Gelli Plate Printing on Fabric

The folding book for which I have made the inserts needs a cover and the piece of calico (muslin) cut to size for that purpose has been lingering on my desk for weeks. Today was the moment to get the gelli plate printing done. Of course I never do just one piece of fabric. If I'm going to make a mess (and that is almost guaranteed!) I might as well do it on a big scale. After all the clean-up takes almost as long in either case. So I grabbed a variety of cotton fabrics and a hand full of stencils as well as my largest (12 x 14") gelli plate, later adding the 8" circular one to the mix too. 

Only the piece for the book cover was more or less planned (and you can see a detail at the top of this post).

The rest were entirely improvisational. I just added things where I felt I wanted them and only towards the end when the pieces of fabric were almost done did I have a careful look at them to see what more they needed. I have no idea why I bother with this as most of these fabrics will be cut up and used in various pieces of work but I don't seem to be able to stop fussing (or maybe I just call it designing!)

I then I do the exact same thing again when I'm taking photographs of the finished results. Areas that I particularly like are carefully positioned in the camera's viewfinder till I have a picture I'm happy with.

 All a tad obsessive! 

But it makes me happy!

12 x 12 Exhibition in Hendaye

I'm busily working away on another folding book for which I painted the papers using the gelli plate last week, and now the folding has started as you can see above. 

Today is the opening day of the 12 x 12 exhibition in the Acces Espace Culturel Mendi Zolan in Hendaye in France. Thiis exhibition has already been shown in Spain and now it's France's turn. It will run from today till the 14th March 2015. Should you find yourself in the area (I should be so lucky!) it's open between 10 and 1, and then from 3 till 7pm. The official preview is this coming Friday evening.

As I explained in a previous post the whole idea is that all art shown is 12 x 12 cm (so quite petite!) and you can see the two pieces I entered above. More about them can be found here.