Some manholes are much bigger than others, big enough to get a man down a hole. Here’s one printed by The Plebeian Printmakers the other weekend at the Gwyl Troublemakers Festival. You can get an idea of it’s size by looking at my ridiculous Bagpuss slippers at the bottom.
And coming soon to Cinema & Co…….
Some manholes are not manholes at all. They’re too small to get a man down. While I was doing some public printmaking with The Plebeian Printmakers a couple of weekends ago, we saw all sorts of manhole covers, big and small and this lovely one was one of the smallest.
We were puzzled by it because it has that number 8 on it and there was no keyhole so it didn’t give access to anything underground. My fellow Plebeian Printmakers, Lynne Bebb and Hannah Lawson found a similar one with the number 16 a bit further down Swansea’s High Street.
They did some investigating later on and found that there are lots more in the area, seventeen in all, marking out a virtual tour of Medieval Swansea – you can find it here.
And rushing up faster than I would like ….. because I have to get stuff ready for it …. ERK!!!!!! Please come if you can 😀
Manholes can be quite fancy but some are no-frills and this is one of them. But I like the typography. It’s done in metal. That’s the British Kite Mark on the bottom. I used a blue non-toxic water-based printing ink by Seawhites of Brighton, very economical.
No time to rest ….. this is coming up in a few days …..
I did some prints from street manhole covers along Swansea’s High Street as part of the Gwyl Troublemakers Festival a couple of weekends ago. I worked with some other printmakers from Swansea Print Workshop and we inked up all the way along the street. We wanted not only to take printmaking out into public, it’s often closeted away in specialist studios, but we also wanted people to stop and look at the lovely designs under their feet.
These tell a history too, they come from different eras and have different purposes. They’re just as valid as the buildings, except people notice buildings more.
No time to rest ….. this is coming up in a few days …..
Here’s the last drawing I made at the Troublemaker’s Festival last weekend, in the pouring rain, with my fellow Plebeian Scribblers, Chris Harrendence, Patricia McKenna-Jones and Melvyn Williams. Here we are below. The sketchbooks got really wet and I had extra problems because I had stuck ripped brown paper into my book, but the soaking started peeling it off.
Photo courtesy of Gwyl Troublemakers Festival
Here’s a short film that Melvyn did of all the drawings we made…..
And no time to stop and rest …. on with the next thing ….. coming up at Cinema & Co ….
My sketchbook has finally dried out after the soaking I had with The Plebeian Scribblers last Saturday at the Troublemakers Festival. We stood in the rain for a couple of hours, drawing in public and it was, well, challenging. I thought it might dry very crinkled or mouldy but it’s not too bad. It’s been very warm weather which helped dry it quickly.
Here we are, from left to right, Chris Harrendence, me, Melvyn Williams and Patricia McKenna-Jones. I really like working with other artists. It can be a very isolated profession so it’s nice to get out and collaborate. We tried different drawing materials but we pretty much ended up using graphite blocks which dissolved into a lovely fluid line on the soaking paper.
Photograph courtesy of Gwyl Troublemakers’ Festival
No time for slacking, on to the next arty shenanigans – coming up on July 31st …….
To own one of my series of silkscreen portraits celebrating great but often neglected women artists please click the image.
To buy my work on the Swansea Print Workshop site please click the image to the left.
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