Wirral Metropolitan College

Monday 4th May

Starting work on the project

Michelle

We began today with a meeting to draw everyone together and focus on the work we have to do for the project deadline of Thursday lunchtime. The exhibition of the work is on Thursday evening in the exhibition space in the Harris Fine Arts Centre, its a great space and we have lots of technical help to install it. The gallery is just off the atrium space pictured.

At the meeting we discussed and finalised the collaborative text piece and Louise and Meredith have now processed it an we will print it up on the letter press tomorrow.

We made a group decision to start another collaborative litho plate as we thought the one we started on the camping trip, although fun to do, did not really reflect the content of the text piece and we wanted them to be parner pieces.

We were all on edge today, trying to get things started, trying to learn how to access various facilites at BYU and generally worrying about the quality of our ideas. But we have all made a good start and we have been very well supported by the staff and students here.

Cath and Louise have begun a litho plate each, something they have never done before, we are using Macs which are also unfamiliar. Julie has been introduced to Illustrator to help speed up her process of applying text to image.

All of these obstacles are a challenge, but we are rising to them and adapting as we go. Amy has once again been a huge help with her great patience, knowledge and thoughtful organisation.

It was also Cath's birthday today and we made sure we celebrated this evening to let off steam and we surprised her with a spontaneous get together with cake and candles late this evening.

Sunday

Day of sleeping in, rest and reflection

Michelle Rowley

Last night we returned from our camping trip tired, dirty and very happy to have survived the wilds of Utah and to have had the opportunity to experience such an incredible environment. The camping in tents bit, which initially worried everyone for all sorts of reasons, was absolutely fine. No scorpions, no snakes, no bears – what we did see were chukkas, chipmunks, hares, deer, antelope, lizards (assorted sizes), crickets, beetles, massive crows, a water snake, and we caught trout at the waterfall and saw elk on the mountain road home. No casualties and no bites! I carried the EV8 forms all the way up the canyon, in the 85 degree heat, for nothing!

For the first time this Sunday morning we all slept past the 5 am internal alarm clock that has been waking us up all this week. This morning has been a time of reflection and planning for all of us in Amy and Tali’s house. We started by compiling all our individual text elements into a composed piece, which we will show the BYU students on Monday morning when we next all meet up.

The text piece originally came about as an idea to accompany the group litho that we began on Saturday night after our hike at Calf Creek, and we intended to use the letterpress facility at BYU to produce it. This has now changed after a suggestion from Meredith at BYU who is now going to help Louise edit the text with Illustrator and then expose on to a litho plate for speed and economy. Tomorrow we will collect the rest of the text from the BYU group to complete the piece, which we intend will be an impressionistic text portrait of the landscapes we have visited.

After an outing this afternoon to Salt Lake City and a really lovely meal at Joe’s sister-in-laws home, we all returned to ‘our place’ to share our book ideas. We discussed our various approaches and made paper models to try to make tangible some of the practicalities involved in working in an unfamiliar print department.

We think most of us are set to begin tomorrow, I think I am going to find my own ability to work alongside everyone else quite a challenge as I am leading the project and advising everyone, so it will be interesting how much time I can keep for myself.

Keeping the blog updated with posts from a range of participants is also proving to be a full time job, but we have computer access at ‘home’ to help us. With the time difference, we are 6 hours behind the UK, some of our posts stretch into the next day UK time, so if things seem out of sync this is probably why.