Hannah Tilson

Medium
Experimental print-making with the possibility of exploring various techniques (tetra pak, paper/fabric stencils, monoprint, chine-collé, frottage, collagraph) etching - including drypoint, aquatint and sugarlift.

Requirements
Readiness to develop new and experimental ways of printmaking, you must be willing to work and share ideas in a group and work autonomously

Teaching Assistant
Otis Blease

Maximum number of participants
16

The course stems from a passion for patterns. When you look, they can be found everywhere. Whether they are in the shadows, cutting darkly and sharply through a chain-link fence or falling and splicing through a building designed by Carlo Scarpa, the tiles of your kitchen or bathroom floor, symbolic patterns, visual language, the clothes you dress yourself in now or in years gone by, the wallpaper pasted on your walls... But also patterns in the light of habits and routines, the multi-layered processes enacted in the print studio. Through your chosen processes, you will find yourself inking, printing, carving, scraping, adding, erasing and repeating to achieve unexpected and exciting results.

We will begin by sharing image references, discovering patterns throughout art history: Katsushika ōi, Mary Cassatt, Jade Fadojutimi, Rachel Jones, Christina Quarles, Lubaina Himid, Toyin Ojih Odutola, Hilma Af Klimt and Kiki Kogelnik, to name a few. As a student, we ask you to bring a pattern that means something to you. These patterns can be found in fabrics, photographs you find interesting, in architecture, objects used in everyday life, or you can come to the course with an idea for a pattern to explore further during your time here.

Etching evolved from the desire to develop a way of recording patterns engraved onto suits of armour. People discovered that by filling the engraved lines with ink and pressing damp paper into the grooves, an imprint of the pattern would be made. This evolved to incorporate the use of acids to etch drawings and script on to metal plates. 600 years later, we are once again using the same process to record our own patterns.

Over the course of two weeks, alongside developing students' personal projects in the print room, we will partake in group exercises to spark new ideas, eliminate inhibitions and seek out new compositions. One of the activities will involve drawing from film, an exercise using cinematography to help us think about the staging, cropping, and composition of our works.

By introducing various methods of printmaking, we will demonstrate to our students the seemingly endless possibilities of working with an explorative approach to printmaking, allowing each student to incorporate these approaches in the way that best suits them. The nature of the print studio is stimulating, prolific and intensive. We will be working in a hands-on, energetic team environment and have regular group discussions, exchanging ideas and encouraging works to evolve. It is important to note that we will not be focusing on perfecting classical techniques, but instead will be exploring exciting new experimental printmaking techniques with the added elements of drawing and collage.