Julie Doucet prints at Castor and Pollux

Along side Mike's pot party, down on the seafront we are getting ready to hang Julie Doucet's lino print illustrations.

Opening on the 23 April, this small, but perfectly formed group of prints were made as illustrations for ‘Chroniques de New York’ by Jean-Francois Jouanne.

Born in 1965 in Montréal, Julie Doucet was educated at a girl Catholic school. Then she began Fine Arts studies, first at the CÉGEP du Vieux Montréal (the equivalent of junior college), later at the Université du Québec à Montréal, where she completed a degree in printing arts. During her studies Julie Doucet took interest into drawing comics, and eventually devoted herself completely to that funny art form. Her comic book, Dirty Plotte began life as a photocopied fanzine. In it Doucet would document in french and in english her day to day life, her dreams, angsts, fantasies. The series was first published in 1991 by Drawn & Quarterly, in the comic book form. Shortly afterwards she won the prestigious Harvey Award for Best New Talent. She left for New York city, where she spent a year related in ’My New York Diary’ In the 1990s, she abandoned the medium of comic books and went back to printing. Woodcuts, linocuts, silkscreen printing, followed by an abundant production of artist’s books. She took part in many group exhibitions and, finally, in 2006 she had her own solo exhibition of her print work at the galerie B-312. Julie Doucet now writes and makes collages. Mostly.

You can see the prints that will be on show here.
http://www.castorandpollux.co.uk/2010/03/print-exhibition-julie-doucet-23-april/

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Road Roller Printing - Pics

Despite very blustery weather and a very doubtful looking start (heavy rain) 6 BAF artists met at the pavilion gardens to print specially commissioned lino-cuts for the lobby of Brighton Art Fair.


Brenda Hartill, Jane Sampson, Helen Brown , Ann D'arcy Hughes , Hugh Ribbans and Bernard Lodge all cut a 90cmx90cm lino block over the summer and we printed (some of) them today.
We were using a road roller as the blocks are too large to fit in a press and although the sun shone most of the day the conditions were not made easy by very strong squalls twirling our paper, pushing dusts leaves and stones onto the block and at one point turning our canopy into a kite.

The blocks though were great and some of the results outstanding despite the working conditions.

We got some spectators and Fred Pipes sent me this video he edited on U-tube


Jane Sampson keeps the 'blanket ' in position as the roller slowly applies pressure


Bernard Lodge and Jane begin to peel the print from the block


The print 'Harpies' revealed


Lino blocks ready to ink (ann D'arcy Hughes' the universe)


Brenda Hartill's finished print.

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Dunford Wood - Handmade Wallpaper

Browsing one of my favorite blogs Design*Sponge from New York I cam across this fantastic wallpaper from Dunford Wood (Hugh Dunford Wood) who is based in Lyme Regis. Hugh trained under and was inspired by Peggy Angus who lived at Furlongs in Firle (Sussex) for many years
The designs are cut by Hugh in Lino and hand printed. Hugh has colour suggestions on his website ranging from zinging contrasting reds and pinks or citrus colours, to natural colours, or you can choose your own colours. We may well invest in enough for a wall when we eventually get round to decorating.

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