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.

Detritus

 Rugby Bike Fest today, so we persuaded our neighbour that his Harley Davidson, "Detritus" should be a model for us to draw. I pushed the boat out and did a number of drawings and finished with a linocut, I thought it would be difficult, and it it turned out to be even more difficult than I thought. As always with artists' problems, the question is, "How much can I leave out."

Unser täglich Brot

 Gieb uns heute.

An old bread board. Instead of throwing it out, or burning it, I decided to make a woodcut. I went for Uncle Death again, because he looks like he could use a sandwich...

I was channeling a lot of artists here. Tal R with the breadboard, though mine was a boring rectangular one. But also Naoko Matsubara and Shiko Munakata, because I decided to cut directly into the block without any preparatory drawing - and let it just take the shape it wanted to.

It's not a great piece, but it's somehow better than it deserves, having taken shape during what I guess Tal R means by "free falling". I tried different papers, too. First the card I normally use, then some Shoji paper which better shows the grain and the cuts and gouges in the board surface.

Cement

 Sometimes you have the urge to make something, but just don't have the strength. I cut a block of around 20cm x 25cm to do this print. But I just couldn't. So I took a postcard-sized offcut and did a small one instead. It seemed more manageable. And if it worked out, I could do a larger one another time. I could send a postcard to my future self to say, "Try this."

Anyway, Rugby Cement Works. Looming over the nearby houses. Wherever you are, it seems to be on the horizon, a vague grey mass. Something like Howl's Moving Castle.

The drawing was from memory, so only presents a rough idea of reality anyway. So the fact I just drew it on the block and it's come out mirror image, kinda makes it Every Cement Works in a way. 

When I was a kid, there was a carbide works a few miles off from where I lived. No matter how close you got, it remained a flat, black profile. There was no detail you could see, it was so black. Then it was demolished and they built a gearbox plant on the site. Years later and the Bhopal disaster hit the headlines. And there it was, the matt-black monster dominating the town. I've only remembered this after doing this print. Funny how these things will out.

Blue Coat

 When our son was in the last couple years at school, he needed a new coat. We looked online to see what was available. There were dark blue/black ones available in the type of coat he wanted, but also a VERY blue one, considerably cheaper. He felt it was a no brainer - get the cheaper one. 

Some seven or eight years later he still wears it. I was at his house the other day and saw it hanging among the more sober coats near the door and had to draw it. It was like a gang. And the blue coat had a kind of leadership role.

I like how the print has gone. Something of the Daniel Richter about it with its slightly threatening vibe, I think. It's a 5-layer reduction print in 2 shades of blue. 3 layers in the lighter blue and two in the blue-grey.