Forest Books and forest ghosts

My Alone Together Forest images were printed from carborundum plates. The carborundum itself is highly absorbent and I’ve used it to create the deep and moody tones of the trees: my contribution to our collaborative suspended piece.

In the case of Forest Books, I approached the image-making differently. Again, the carborundum was inked but, prior to putting the plate through the press, and before the actual surface was wiped back to its eventual pale state, I monoprinted from it by hand. Under the light pressure of my hand the carborundum tree forms refuse to surrender their dense deposits of ink but the smooth plate relinquishes its partially wiped and expressive inky residue easily. This explains why the tonal relationship in the book pages is the reverse of those in the central installation: the trees light in one and dark in the other.

 The substrates are in contrast too. I waxed Chinese paper for the collaborative piece and for Forest Ghosts, which gives a slightly translucent weightlessness to the work. This speaks of airy impermanence and the movement through a thing. By contrast, the double-sided book pages on the wall have a solidity to them, they are more definitely present. The chaotic disquiet of the monoprinted book pages required order as well so I imposed a boundary of black binding tape on every edge, which adds to this more concrete quality.

For Forest Ghosts, I used ghost prints (those printed from a plate the third or fourth time after first printing) and then waxed and hung the prints on top of one another. The layers echo pages of a book, ex with its contents disappearing.

Writer, Rachel Cusk, talks about the ‘gift and burden’ of being alone. I think this dichotomy is mirrored in the contrasts between my contributions to the suspended piece and Forest Ghosts, and Forest Books: contrasts in both weight and tonal distribution. There and not there. Permanent and passing through.