Exhibition plans.............

Joe called a meeting this morning to discuss our exhibition plans and began by showing us a film he had made with all the photos he had taken of all the activities we had taken part in and all the places we had travelled to. It was a nostalgic look back at the last week and gave everyone a laugh too.

Jo's Quick Time film plays on the screen in the base room.

We then went to see the 303 Gallery downstairs in the Harris Art Centre to  check out the space and think about where we would like our work to be shown and how it might be displayed. 

Steve and Joe explained the variety of mixed media that would be part of the exhibition. There are four  collaborative sound pieces, a projection and dance piece as well as all the artists' book and there will be a recital in the space upstairs and a dance two dance performances outside the gallery entrance in the main foyer of the building. its a lot to consider. To help Joe understand what everyone needs he bought in a big white board and asked us to pt our names to the various display methods and we all got in line to sign up.

It the end of the day it looked like this, but there was still a few missing requests.

Brandon's Lithography Project

Brandon has begun his project. Using the method of lithography he is focusing on the horizons we saw at Yellowstone Park. As a group collaboration he asked various students to paint on to the stone tehir images of skylines. All of us were very excited to be part of this as none of us had experienced the lithography method before. brandon was up against the clock to get all the stones printed and even though everyone else was busy they all got involved and watch his progress.

Friday deadline.............

As friday afternoon came round everyone was really busy trying to get last minute printing done and anyone that could help was assisting someone else to complete their books.  In other studios around campus the dancers were rehearsing with their teams and the sound and music groups were completing their sound works and editing film pieces.

Sam is helping Claire to assemble her drypoint book and has suggested she use a copper wire binding.

Scott has a three tier cut out book to assemble and it looks like Michelle has the job to help him out.

Jay puts the finishing touches to his book with Yvonne's help in planning where he needs to insert end papers.

Michelle gets her cyanotypes into a sequence and only starts construction at 4pm. its going to be a late night for her and Yvonne!

Thursday pressure..........

Today has been a set of challenges for me. I am so glad that we have 26 letters in the alphabet as by the end of my printing session I was at plan E!!

Yesterday I mono-printed my pages for my book and today was the day I was going to print my book cloth for my front and back covers. Throughout the week at Yellowstone I had been collecting flowers and various leaves. I love looking at nature and the intricate patterns.

I started off by trying to use magic foam that I had brought from home. The instructions told me that I only had to heat up the foam and then press my desired object into the hot foam. After trying multiple times of heating it on the hot plate and burning myself I resorted to using a hairdryer. Another disaster was about to strike. I had forgotten that my image was inverted so that when it was printed, it printed the image but also a square of black as well. This is not what I wanted.

Practice prints on newsprint

Plan B then came into action. I started to trim the foam into my desired shape. When cutting it, I found it hard to cut it into the shape around the print. I printed it again. However I found that because the room was warm my image had started to reshape into the original foam. After lots of frustration and grunts I decided to give up.

The foam printed shapes were still not working!!

Another plan. Another letter. Plan C. Still wanting to use my collected foliage I had the idea of printing with them on to my book cloth. The colour of my book cloth was a tan colour. I wanted something quite subtle. Practicing on newsprint I found it really difficult to use them as I had kept them in a bag for over a week and some of the leaves became very fragile and were hard to handle. Trying both a brayer and a paintbrush to paint them it became impossible with getting ink everywhere and not getting the delicate prints that I wanted.

Plan D came to a head. I spoke to one of my tutors and asked for her advice. She suggested that I roller a glass paint with ink, place the leaves, flowers, etc and put them through the press so that they were evenly distributed with ink. I tried this and worked really well. However I was more inspired by the relief prints that the leaves, etc had made on the glass plate. I had the idea of using these relief prints on to my book cloth. However when I printed on to the book cloth, the brown ink on to the tan coloured book cloth didn’t work as well as I had hoped. I re inked the glass plate again with a darker shade of brown and tried again. The outcome was better but it was still not what I was looking for.

Plan D - relief printed leaves

The final plan arose. Plan E. I had tried everything I could think of from printing with the leaves with both negative and positive shapes. None of it worked how I wanted it to. I then resorted to doing a mono-print on to white book cloth, using another image from my previous Photoshop work.

After all the trials today, I am looking forward to constructing my book tomorrow. 
Rachel Perry

Whilst Rachel had been suffering her trials, Brandon the print tutor from BYU Idaho has spent yesterday regraining some litho stones for a collaborative lithographic print. This is a laborious process, but everyone is eager to have a go and see how it works. Today he is ready to let us make our images on the stone and he has asked each of us to draw or paint an horizon line that we remember from the trip last week. Clare is one of the first to have a go.......

 

Clare was the first to have a go with the lithography painting and drawing media.

                            

More of the group's drawings on a much bigger stone.

                                          

Clare, Sue and Jane working on their remembered skyline landscapes for Brandon's Lithograph

Brandon explaining the sequence and many procedures in the production of a lithograph. 
The images having been painted, Brandon worked late into the evening preparing the plates for printing tomorrow. 

While most of us were busy in the print areas Bill was getting Nathan's help cutting steel hinges in the metalwork area of the sculpture studio

Clare wanted to use 'Letterpress' for the title page of her book and Michael was able to take her to the Letterpress area and explain and assist in producing what she wanted. 

  

The finished title page in Letterpress type.

  

And work starts - Tuesday and Wednesday

The view from the van on the drive to BYU from Sundance - tuesday morning.

After our orientation and planning day  yesterday we are now truly feeling the clock count down to our exhibition on Saturday. everyone is either on a Mac, in the print store shop looking at possible materials, or asking me twenty questions about how to produce their idea. I also have to make  my own book so I have to carve out some time for myself.
Our group are quite focused and I have no worries about their ability to do the best they can. There is a really good atmosphere in our base room which we have made our own and there are BYU students working alongside us too.

The Base Room.......

...........in full operation.

Sarah and I find some peace and quite in our own room next door....

......and I try to figure out how to use all these photographs!

Sarah's monoprints get underway

Sue is preparing her relief prints for her Turkish map forms

Clare has begun to print her panoramic collagraph of the Yellowstone geysers

Our first day at BYU and work starts

This is our base room for the week with all the group waiting to start our project recap meeting.

The first morning on campus and everyone is still nervous and full of anticipation. We started the meeting by reading out the poems that were Sunny's challenge for us to write on the way back to Utah on Friday. Each van load of students and staff were asked to collect and organise some words that described their ideas and experience of Yellowstone. these words then form a loose prose poem. Each team read out their group effort and we were all impressed by the complexity of language and meaning contained within the word works. Each one illustrated aspects of all our thoughts and ideas provoked by our exposure to wilderness.

Nate reads the first poem to the group.

 Joe had asked me to give a presentation on the books we had produced on our previous collaboration 'Shared Ground' in 2012. I explained the context of this earlier project, its themes and the ideas contained in the individual books. Concept, content, form and materials are the four main areas to consider when developing an artists' book and the books perfectly illustrated this approach. 

Then we were off to see the Thomas Moran prints in the Special Collections Library at BYU. the library is one of the best stocked university libraries in the US and were were going to see the most expensive book in their collection.

The atrium of the BYU Library

The Curator of the Special Collections happens to be an expert on Yellowstone and he gave us a talk about the role of the artist Thomas Moran and the photographer William Henry Jackson in publicising the landscape features of Yellowstone after their inclusion in the first exploratory expedition in 1870. There was a large selection of his watercolour sketches and chromo lithographs for us to look at. Having already experienced these landscapes for ourselves it was very interesting seeing how Moran had chosen to paint them and the emphasis he had placed on a very visionary interpretation of nature. 

Michelle Rowley

Today was our first day at Brigham Young University, we were all looking forward to see where we’d be working and eager to get going on the project.

We were taken on an extensive tour to help us orientate ourselves around the large campus. The tour included the food hall, the University shop (more like a department store), a large format digital print shop, sculpture studios and most importantly for me, the printmaking workshops, yes there are more than one!

The Intaglio lab

The Lithography Lab

Nathan introduces us to the large format Print Lab

The print workshops were large, airy and clean, and what BYU lack in screen printing facilities they definitely make up for in other areas, big presses, massive stones for lithography, all the colours you’ll ever need, they actually have a clean area, and the list goes on……….. what more could anyone wish for?

I think we’ll be in our element for the rest of the week.

Sarah Romano 

Group get together at Sundance and the Hillam Cabin

One of the ski runs at Sundance

After the square dance on Saturday night Bernie, Yvonne, Michelle, Sarah, Clare, Rachel and Sue moved to a new home in the hills about 20 mins from Provo in the ski resort of Sundance. Our woodland home is the property of Mrs Hillam and her husband built the house himself over many years. It is a wonderful quirky home full of interesting objects and memories and feels very welcoming. It is a privilege to be invited to stay here and were are delighted to be together for this coming week as it helps us to keep in touch and help each other more.

A quote from Robert Redford about nature's relationship to creativity seems very appropriate to our own project.

Today, Sunday, the whole of our WMC group came up to spend the afternoon here to be together, share ideas and explore the mountains. There continues to be wild life all around us and we have an especially territorial Goss Hawk in the trees next to the house who likes to dive bomb passing walkers. It has already buzzed Sue and Clare today!

Out on the deck in our very own cabin in the woods

With Clare's birthday coming up soon we had another reason to celebrate being together, but its not all about fun. This is a nervous time or us all, we have our individual work to produce, a new environment to negotiate and settle into, and a public exhibition ahead of us. Having a chance to reflect on our experiences of the past week is really useful and sharing all those anxieties and helps to build our confidence in how to manage it.

Cutting the cake

We also had some Kickstarter business to discuss to keep on top of our rewards obligations and michelle gave us some new jobs to do and showed us some ideas for how we could design our poster reward.

Postcards that we have found in all the visitor centers over the last week 

Giant salt crystals from the Salt Lake almost 1 inch across!
We all cut our fingers collecting them too, they are very sharp.

  

Rock Canyon and the Square Dance

On Saturday we went up to Rock Canyon, just above the university in Provo for a short hike. The weather could not be more different from Yellowstone. It is baking hot at around 30C and then add the altitude and a short hike becomes a huge trial. We get breathless very quickly, factor 50 is a must and we all have two water bottles, we have never drunk so much water!

Joe explained that the area was home to rattlesnakes and grass snakes and to be careful if we heard the rattle. The cicadas made an unnervingly similar noise so we were on edge as we walked up the steep sided path. Rock climbers clung to the crevices all around us and forced us to look up at the zigzag compression patterns of the geological strata in the cliffs.

Clare setting off up the canyon

I gave out small Petri dishes to everyone to collect samples from the environment, sure enough James found an intact sloughed off snake skin proving Joe's warning and later Sue saw the fabled rattlesnake. 

Throughout this last week our encounters with wild creatures have unsettled us and delighted us. How is it we are prepared to be so fearful and yet so pleased to see them at the same time?

More activities threaten to scare us this evening with the Square Dance which Joe has arranged for the entire group. This may be the most feared activity yet?

Bill and Bullseye strut their stuff!

As it turned out we did OK, we were mostly chaotic and undisciplined, but it wasn't so embarrassing - we were all about the same level of bad. But then Bill came in wearing his blowup horse, the star of our Kickstarter video, and he brought the house down! 

These group activities have really cemented this disparate group of creative people, making fools of ourselves is a great leveller and there are clear bonds established now. Everyone is getting on amazingly well and it's good to see and amazing to think it has only been 6 days since we all met.

Michelle Rowley

Smithson's Spiral Jetty and the Challenge on Salt Lake......

We have met head on the challenges from both the BYU Music and Dance groups and now it was our chance to throw down the gauntlet! Missing our fellow student Steve Sheehan , a performance artist of some repute, we arranged three group ‘warm up’ pieces followed by 3 individual team pieces.

The initial pieces were each related to group behaviour - how when we are in large groups we perhaps instinctively work as one. In the animal kingdom, huge flocks of starlings appear to dance across the skies or enormous shoals of fish act in a similar manner. Does any one bird or fish act as leader? 

Here in Yellowstone and Utah the sighting of a wild animal brings cars to a sudden halt and we tourists pour out of them, cameras strained towards the animal. 100s of people wait for the moment ‘Old Faithful’ erupts and then as one gasp and cheer, cameras clicking once more.

These initial ‘warm up’ pieces try and mirror those movements. For the first the entire group huddled very closely together each person touching the next. With eyes closed and guided by one person the group are encouraged to start breathing in unison – slow and deliberate with absolute quiet other than the sound of one’s own breath. After a short while the group are asked to begin humming, quietly at first but growing louder. The sound of humming can be felt through vibrations within the body. Whilst the humming gets louder the group are asked to move around independently but whilst remaining in contact with one another. The humming is directed to reduce in volume to eventually only the sound of slow breathing once again.

The second piece required the group to space themselves apart in a diamond formation, with a ‘leader’ in each of the 4 corners. The leaders in turn , holding a camera or phone , led the group in postures perhaps resembling the taking of photographs. The group through direct or peripheral vision followed suit, but naturally a little behind the leader. The piece was completed once each of the leaders had led the group.

Kate and her dance students Nicole, Elise and Stephanie show us how the flocking formation will work.

Here we are in 'flock mode'. Jay, in the background, is filming it all for the exhibition.

Finally, the third warm up piece required the group to form into equal rows of 6 people 6 deep. Each person laid a hand on the shoulder of the person to his right. Those people on the outside placed the other hand on the person in front. In this way, with eyes closed each was in contact with the entire group. One person, the leader ,commenced movements, while the rest of the group, using their arms like shock absorbers, moved in a similar manner.

For the final pieces the groups were divided into 3, each of about 12 people and were given animal behaviour phrase to interpret and enact as human behaviour. 'Predator and Prey, ‘Hunter Gatherer’ and ‘ Flight Instinct' were the 3 phrases.

'Predator and Prey’ was interpretd as a paparazzi scenario with a series of still, set pieces in a tableau

style photographic document . The female movie star is being chased by the paparazzi, who are seen to be climbing over her vehicle and giving chase on foot and following vehicles. This worked really well with the vehicles used as props and everyone getting into 'character' and offering suggestions. 

As an exercise it worked well, feedback was really positive with comments like "We wished we had thought of that!" And we have a set of documentary photographs for the exhibition if we can find a spot for them.

Bill Fletcher

Robert Smithsons 'Spiral Jetty' is a famous piece of land art. Seeing it was another highlight of this trip. The salt flats are the most hostile place we have ever been and with the intense heat and the shimmering mirages of the distant mountains it felt like we were on another planet.