DEC 2024
I’ve started a new natural ink printmaking project which will involve making ink from oak trees situated in parks across Stockport. Although it’s a rubbish time of year to go foraging for galls (and I made the mistake of going the same weekend of Storm Darragh), I found knopper galls in Hollywood, Adswood, Vernon and Brookfields parks. I also have a very trusty, jackpot-sort-of-tree on the St. Elisabeth’s School playing fields (which overhangs the public footpath). The plan is to make a batch of ink from each oak tree, which I’ll then thicken for screen printing. Then, I’m making a huge collaborative textile print with people from Stockport using the inks.
At each drop in printmaking session, I’ll also have knopper oak gall ink to draw with. I am very, very pleased and honoured to be collaborating with Stockroom, What If? and Arc on this – the latter two of whom have very kindly let me use their venues to deliver the public sessions. I’ve also mapped the co-ordinates of all five trees, on a google map you can find here. If you want to collect your own galls, the best time to go is in September, but there are still – just! – some findable galls now, as long as you don’t mind side-stepping all the dog tods.
Anyway. There will be three public drop-in sessions, held in January/February 2025. At each one, you’ll be able to add a print to the huge oak gall artwork I’m making; so it’s a tiny wee screen printing taster, first of all.
You’ll then be able to do some mark-making and drawing with Stockport oak tree ink, using sticks gathered in the parks, dip pens and found tools. Along the way, you’ll learn how natural dyes and pigments can be made from food waste, foraged plants and native minerals. All activities are relaxing and mindful, so I hope you’ll swing by for a warm welcome.
FREE tickets for each drop in session are findable via my Linktr.ee here – though I recommend following me on Eventbrite here if you can, or signing up for my mailing list here, if you want to be the first to know about stuff like this!
JANUARY 2025
For most of December and January, I was busy making the inks in my kitchen. This involved a fair amount of patience on the part of my family; as I am often using the stick blender to grind up some foul-looking brown liquid whilst simultaneously making the tea. I can see the worried looks in their eyes; one wrong move and there’ll be ink in the pasta.
I also began to tell people a little about my plans for the work itself. It’s pretty weird trying to promote an art project when you can’t really tell people that much about it (I was sworn to secrecy), but I can tell you this; the work is a representation of a murmuration of starlings, with each bird being printed by a different person from Stockport, using ink made from Stockport oak trees.
Starling murmurations are still quite mysterious, but it seems to be generally agreed that the birds flock together in this way to deter predators; they are stronger and more powerful together, often seeming to mass into shapes which make them look like one huge bird (see here, if you don’t believe me). This seemed a pretty wonderful metaphor for the idea of community in Stockport. Since I moved here nearly ten years ago, I’ve been really struck by how much hands-on, ground level organising goes on by community groups, charities and just regular, can-do folk. I’m lucky enough to work for one of them in Arc, but it’s even more thrilling to commemorate the idea of strength and unity in a single artwork.
I also began to plan the print in earnest, using a sketchbook to play with graphic and simplified versions of the birds; messing about with etching plates and generally trying to find a way to ape the fluid, smoke-like way murmurations morph and lilt. Loads of artists have been inspired by murmurations for pretty obvious reasons, but if you want to be thoroughly caught short and have your breath taken away, these photographs by the Danish artists Søren Solkaer are a good place to start.
