Before Coracle
Drawing / Hatband Landscape 1974
As part of my final show at Birmingham, where I specialised in printed textiles, my large scale fabric prints used drawing made at the American Museum in Bath.
These included these delicate ink representations of Native Indian decorative patterns.
Simon Cutts and I met in 1972 whilst teaching at West Bridgford Further Education College in Nottingham. Our flat on the 14th floor had a small Adana press on which a small book was printed called The Allies, by Simon and Martin Fidler. This was my first introduction to small press editions, my only role was to collate and sew on the small blue button with red cotton.
Nottingham was at that time an industrial city with a heritage of etched glass pub windows. I had made several drawings from an image of a dilapidated wall in a Greek villa. This I wanted to use as a way of showing the two ages of the decoration, before fading & after. Working with a technician in a glass factory the small folded works were made by his acid etching my templates. on glass cut to shape.
I then made simple wooden frames with hinges for two versions, a coloured one using humbrol paints on a deep etch & a white one on a surface etch.
Hatband landscape in glass & wood 1974
Hatband Landscape was a piece made in a similar way
After a year in Birmingham we moved to London in the summer 1974.
I continued making little drawings whilst working as print technician at the Sir John Cass School of Art in Whitechapel.