Angela Cavalieri: large scale linocut printmaking process

I wanted to create a new body of work that was based on music and art at first I wasn't sure how to approach this but it became obvious that given my work is text-based and strongly focuses on storytelling that researching into the state library toys collections will be a valuable place for me to start my project Hartley was concerning musical storytelling the fellowship allowed me the luxury time for research and to accumulate material that I would not necessarily have looked at I wanted to focus on the music of the early Italian baroque composer claudio monteverdi especially as madrigals where poetry is put to music at the State Library I began exploring Monta veges influences and interest in word painting it's where the musical forms reflect the lyrics and therein are focused on the eighth book the madrigals of war and love whether air morning as well as poetry music I also became interest in looking at several volumes of engravings and drawings of the Italian 18th century artist Giovanni Battista Piranesi I was especially interested in looking at the series of images of architecture antiquities and the Peace of Rome levodopa antiquity Romani I didn't create any artworks at the library apart from small sketches these were to be produced later at my studio once I had enough material to work with at my studio or would translate and rework these ideas into large drawings straight onto my liner when I was drawing the text it all had to be done back to the front so then when it's printed it would be reversed I spent a lot of time on the drawing and it was important that I got it right so I spent up to two months working on both the line knows the structure was to house the text so if I didn't get the drawing right then the whole thing will fall apart eventually so it was important that I've arrived I would use ink charcoal paint pass tools to door straight onto the liner but eventually this drawing then disappears because it gets cut out the cutting is done after I do the drawing but I also then redraw sections so I cut and draw and then I do a bit more drawing you the lines do vary I use a couple of different fish shaft tools which give me different widths of line so wider lines thinner lines and then I use this semi curve tool that I call the stoop that scoops out the background and I use this to bury the lines and the texture of the liner and the background for me is as important as the bits that I lead so the letters in the background work together to create movement and atmosphere and texture as well when I'm ready to print I need to get some assistance from other people and I've been Mikey I've had people that want to come for the experience or friends or volunteers so I need this scale at least six people and this time I had seven people and basically we need to ink up consistently and we also can't afford to stop so the inking up which is applying the ink on the liner blocks can take about an hour and now on a half just depends I try and do it quite quickly so the ink doesn't form a skin or dry it out basically the blocks are cut up into different sections and are quite different colored inks to each section depending on how many colors I want to use once we've bent up the different colored blocks then we need to place it together I've already prepared a registration sheet so we know where to place the blocks and I've already registered the canvas and this is crucial because if the registration is wrong then the whole thing is out of whack and I basically have to start again so I do make sure the registration is right and I spend a lot of time doing that prior to printing we're not feed all the blocks together basically if the canvas find up at the end which is already registered and then I roll it on to the inked up liner block there's about two or three of us doing that and we slowly roll it on our whiten the heaviness of the canvas prevents it moving so when sleep we then have to burnish and rub the back till it picks up the image and you can just see like an invitation on the back of the canvas it's hard to know how much to rub when we're finished rubbing it's really guesswork when we lift up the canvas there might be areas that haven't quite taken or got enough ink and we have to touch up with the brush I do try and avoid this but in this case with the scale there wasn't much I could do when we lifted up this print we didn't in sections so that way I could see if we needed to rub a bit more if we needed to touch up I think the printing process with these prints took about six hours and it was so good at the hint to see it hanging on the wall all that's left to do now is to choose the color and paint in the background with oil paint and then prepare it for hanging you you you you you

Channel: pseudechis

Views: 106,701

Rating: 4.9076767 out of 5

Keywords: linocut, lino-cut, printing, Angela Cavalieri, print, large scale, State Library of Victoria, SLV, huge, enormous, artist, Melbourne, Rare books, Claudio Monteverde, Giovanni Battista Piranesi, Greg Wallis, stock footage, printmaking, canvas

Id: f0oWrgfd9iE

Length: 13min 44sec (824 seconds)

Published: Sun Feb 16 2014