If you go down to the woods today.....

I found this the other day and told a couple of friends about it. They suggested it was something I should not pass on as it sounded a bit creepy. Now, whenever I'm told I probably shouldn't do something I usually go the other way and do it anyway. See what you think. I have never had a cat. After watching this, I never will.

Miss Print

Whilst I make sure that I keep up with all the activities of the lovely blogs I follow, the same cannot be said for trying to keep up regular posts with my own. Taking two college courses at the same time means that I am quite busy with visiting exhibitions, studying and keeping up with the work I am trying to do at home.In recent weeks I have been doing lots of drawing, mainly of my own face , hence no photos! Whilst my drawing has improved with the practice I cannot inflict the shock of my boat race on the nation. I have become obsessed with looking at, and drawing faces, so much so that I decided to alter a book this week to act as a sort of mini sketchbook for them. The above photo is just the covers after I collaged lots of old prints and scrap paper over them. The inside pages are all gessoed or collaged and now waiting for me to pick out a few faces to draw within. I think it was really distraction activity rather than get on with another task I'd set myself for half term but I buckled down to it in the middle of the week and have spent a few days trialling some collagraph plates I'd made.

There is soon to be an open print exhibition locally and I decided to try and enter some prints this year. I may also be demonstrating whilst it is on, showing the gum arabic transfer technique taught to me by my pal and printmaking mentor Sue. The trouble is that every time I manage to get it right, I don't do it for ages and then have to re-learn it all over again usually with Sue's help. Yet again this week she has had to walk me through the process another time. That girl has the patience of a saint! The trouble is that I practiced it - and cracked it - with my own self portrait images so won't be showing those either! Instead, these images are of some collagraph proofs I've done in the last couple of days whilst I try to work out what prints to enter for the exhibition. The above circular plate was inked up with left over ink so the colours were not planned. I have to decide whether it works or not as an image. I think the answer is no in it's current guise but I have a few ideas for changing it.

I made a shed load of these pebbles last year and whilst placing them in a circle is not an original idea it might work if the frame and mount are well chosen. Sadly, whilst I was messing about with the gum arabic transfer I managed to cover the edge of this one with some linseed oil and putting a mount around the image will not disguise the greasy blob so this is one that will end up as collage fodder or work its way into a book maybe. It will join quite a few trials from this week on the reject pile, some of them so bad I am ashamed to show photos of them. The problem with me is that I don't start any printing session with a colour plan and I should. All too often I just pick a colour and make it up as I go along, or I just use up what's to hand rather than waste ink. Instead, I just waste time and paper! Hmmm.... I think I need to do this better in the future.

This was a plate I made on a whim just for texture and it has some possibilities but the handing in date for the exhibition is next Saturday and not only does any print I make have to dry, it also has to be framed in time. I think I may have left it all a bit last minute by being distracted by the drawing and self portrait stuff but when in doubt, falling back on a tried and tested idea might be the solution.

For me this means using a plate that I made about six years ago. I made it after coming home from my first collagraph workshop with Sue, using the germ of an idea that one of the other participants had suggested and produced. I used it once as an idea for a Christmas card and I printed a few examples of it this afternoon in different colourways, one of which I may get framed and submit.

Alternatively, I may try a few monoprint ideas tomorrow that I have floating around in my head. As time is not on my side if I want prints to dry, I may end up entering nothing in the exhibition but I have rekindled by enthusiasm for printing this week and that is far more important to me. I've also developed a real passion for drawing recently so that altered book is going to see some use in the next few days and weeks. One college course finishes next week thankfully but it is closely followed by the start of a sculpture module the week after so I might still be absent from this blog on a regular basis for a while. At least you know I'm not being idle.....

Women with conviction

The other week I came across Retronaut, a wonderful site full of interesting articles and photographs. It is a place you could lose yourself in for a few hours but it contains some wonderful images including the above, held in the archives of the National Portrait Gallery. In 1912 Scotland Yard bought it's first surveillance camera and used it to follow and photograph known activists in the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU), better known to us as suffragettes. I have long been interested in this area of history and listened last night to a fabulous programme on Radio 4 which would be well worth catching on the 'listen again' feature. In a nutshell the Archive on Four team revisited interviews made in the early to mid 1970's with elderly, but still feisty, women who had been part of the suffragette struggle. How wonderful that someone had the foresight to talk to them before there were none of them left to give first hand accounts of their actions.The tapes are now held in the Women's Library archive in London. Suffragette jewellery is an area I find particularly interesting and this is the Holloway brooch, designed by Sylvia Pankhurst and given to women who had endured hunger strike in prison. Many were given out after 1909 when numbers grew in prison, so many of them on hunger strike that it led to the infamous Cat and Mouse Act where women were force fed to keep them alive. Last night I heard the personal testimony of Maud Kate Smith telling in her own words how the doctor rammed the tube so hard through her nose that she had permanent damage and pain to the end of her days. When that tactic failed the tube was thrust straight down their throats and poorly saturated food was ingested. Many had colitis and life long digestive disorder. Despite the hardship, when they were interviewed in the 70's I got the feeling that they would have done it all over again if they had too.

It was the WSPU who adopted the colour scheme in 1908 of purple, green and white. Purple symbolised dignity, white for purity and green for hope. London jewellers Mappin and Webb issued a catalogue of jewellery for Christmas 1908 and the more wealthy supporters often designed their own items of jewellery using gemstones and enamels to represent the movement's colours. The WSPU exhorted women to wear the colours to show support for the movement. In 1908 a new law was even passed to limit the size of hat pins. Fearing that suffragettes would use the pins as a weapon the new law specified that the new length of a pin was to be limited to 9 inches from top to tail.

One of the treats last night was hearing Leonora Cohen. I have read about her in books written by historian Jill Lidington and can recommend 'Rebel Girls' if anyone wants to find out more but I first heard her name on an Antiques Roadshow programme. One of her descendents had brought along her suffragette medals and jewellery and it had a staggering value because of who she was and the role of suffragettes in our past. In 1913 she took an iron bar and smashed a glass case containing the insignia of the Order of Merit, part of the Crown Jewels at the Tower of London and it was fascinating to hear how she missed her tube stop in her nervousness and had to go all the way around the circle line again before she could complete her task.

When she was wrestled to the ground by Beefeaters after the breakage she had a note tied to the iron bar and it read ' This is my protest to the Government's treachery to the working women of Great Britain'. She was charged with causing unlawful and malicious damage to an amount exceeding £5 and was bailed for trial by jury. She defended herself and her personal courage and articulate defence won her many admirers. An expert witness declared that the damage could be repaired for £4 10 shillings enabling the jury to acquit her as the amount was below the £5 of the charge.

Her story is just one of many but thanks to the tapes I heard last night we can hear it first hand and relive it through the voices of the women who fought for the rights that too many take for granted these days.