

 Took a holiday from Anna Bloom to do this. The evening before last C was sat opposite me at the table. She was looking intently at something on the internet. So I decided to do a quick drawing while her attention was elsewhere. After a couple of minutes she said, "Oh, no!" and did this. It was too good to miss, so I scribbled a quick biro sketch in the 30 seconds she held this pose.

I decided to print in dark blue. Firstly because I had some, and secondly because she looked kind of blue. I tried some nice paper (pictured), but it didn't come out as well as the not-so-good stuff. Such is life.

Steve Davies: Made at the Alex 21 - 30 July

I've taken over the walls at the Alex for an exhibition until we close for August. 

All the works on display here were made after we moved to the Alex in February 2022. More than that, nearly all of them were made when we were open to the public. When the doors are closed, there is plenty of other work to be done, running and maintaining the place. So it’s something of a surprise to me that I’ve got so much done. Partly because of this limited time window, I tend to work at speed. Make decisions quickly. Let my body take over. Sure, mistakes occur. But the point is to work with them. In the moment. 

Printmaking is a graphic art. As such its roots are in drawing. It comes out of organising and selecting from the world. A way of honing things down, of cutting away what is not essential. A way of dealing with too much information. Printmaking is also a way of sneaking up on your subject matter. The process of cutting – taking away the “non-drawn” parts and working in the mirror image of the final print – creates a distance between the artist and the work. So there is always something in the end that surprises me.

Anna Bloom: Simple girl

 "You simple girl in everyday clothes, you dear green creature, I love you!" Now this is a strange thing to say. Up to this point in the poem Anna has been quite unconventional. She is acrobatic, wears loud clothes, is gossiped about. Suddenly she is a simple girl in everyday clothes. 

Have I mentioned this before? I once knew a guy who had a crush on a 6ft lesbian. He used cute diminutives in refering to her, even though she could probably take him down with one hand tied behind her back. But it was his way of giving his doomed pash even the remotest possibility of a future. So if she's a simple girl, she's in his league.

So that's why I've given Anna a more sophisticated vibe here. Just to strike a discordant note with the statement. Also she's wearing a military style coat to make her green...

Anna Bloom: Cold embers

 

"This belongs in the cold embers (by the way)." The last of the "editorial" comments. Well the last from me, it's the middle one of the three in the poem. I imagined Schwitters, after having stayed up all night writing, throwing his manuscript into the fire which has long since gone out. This is based on one of the first drawings I did for this project, way back in 2014. I still like it. It's the kind of open fire I remember us having when I was a kid.

Anna Bloom: Red is the cooing of your green bird

 

This is based on one of my old drawings from 2014. Who knows what kind of bird it is? Some kind of finch, maybe. Especially if it's green. I love the idea of birds saying things in human language. But all that meaning is not there for the bird. It's just another song that they maybe like the sound of. I think when I get round to a colour block, I'll print it all green. Even the bit that says red. Just because. Or maybe because of Cousin Miles... like Green in Blue.

Anna Bloom: Blue is the colour of your yellow hair

 It's not such an unusual observation these days, is it? Anyway. Her hair is blue because she dyes it.

I'm a little disappointed with some of the drawing, but not enough to re-do the whole thing. I might try a little tweak here and there,,, or maybe not.

Anna Bloom: you dripping creature!

 This is the last line of the poem. There he is in the previous line, burning himself with candle wax while here she goes about her daily life oblivious to his infatuation.

Plenty of guys are like Macbeth's proverbial cat, "letting I dare not wait upon I would" in matters of romance. Our protagonist is just like this. The pain of hot wax seems preferable to him, rather than face the possiblity of rejection.

Anna, we know will be all right. Somebody will dare to ask her out. Likely sombody with fewer "issues".

Art at the Alex Summer Show 2023

 Seeing as we had cleared the place for Warwickshire Open Studios, it made a kind of sense to follow straight on with a big exhibition that would fill the building. 76 works by 40 artists. It's going on at the moment but I've only just done the flipbook catalogue. Here it is

Anna Bloom: Prize question

"Prize question: 

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

This sits pretty much in the middle of the poem. And around about when our poet starts to really fall apart. His obsession is starting to get the better of him.

I thought of making this a silhouette so that I wouldn't be giving too much away. As you might guess, the answer contains colour, so let's keep this black and white. In the end I decided that the bird wouldn't be a shadowy silhouette. It gives a little detail in the middle and helps differentiate the bird from Anna's hand.

Anna Bloom: Let them talk!

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

I made a lot of abortive attempts to come up with this one. In the end the picture came out of a quick scribble with a biro. I thought the covered mouth and the pointing finger are sure signs of the gossip. After doing this I can see something of a "Paar" by Karl Hubbuch that I have spotted recently. I put this pair outside the church because... Well it saved me the trouble of having to deal with that metaphor directly in a separate print. And also church-goers can be a bit judgy sometimes, can't they?

Fire flight

Regular fire exit signs are so... mundane. I've spent much of the last week drawing running naked women and finally arrived at this design this morning. 

The fleeing woman and the arrow are separate so that I can change the direction of the arrow. The whole thing needs to be tidied up a bit but I like it. She is every bit as "readable" as the ubiquitous stick figure, but brings a bit of joy to a grizzly situation. Everybody expects a bit of nakeness in an artistic environment, don't they? This also illustrates why life models always sit on their dressing gown. 

Either or both parts fit nicely on a card, so you can send it to your loved ones to say, "Flee now!"

Anna Bloom: You wear your hat on your feet...

 Either it's the madness of love. Or maybe she really is a circus performer. Either way she has caught his attention and turned his world upside-down.

Anna Bloom: Red dress

 "O your red dress, sawn with white pleats."

 I've spent a lot of time struggling with these pleats. I've tried out several drawings over the years. Sawn pleats. Pleats don't really make zig-zags, like saw teeth. So what kind of concession do I make to poetry or to the construction of dresses? Definite artist problem. This one came to me in a scribble last night. And I developed the drawing this morning. I also added feets. Because they rhyme with pleats. And I thought I'd double down on the artist problem thing.

As these prints have appeared it has become more plain that they are going to be black/white with blocks of colour. There is so much colour in the poem. I shall have to wait until I have made the red block to see how much sawn-ness is in this one. But I'm happy that it's a dress that somebody could make if they wanted.