A Stomping Great Stamp

Rubber stamp prints by Dave, Liz and Jacquetta

Do you remember the first mark That You made? 

Mine was drawing on my bedroom wall when I was five. My mum was very generous and drew a square on the wall and said I could draw on the wall as long as it was inside that square. I was happy as long as I could keep on drawing.

Maybe yours was printing with potatoes. You sliced it in half, carved out a shape with a knife, dipped it in paint and printed it all over sheets of newsprint and maybe tried out a new pattern on the kitchen floor. Maybe you were four. Maybe ten. Maybe twenty. 

When I went to art college I just wanted to draw and paint. I wasn’t interested in printing. My first memory of printing was with potatoes. I was in my early thirties and then I tried printing with rubbers and then lino and then letterpress and woodblock printing and I fell completely in love with whole process of printmaking. 

We’ve all been making marks since the day we were born and if you can’t remember, it’s never too late to plant new memories.

Here are some rubber stamp prints made by Liz, Dave and Jacquetta who came to a recent rubber-stamp workshop at Salt cafe, Bristol. They really enjoyed having the time and space to have a stomping good stamp and no-one was under the age of thirty!

It’s never too late to make your mark  

Dave’s cross and circle stamps

Jacquetta’s house and multicolour chevron stamps 

Liz’s multicolour circle and square stamps

Potato Face by Mog

Folded Gifts

There’s something very special about receiving post through the letterbox when so much communication takes place on the web these days.

Darwin Stamps

This morning I heard the flap of the letterbox springing into action. I usually find either a bank statement or pile of junk mail ready to line the compost bin. This morning I found a little brown envelope addressed to Ms. Mog Fry with a 1st class Darwin postage stamp in the corner. Three queens also stamped in 2p bottle green, 20p grass green and 10p rusty orange lined up next to Darwin. When the cost of postage had risen a fair bit, I can see why people are less enthusiastic about sending a small letter which almost amounts to one pound. It costs nothing to send an email (if you don’t include your broadband, electricity bill and possibly a few more pounds spent on trips to the optician or the osteopath). But how many emails can you tear open along the edge to find tangible gifts? (unless you have a 3D computer but then you have to wait at least 8 hours for the object to print before you can pick it up.) In the little brown envelope are two miniature paper objects - recycled magazines folded into delicate forms and a miniature book shaped eraser.

I am curious about the folded gift in the shape of a winged jacket. I open it up to reveal a dynamic world within. Black expressive marks within their own canvases. I’m curious to know who made these as only the name of the gallery is written by the side of the images and they feel so familiar. The Sabine Knust gallery doesn’t lead me to the artist so I enter the string of words printed in Italian next to the images. I type into google images - incisioni puntasecca e acquatinta firmate datate e numerate su Rives - which reveals lithographs and etchings by artist Emilio Vedova.

Emilio Vedova

Finding Emilio’s work in paper form and then discovering more about him on the web is where the wonderful dance between the physical and ethereal world meet. As I continue my exploration in cyberspace I find a film of Emilio’s work being installed by robotic shuttles at the Emilio e Annabianca Vedova Foundation, Venice.

“The main aim of Fondazione Emilio e Annabianca Vedova, created by the artist and his wife, is to promote the art and work of Vedova and to highlight his importance in the history of 20th century art through a series of initiatives, such as studies, research pro- jects, analyses, exhibitions, itineraries and teaching spaces, conferences, scholarships and prizes.”

— Fondazione Emilio e Annabianca Vedova

Thank you Lilla for your precision folded treasures which has opened the doors into chiaroscuroctic corridors of the 1900s.

See more of Lilla Duignan's explorations at www.seeingthings.me.uk/blog