Printmaking – Laura Castell Artist

More Artist Books – Winner of the Firestation Print Studio Biennial Artist Book Award – Craftsmanship

2024 JUDGES

Anna Welch Principal Librarian, History of the Book and Arts at
State Library of Victoria
&
Gracia Haby & Louise Jennison Artistic Duo who have been collaborating for over 20 years making artists’books, zines, collages, stories,
prints, and drawings.

In amazing news I won the craftsmanship category of the biennial Artist Book Award held by Firestation print Studio based in Melbourne. I wasn’t there, unfortunately…. but thankfully I have seen many photos of the event through instagram. The books look all so interesting and full of complexities! The photos above show the book that was particularly highlighted by the judges. I am Here, a flag book, edition of 2

These pages above belong to the other book, called ‘Taking a Walk’, a Japanese stab bound format of landscape impressions. Unique edition

My art statements:

“I Am Here”: This artist book reflects on the invisibility that a person may feel when not heard or even seen in spite of being right there. The structure of the flag book provides an ideal form to express this concept by ‘breaking’ the image and potentially making it disappear, but allowing the retention of every detail to be noticed by any who truly pays attention.
‘Taking a Walk’ : This artist book explores my experience of the eucalyptus trees when bushwalking. Once I start paying attention I get lost in the infinite combinations of colours and shapes, mainly subtle but also contrasting, and somehow all in harmony. Looking at one tree leads to looking at the next one and then the next one, until the next walk.

This is what the judges said about my work. I am of course incredibly honoured of this appreciation:

Craftsmanship
Winner: Laura Castell, I Am Here
“A good place to hide can be within a book, within the pages, constructed from rows of flags adhered to opposing sides of the spine’s mountain, within the beguilement of the whoosh- whoosh movement that is the flag book. Laura Castell’s edition of two, I Am Here, has both the flutter-motion of the original flag book of Hedi Kyle, and an unruffled stillness, when viewed upon the gallery wall. I Am Here, in plain sight, and, as Laura comments, I am “not heard or even seen”. In the fragmented image, the broken image made whole through the process of reading, looking, feeling, and “noticing”, the human figure, centre stage, stares into the mid-distance, somewhere over my shoulder, and for a moment the reader might be being read, might be “unseen”, might be a flag book closed upon the shelf. The face in quiet contemplation, upon the page, that is, perhaps thinking of all the ways eucalypts vary inform, trunk, blossom, role, and scent (as explored in Laura’s second entry, Taking a Walk).
The very structure of this book invites delight and rewards attention, through both the concept of the image “breaking” and exquisite bookbinding technique. I Am Here proved a reverie of Craftsmanship and more.“

Thank you!! ❤️

Good news for my Artist Book ‘We ALL’

This post is delayed so this happened earlier in 2023.

This artist book, ‘We ALL’ has been very fulfilling to work on. It presented challenges in several ways. How best to translate the concept into images, how to use text minimally and easily, what technique to use. I did not have a letterpress at the time so I used some old pages of letraset. The subject matter includes what I love most, figurative and social issues. It is difficult to tackle these subjects (as one) in a way that people find them accessible to spend enough time looking at them, so getting a prize was incredible. The book was part of the Northern Beaches Artist Book award, in 2023 and it was one of the books acquired for the Manly Library Collection.

Artist statement In this work I used the idea that we all have similar emotions to highlight the equality among all of us, independently of what race, religion or cultural inheritance we have. I created slightly ‘abstracted’ faces hoping that the viewer can go beyond the specifics of one person/face and see themselves in each of them.

Here is a link to the youtube video (below) where the judges go through the works that were acquired. I can’ express well how meaningful the words of the judges are to me, I feel they captured exactly what I had in mind while making the work.

It is an edition of 5, another one was also acquired by my then local gallery in Townsville, Perc Tucker Regional Gallery. Super grateful!

Some recent work at Sydney Contemporary 7-10 September 2023, at the Carriageworks

I live far from Sydney but thankfully I will have one work showing at the upcoming Sydney Contemporary Art event. This is a rare and valuable opportunity to have my work viewed by a much wider audience. The work will be part of the folios showing by Firestation Print Studio, based in Melbourne. From their website:

FPS is participating in this year’s prestigious Sydney Contemporary Art Fair for PAPER, a curated section of the fair dedicated to works on paper.
The Firestation Print Studio’s booth, B03 will present original artist’s prints by 47 artists for Sydney Contemporary’s, PAPER

I will have one of my newest works on display, a triptych of bark inspired abstract monoprints.

Not this year but may be a trip down there for a next time?

Finalist at the Burnie Print Prize

A month ago I learned that my piece ‘Bark Landscape’ has been selected as a finalist for the Burnie Print Prize 2023. Really happy for many reasons, but one is that this is a well known prestigious art prize for printmakers so the exhibition is full of amazing works and very well known names in the world of printmaking. I feel very fortunate to have my work exhibited with the rest. And second, this will be the first time my abstract work will be seen by others.

While continuing with my more figurative and realistic (or identifiable.. should one say?) work, I have become very attracted to the challenge of expressing through more abstract work, taking the inspiration from the real world, but finding a way to take the parts that really talk to me. It is an incredible process, interesting, very challenging, addictive.

The work above is inspired by the patterns and colours of some Eucalyptus trees, the many that I encounter in my walks. There is an urgency to hold onto these pleasures that nature brings us, knowing that they can one day, sooner or later, go. The nice thing about these process is that it makes you look, not once but many times. I don’t think I have ever looked that long at the bark from these trees, spent so much time in that observation and in that feeling, trying to translate it into marks and colours.

This work is on paper, a monoprint, and my largest to date, 150 x 56 cm. It consists of 3 pieces that have been joined together.

Wishing good luck to all the finalists! The exhibition and announcement of winners will be at the Burnie Art gallery in Tasmania from July 21st to September 8th.

Preparations for an upcoming exhibition

Some of you will know that I have been preparing for a while for a solo exhibition in the access space at Umbrella Studio gallery, next April. This will be my third solo exhibition, although the second one in 2014 was a relatively impromptu exhibition of small works, quite a few already made beforehand . For this one I have had time to think, probably too much 🙂 . The theme is our local bower bird, the Great Bower Bird. I (and more so my husband…) have spent many hours observing and photographing this bird, especially the males and their bowers, and occasionally the females as they approach the bower. I can honestly say that if I liked this bird before, now I love it! Their behaviour is incredibly interesting, long hours of effort invested to mate.

I have learned a lot, still many things to do to complete everything I need to do, and waiting after to show the complete images, but here is a little pick at process, a photo of the beautiful male displying its pink crown, and a previous image of a small etching I did some time ago. Hope you like it 🙂

Learning

I think I am finding myself in a period of introspection because I want to make my art more meaningful and rich. Trying to clarify what it is that I want to do and also, importantly, how. I like many media and find myself continuously going from one to the others, so perhaps mixing them will be ultimately where I get.

However, in the meantime I also feel I need to be better technically at everything, but especially so at the printmaking media. So I jumped in at the opportunity and went to Melbourne to take two printmaking workshops at the Firestation Print Studio, one by Jazmina Cininas and one by Sarah Amos. Jazmina is a master in reduction linocut and Sarah is a master in collagraphs. They were both fantastic, very different techniques, very different approaches, very different teachers, which for me was perfect because I learned not only about the actual techniques, but also about variability in artistic process and approach. So, after worrying a lot about how much money I was investing on my practice, I feel it was very much worth it 🙂 fiu!

The artistic side was very stimulating but in addition I was extremely lucky to be offered accommodation with the loveliest couple you can imagine, Kathleen and Stuart, who so kindly offered me a place to stay in a beautiful part of town with very easy access to everything. It was truly wonderful and in spite of the short time, we became good friends and will always remember those days. They inspired me in many ways, healthy habits and attitudes to life. I have already made our own rich, healthy cereal and chocolate snack…….

I was keen to come back and try the techniques. Since it has only been a few days, I started with this linocut and I am pleased with the result. I learned a few things in the process (one of them that I would loooove to have one of the big, at least 30cm rollers!, not very likely for a good while!). I am sure each image presents different challenges, but hopefully I am learning to be less scared at having a go. This image is of a male sunbird, common in North Queensland. Size 32×25.5 cm. This work simply celebrates the beauty of our local nature and its beautiful birds. Sunbird are very small and although their yellow colour is quite strong and makes them easy to spot, sometimes you have to look carefully through the leaves to find them.

Some more bowerbirds

Bowerbirds are fascinating. I only have to walk for 5 minutes to see at least two bowers in the park, often active with the males displaying. Here in North Queensland we have the Great Bowerbird (species name Ptilonorhynchus nuchalis), which in spite of the exquisite complex behaviour is so common that we can delight in it, or probably often simply ignore it. The males build a ‘bower’ to attract the female. Different species have different types of bowers, some tidier than others, but the Great Bowerbird has a very beautiful one. It is built with numerous sticks, quite dense, forming two arched walls. The bower is adorned with ‘treasure objects’ many man-made that the birds find atttractive and ‘steal’ to take back for their bower. They even steal from each other!

My latest linocut shows a male by its bower. This one in particular had lots of white and red ornaments with white round pieces of styrofoam and red tops, and silver/grey screws. It is quite fascinating but somehow also sad to see bowers so full of our waste objects. It makes me wonder what the changes have been in time of the objects birds put in their bowers and how will it be in many years down the track.