Welcome to the Threefold Letter. This month, an upcoming print festival, plenteous printmaking, and an audio magazine recommendation
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My creative practice is currently entirely orientated towards the Printopia Festival which will take place at Corban Estate Arts Centre 3 – 5 May. Organiser Ina Arraoui describes the festival as a “catalyst to ignite the public’s curiosity of print.” There are talks, demonstrations, and workshops, some of which are free to attend. And there will be a print fair running throughout the festival where you will find affordable prints for sale by a huge range of contemporary New Zealand Printmakers. This will be my first year as a stallholder.
There’s also a free live poetry printing event happening on Saturday 4th May where Graham Judd from Inkiana Press will be letterpress printing poems by four poets throughout the day, which will also include short poetry readings. One of those poems will be my poem ‘Groundwork’ which I wrote about a group show at Corban Estate a few years ago, so the poem will be having a homecoming of sorts. I’ll be reading my poem while Graham prints it at 12.45pm on the 4th of May, and you can take away a copy of your very own. I hope to see you there!
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It’s been a journey working on producing a large quantity of prints which is not my usual mode of working. I currently have 50 prints on handmade paper with handmade dyes ready for the print fair. I’ve really enjoyed playing with the combinations of colours, papers, and plants and their compositions. During each printing session, I have chosen an essay or two to listen to from Emergence Magazine. Emergence Magazine is an online magazine that “share[s] stories that explore the timeless connections between ecology, culture, and spirituality”. The essays are audio recorded and voiced by their authors. There is also an annual print version which I’d love to get my hands on.
The voices in Emergence and their remarkable intellectual philosophies and explorations have carried me through this last month of printing. The essays weave new connections and threads of thinking in and around my printing practice and how I engage with nature so directly. I work in a collaboration with the materials and the materials are so close to their origins; the marigolds are from my garden, the tanekaha is gifted to me by a friend, the corn husks once clothed corn my family has eaten.
My favourite essays so far Reading the Rocks by Jenny Odell, and The Serviceberry by Robin Wall Kimmerer, and I heartily recommend them both.
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Also in preparation for Printopia, I’ve been printing business cards. The front was letterpress printed on a Heidelberg platen in Ashley Script (1955) and Granby (1930) on Keaykolour grey fog paper. The backs have nature printing of various kinds of ferns. They are all completely individual: no two are the same!