[LAUIL603] Studio Brief 2: Monoprints and Reflection

The third brief that set for myself was to create a series of monoprints in response to blindness - to attempt to convey blindness and its blurriness using a range of colours and visual language. As with the "Letters in Braille" series. I again used a gelatine plate with acrylic paints to recreate monoprinting at home while the university facilities are closed during the current lockdown.

What excites me about the prospect of monoprinting at home is that anything can happen and anything goes as the paint is rolled out, and each print is created, especially in this set of monoprints without the Braille element. Taking away that aspect, I now didn't know what was going to happen or what to expect. Colours can blend and do anything they wish to. The unpredictability is exciting! I chose my colours at random, as I always do for all of my work, as colours are not important to what I create - but tried to stick with the dark side of the paint box. 

What worked in this brief? There was a varying degree of success with these monoprints. I utilised mark-making exploration as a way to explore my face and face portraiture as a blind person. I would feel my face in congruence with running a brush along the gelatine plate with some interesting visual language being created. The rolling of the paints onto the plate, blending together, successfully conveys blindness in a very dramatic way.

What didn't work? The legibility of the face portraits wasn't as clear as I'd like them to be, which may work in their abstract favour during the experimentation process, but may not hold value towards the final publication. I also didn't check if I was in portrait or landscape orientation before working and the portraits would have worked much better if I'd moved the plate differently so I had more of a surface area to work on. My gelatine (Gelli Plate) is old as it's five years old now, purchased during my time on the Access to HE course, and is unfortunately warped from heat, age, storage, and travelling. This affects the shape of the prints as they aren't perfectly rectangular. Professional monoprints at the university, with professional inks, would have a different visual language and a different quality to them. I could redo these when the facilities are back open but the question remains - when do we come out of the lockdown? Would I want to redo these again?

I need to be mindful of curating the content of my publication/zine and what I want to include in its pages. Is there value and aura to the work produced here because of the lo-fi outcomes? The hand of the maker? Or would higher quality canvas paintings that successfully depict my level of sight have more worth? A mix of both? This is a decision I need to make nearer the time in the development stages of the publication. 

[LAUIL603] Studio Brief 2: Letters in Braille Monoprints and Reflection

"Letters in Braille" Monoprint Series:

The second brief I set myself for this project is to produce a series of Braille monoprints and experimentations. I used a Gelli Plate (a gelatine plate) with acrylic paints which allows monoprinting at home, without a press, at a low cost and as an accessible solution to monoprinting while university facilities are closed during the lockdown.

There were varying degrees of success of the braille being legible. Some interesting things happened in the outcomes, with random colour choices and mark making, which were like fireworks and sparks reminiscent of the flashing lights that happen before retinal detachment. Very poignant. Some prints were very grungy in aesthetic and quite deconstructed/deteriorated looking. Lo-fi. These are nice experiments to evidence at this stage though I am not sure how these would sit within a publication and would need to consider and curate my contents when it comes to the making of the publication. What do I want inside? Experimental work? More refined canvas paintings? A mix of both?

What could be done differently or better? My gelli plate is old. I've had it for 5 years now and it is, unfortunately, warped in its shape. It isn't a perfect rectangle and this certainly affects the prints. The Braille didn't pick up as well as I'd hoped and sometimes it's very easy to roll too much acrylic onto the plate and lose information. Some of these things would not happen with professional monoprinting with a press with professional plates and inks. I could consider redoing these when the university facilities are back open.

The Braille is just collected bits of mail that are sent to me in the post - bank statements (thankfully no one can read Braille to read how much money I don't have), newsletters from the RNIB and Henshaws, etc. I don't have access to procuring a Brailler from somewhere like Henshaws or the RNIB at the moment, for a short space of time, because of the lockdown. If i did, there would be incredible value in Brailling my own poetry or my thoughts and creating prints from those. I used to have a Braille which i bought second hand and the money went to a charity in Devon but the problem with Braillers is that they are incredibly fragile and the insider of them need repairing often.