Today was the first day of my residency at AHH Studio Collective here in Malton, North Yorkshire. I’ve lived in the town for five years and it was just by chance, through a friend, that I became aware it existed. I’ve walked past the building many times and wondered what AHH stands for – now I know, ‘Art Happens Here’.
I miss my time at Magdalen Roads Studios in Oxford where I met many like-minded artists and enjoyed many collaborations… I was thinking that it is now the time to head to Leeds to be part of a contemporary art-scene and low-and-behold, there’s one five minute’s walk from my house. I’m looking forward to getting to know the other artists who have studios there and sharing ideas.
A month totally dedicated to my practice is exactly what I need to develop the next stage of my ‘Self | Cell’ blood cell project, I know what I’d like to explore initially, but hope the work will take its own direction.
I had intended to be making videos of my own blood during the residency, I’d decided I’d have to get over my trypanophobia (I had to google it: fear of needles) for the sake of my work, but my studio practice has had to be put on hold as I broke my ankle messing about on the moors. So, I’m behind where I wanted to be at the start of the residency, unfortunately the videos made with my blood will have to wait until I’ve explored the photos of my cells further through a series of engravings/drypoints.
Day 1: Plate preparation. Today I prepared 72 aluminium plates ready to engrave. Perhaps they’ll form a book or be part of an installation, it’s early days – but I do know that each image will be created with two plates of two colours, so 36 prints in total, all re-presenting me, my blood.
My research into the photos of my blood cells as self-portraits, insights into myself, the ‘self’, have led me to contemplate parts of who I am and my identity.
It’s been an enlightening journey so far – I’ve found that my love of pattern, order, and repetition is a big part of who I am. When I mirror the images, it’s amazing to see how chaos can transform into order. It’s like I’m structuring my own chaos.
I’ve been editing the photos of my cells. I was expecting the typical circular forms of the red and white blood cells, those images we are so familiar with from school biology and TV documentaries and I am very excited that the images reveal so much more. If I was told that they were collagraph prints, I wouldn’t have been surprised – the combination of lines, surface textures and contrasting tones is visually exciting. I have a doctor friend who has analysed the photos and explained the unexpected components: fibrin strands, plasma, platelets…
In fact, in these scans I have a lifetime of visual stimulus. I can find starting points in nature, in a photo or a video or even one from the making of the work itself – I feel working from my cell photos is very different to copying a photo of an object or a landscape… the photos of my cells offer a unique insight into form, shape, tone, texture etc. that the naked eye cannot see.
Print seems the obvious starting point to explore the images. There are so many approaches that I can explore: multi-plate using etching, drypoint, carborundum, collagraph and relief, and then also combining all those techniques in a single plate. I like the idea of making a series of each type of image, perhaps a series of three and even printing 25 en bloc, 5 by 5, on a large piece of paper. Playing with surface is the most inspirational process for me and I can’t wait to get back into the studio again – hopefully I’ll then develop them as colossal paintings.
One of my favourite theorists is Roland Barthes, in Camera Lucida he wrote of the umbilical cord of light waves that joined him with a photo of his recently deceased mother: the light that made her face visible bounced onto the film of the camera and then the printed photo captured that light which he then viewed, ultimately creating a powerful link between them (“the photograph…will touch me like the delayed rays of a star”) – my cell photos touch upon a very tangential version of this for me, but they explore something which is intrinsically part of me and that which gives me life…
As it’s snowing and my plans for the day are postponed, I decided to stop putting off taking a sample of my blood to enable me to start visually analysing my red blood cells. I could have taken a syringe to my arm, but that seems a bit excessive as I only need a tiny drop, so I used a lancet to prick my skin and draw the blood – a surprisingly large amount flowed out which I then dripped into a phial with anti-coagulant. I’m waiting for the slides to dry, then I’ll view them under the microscope, take photos and hopefully make a stop-motion animation.
