Friday 28 October 2016

Etching with 'A Belfast Peace'

When I visited Belfast almost a year ago, I took a lot of photos of the city as it now is, as opposed to when I knew it in the 1970s and 1980s. In those decades, it was a very tense place to be because of the violence that plagued the city and Northern Ireland in general but I'm very glad to say that it is now a much changed place with so much happening socially, architecturally, in the arts and in tourism. The same is true of Derry/Londonderry which I have now visited for the first time. I was here to attend an exhibition opening in the Verbal Arts Centre and I'll be posting about this visit in my 'Thread of the Spirit' blog. In this post, I will include images and details of another exhibition 'Stitched Legacies of Conflict' on at present in the Roe Valley Arts and Cultural Centre in Limavady, a few miles from Derry, as I have one of my conflict pieces 'Continuum', in this exhibition.

The photographs I took of Belfast last year inspired me to make a piece within my 'Conflict' work which looks toward a peace which has begun and is ongoing, if still not perfect. Added to the pleasure of thinking about a peace that seemed impossible for so many years - the Troubles are generally spoken of as lasting 30 years - the medium for my new work is etching, something I carried out with such joy as an undergraduate and to which, thanks to the help of Andrew Baldwin in the School of Art, I have now been able to return!




View of presses in the Printing Department, School of Art, Aberystwyth University



The bench I work at in the Printing Department.

I started off with a copper plate  -  I had only worked on zinc before  -  and used the new ground for etching and aquatint called BIG (Baldwin's Ink Ground) that Andrew developed as a non-toxic method for etching and aquatint - when I worked in the medium years ago, health and safety weren't regarded in the same way that they are now! It was such a pleasure to be doing etching and I have fallen in love all over again with the plates, the prints, the method and process  -



Photo of my etched copper plate on my bench.


Inking up the plate  -  the 'Titanic' workers with 'Rise' behind.


The image that you see on the plate has, as its main components, my interpretation of a bronze sculpture in East Belfast of three figures that represent the 'Titanic' workers of 100 years ago and, behind them, a sculpture in steel by the Falls Road known as 'Rise'.

The figures of the three workers, sculpted in bronze by artist Ross Wilson, stand on the Newtownards Road and, unveiled in 2012, they depict the 'yardmen' walking home, a tribute to the industrial legacy and folk history of the workforce of East Belfast. This was made as part of East Belfast Partnership's project Re-imaging the Newtownards Road and some of the most contentious murals in the area were removed and replaced with 'No More' and 'Ship of Dreams' community artwork.




Harland and Wolff's iconic cranes, Samson and Goliath, one of which I have pictured here, can be seen rising above houses in the background at some distance behind the bronze figures. I have not included the cranes in my etching.




This is a night-time photograph I took from the car, using my phone, of the sculpture 'Rise.

Built to represent hope and known locally as 'The Balls on the Falls', it is a structure in white and silver steel, almost 40 m tall and 30 m wide and I think it is particularly effective seen lit up, when its two geodesic spheres, supported on slender stanchions, seem like ethereal lace against the dark of the night sky. The large sculpture stands on the Broadway Roundabout at the junction of the Westlink and the M1 motorway, a main road into the city with access to the Falls Road via Broadway and it is visible from a considerable distance and can be seen by both sides of the community. Artist Wolfgang Buttress, who designed the work, wanted it to be simple, universal and the same when looked at from every angle.



The print showing the sculpture 'Rise' with the 'Titanic' figures.


From plate to print


For the very first trial pull, black without extender was used but it turned out to be much too dark, so extender and Prussian Blue were added. This use of the extender to thin the very dense ink and adding the blue to the black gave a much more subtle colouring to the image. 




Using a single ink mix, Prussian Blue with Black and extender.


Andrew talked to me about the method called a 'double drop' which would involve inking the whole plate in Vermilion, using extender to define and give the desired character and effect in particular areas, then repeating the whole process using Prussian Blue. I thought that Vermilion could give a warmth to the image, so we tried this out on the plate. However, instead of the sepia tones I had been expecting from the mix of red and blue shades, the colour that resulted was very much more burgundy than sepia and I didn't think this tone suited the piece. Vermilion is also a very strong colour and, as well as the tendency toward burgundy rather than sepia, I felt the colouration Vermilion gave with the 'double drop' was much too strong, drowning out the blue shades almost entirely and robbing the piece of the subtler atmosphere the Prussian Blue had given it.



Experimenting using Vermilion as a 'double drop'.



Inking up and printing to find the right colour balance and treatment of the inks.


The solution was to use a recipe of Prussian Blue, Black, a little Vermilion and touch of extender as the initial colour for the entire plate. The plate was inked up using this colour recipe, then extender was applied to appropriate areas where a softening or suffusing of tone was wanted. After this, Vermilion was applied only to sections where it was needed and again suffused using extender. The result was a satisfying blue/black with the vermilion adding hints of warmth to the lower sky and foreground of the image.


 

The finished print on Somerset paper. I gave it the title 'A Belfast Peace'.

I was thrilled when Andrew said he would like to include my print in his exhibition 'Breaking New Ground'! This is an exhibition of prints using the etching and aquatint ground known as BIG, developed by Andrew. The exhibition features work by artists from all over the world and it opened on Friday 7th October in the School of Art Gallery, Aberystwyth University and runs until Friday 18th November 2016.

I find this is a really exciting addition to my processes and I have now printed onto linen and am stitching the etching on paper  -  next blog will include images for this next stage in my work! 







Wednesday 30 March 2016

Poetry and Sick Children's Hospital

In January, I had a wonderful time recording volunteers reading my poems in the National Library. It was so interesting and moving to hear Colin, Mary, Paul and Mike reading my words, to hear their interpretations of what I have written and to see them moved by one poem particularly, 'Fragments', written out here beneath the photo of Ed and myself.

I had organised the day and poems but Ed came along to act as sound technician and his help here was invaluable. He has a great skill in working out the recording levels so that nothing peaks and each reader's voice comes across really well. Ed and I have cooperated before on the music elements of my installations and we work very well together.

These recordings have given me a lot of material to work from and Arthur took some photos to make a visual record of the day. The Drwm room's auditorium was an excellent venue for the recordings and I am very fortunate to have been able to hire it. The library staff, too, were all friendly, courteous and helpful and I'll be really happy to use it again if I need to do some more work like this.


Self with Ed in the Drwm Auditorium


Fragments

People morphing in and out of
smoke like clouds,
hides mangled bodies   -

as nine-year-olds to die?

at thirty-five,
    at sixty-eight  -
wandering,     dazed,
shirtless, shoeless  -

‘he was right out of it’

Massive explosion just
removed her from this earth  -
we were screaming and panicking,
screaming but deafened,
     bones slammed tight
    couldn’t hear anything
            no sound    -

as nine-year-olds to die?

devastation, just
     devastation   -
heroes were police and
ambulance crews   -
came to help the dead and
dying, not knowing if
another device would
remove them from this earth   -

as nine-year-olds to die?

he was running  -  shouting!
spotted the thing in the
back of the car,
warn everyone   -

       Bomb!

in his teens,
           caught full force
of the blast   -

‘he was blew to pieces’   -

as nine-year-olds to die?

looking for her children,
she drew level with the car  -

                Bomb!

removed her from this earth   -

as nine-year-olds to die?

‘no sound, not of bird
        or anything’

he planted the bomb,
        went to the pub,
ordered a whisky   -

she was lying there,
her body full of hacks,
skull of man or woman
embedded in the railings   -

as nine-year-olds,
                   nine-year-olds,
         as   nine-year-olds to    die  ?



Before this time in the National Library, I had been back over to N. Ireland to go to Belfast to visit one of my old places of work, the Royal Victoria Hospital. I had worked here in the late 1970s and beginning of the 80s, first of all as a student nurse in the Royal Belfast Hospital for Sick Children and later as an Art Therapist in the Geriatric Unit of the RVH.

When I returned home after graduating from Aberystwyth University with my initial degree, the Troubles were raging and jobs in the arts were few and far between. I had been led to believe that my university degree would still enable me to work professionally in an art studio but this was not the case. The etching I had done at university was 'as monks had done it' centuries before and I absolutely loved it but I knew nothing of the then modern techniques of photo litho offset, was told that my work was 'fine art' and I was an academic  -  this last said, on one occasion, as if it might be some kind of disease!  -  and so I struggled to know what to do. I thought of further study at Belfast Art College, of teaching there, of teaching at Queen's University but there were differing problems, including no posts available, with all of these things.

I followed a career for a couple of years which, in the end, I decided just didn't suit me and then I thought of that which had also attracted me for a long time, nursing. It seemed a compassionate path to take, especially in light of the bombs and terror that daily plagued Ulster; healing, in the face of destruction, seemed the right thing to do, so I started to do interviews to get into the profession. My own health had suffered over the years, so it was at the Royal that I found a sympathetic ear to my desire to nurse and they gave me a chance to train in the children's hospital, as they thought my physique wouldn't cope with adult nursing.

The position as student nurse, as I possessed a degree, had some problems but I very much enjoyed studying biology and other aspects of the nursing course and found being on the wards so interesting and rewarding. Eventually, however, my health did give out and I had to leave because I didn't have enough resistance to infection. However, I will never forget my time as a nurse, the people I met, staff and others, conversations I had, the job itself which always felt so much more than 'a job' and, above all, the children and their struggles, so very early in life, against implacable illness. I have expressed my feelings about this and written of situations I faced in my poetry and this is all part of my investigations into and interpretations of life in the Troubles.

It was a pleasure to meet Margaret Rooney and Colin Cairns (my maiden name, as it happens!) and I so appreciate all their help in getting me in to the hospital and seeing around. Margaret took myself, my sister, Joyce and Arthur round, gave us lunch and. afterwards, she even gave me a nurse's cloak identical to the one I had during my student nurse days! I loved my deep navy cloak  -  these cloaks were made of  heavy, closely felted wool and were so warm to wear  -  I don't think nurses have them any more, which seems a shame  -  gone, along with caps and the old dresses and aprons which had been the uniform for many years.




The Sick Children's Hospital building  -  a new one is presently under construction.



Statue of small child in the hospital by the entrance hallway


Former Quiet Room

This room pictured is now a meeting room but, when I nursed in the hospital, was where the body was taken when a child had died. It was a part of the training to sit with a dead child for one hour, alone, as, if it happened when you were on night duty, quite possibly alone, you had to be able to cope with dealing with death. I sat with a nine year-old who had passed away with leukaemia  - his body so still, he looked completely at peace.



Plaque for Florence Bostock

This plaque is on an inner wall in the Children's Hospital  -  I stayed in Bostock Nurses' Home during my nurse training period.

A funny little anecdote regarding the Nurses' Home is that an announcement went out one day asking nurses to stop sunbathing topless on the roof, as this was distracting the army  -  so that's why the helicopter was going round and round and round .  . . .!  (I didn't actually take part in this activity myself!)

One thing I did do was wear my hooded dressing-gown with the hood up one evening when I was crossing over to the kitchen to make coffee  -  someone at the other end of the lengthy corridor jumped up in alarm  -  I gave a wave to reassure them  -  at least, I could be a friendly ghost!!


Beautiful stained glass window in the hospital


Close-up of the Good Samaritan


Hospital entrance


Statue of Queen Victoria outside the hospital.

Looks a bit gloomy in the photos and we did have to dodge the rain but the very next day, the sun came out!