Gosh. Tempus fugit. The last few months have not been conducive to making art for a number of reasons, but I’m trying to remedy that in earnest now. I’ve been lucky to receive an unexpected windfall from an uncle who was instrumental in my childhood exploration of ideas and mediums. I remember vividly the ‘chinese’… Continue reading Onwards
Author: ivan
I’m post or?
I’ve had a number of opportunities to think about knowledge and the accumulation of expertise in the past week. Ignoring the highly VUCA world we live in (I love that expression ‘volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous’. I’ve described myself at various times professionally – and sometimes unprofessionally – as ‘a complexity vortex’. It’s very pleasing… Continue reading I’m post or?
Meander
I’m going to try and focus on deliberate practice as explained in Anderson’s Peak . I have been attempting to follow the audiobook of The Creative Habit by Twyla Tharp but I’m not getting much value from it. The winding road to reinvention I don’t really have a problem being creative, and if I’m honest… Continue reading Meander
Identifying as…
Time to refocus this blog on the activites I’m currently engaged in – linocut, bookbinding and occasional art. I’m hoping that in doing so I will reignite my writing mojo. But we shall see.
August 2021 Reflections – folding
In the past few weeks I’ve been broadening my understanding of structures. Last year Ben Elbel ran a promotion through Designer Bookbinders which led to be buying two tutorials + materials – I had a really tough time choosing but in the end went for an aesthetic (Onion) and an introduction to (sewn) albums (Shrigley).… Continue reading August 2021 Reflections – folding
Documentary and inventories
A couple of displacement activities this week – new arrivals in the paper department (from GF Smith) and collating all my linocut blocks and remaining prints of the last 18 months. This led to a rather pleasing reminder that I’ve created quite a few prints, and that in turn led me to look at the… Continue reading Documentary and inventories
From the studio…
A selection of photographs of some of my recent work or new things to have arrived in the studio/bindery.
Creative Writing – survival of the fittest
[Ivan’s note – I found this post sitting in draft state. It had lain dormant since early 2012. I post it because I am always slightly bemused, often plain embarrassed, and occasionally delighted, by things I used to think / feel / say. An awful lot of *stuff* has happened since, not least another child, and… Continue reading Creative Writing – survival of the fittest
Writer vs storyteller
Am I a writer? Or am I a story-teller? What do I want to be?
That nagging, clawing, bitching and biting sense of….
Routines, and why they’re not always good for the process.