Sara Grisewood

Unit 4 Process and materials

 

Making rubbings / imprints : in studio and on the site

 

I had begun to take prints of the tarpaulin and studio floor for the Unit 2 assesment piece, and also of plastic woven laundry bags and a plastic record box. These were made on newsprint which I then glued to a layered  papier mache, recycled paper,  ‘canvas’. Idea there was to create layers of meaning and layers of physical presence of objects and also off or on site in studio. I then took this process and used it to make rubbings in a large landscape format sketchbook, and in the studio. I made rubbings of found objects from the Phoenix estate that I had collected and brought back to the studio. Other stuff, detritus in studio also began to play a part in the process and leave its traces, forming an interesting off site ? element. The physical process of being close to subject and literally taking an imprint of it, all different shapes and uneven surfaces and sometimes almost wrapping the paper round to get the print, was compelling. I filled the book and then took another one with me to the Phoenix estate and filled that up. I was using a thick graphite stick on its side and I continued to use this as I liked the messy, fugitive nature of it. I worked on the ground kneeling on gravel, rubble, drain covers, dirt, earth, plants, plastic rubbish, mixtures I didn’t know what they were, small bits pressing into my knees in the same way as they pressed into the back of the paper, which picked up bits of mud and dirt too. 

 

I also looked at the work of American artist Michelle Stuart :

 

In 1972 Michelle Stuart began working on a group of large-scale paper scrolls that incorporated frottage (a rubbing technique) with graphite to capture the uneven and unique topography of the earth’s surface. Stuart—who developed an interest in documenting the specificities of land formations while working as a topographical draftsman for the United States Army Corps of Engineers—has described her rubbing process as “making something manifest that you couldn’t really see otherwise.” The largest example from this group of works, Sayreville Strata Quartet (1976) presents the colors and textures of an abandoned brick quarry in Sayreville, New Jersey, on four panels of paper. Substituting graphite for samples from four layers of the quarry’s red soil, Stuart pressed the earth directly onto sheets of paper that were laid across the site to make this work. The panels show the soil’s gradations while capturing the quarry’s undulating surfaces.

Stuart’s monochrome rubbings of the 1970s simultaneously challenged the hard-edged aesthetic of Minimalist painting and its industrially manufactured materials, as well as the relationship between drawing and the artist’s hand. Moreover, breaking with the monumental scale of early Land art, these rubbings explore a physical connection to site and the product of memory. (Michelle Stuart. Long-term view. Dia: Beacon. 2017)

 

This also connected to a tutorial with Simon Callery in December 2017 where he suggested I literally work on the site (I made some drawings there on partly demolished walls etc but this method was very different) and to the processes he uses to take imprints of land at archaeological sites, this method did feel like a way to be connected literally to the place : taking prints, pressing down, sometimes using my physical weight too to take these. It was a kind of performance making them outside. I also remembered in the tutorial that Simon was enthusiastically encouraging me to continue to push the definition of painting – what painting could be in different manifestations, here he talks of its relationship to sculpture :

 

 Later, as a painter, I couldn’t see why painting couldn’t have some of the qualities of sculpture. I couldn’t see why painting couldn’t function on physical as well as visual terms and I couldn’t see why an encounter with painting couldn’t involve all the senses. The roles of painting and sculpture in European art have been much closer together in the past than they are today. Since the Renaissance we have done a good job of pulling art forms apart and elevating image above all else. (Artimage 2018) 

 

When I did my first degree in Fine Art at  Bristol Polytechnic,  in the early 1980s , after our first year we had to choose a painting, sculpture or printmaking route and you sort of stayed within those departments, though obviously quite a lot of students at that time were constantly challenging any boundaries like that, in terms of developing installation and using time based media etc. I remember the painting department seemed quite traditional and confining  and I enjoyed the different approach to materials and process within sculpture.  I also had a good cross-discipline experience on my foundation course at Kingston Polytechnic, where we were encouraged to expand what painting was into sculpture and beyond. I managed to work in both painting and sculpture, finding ways to use materials and a physicality in sculpture that I found frustrating in painting. Interestingly, back in art college many years (!) later it is interesting that I am still looking at the crossover between different forms of visual practice, and drawn to using  non-traditional materials; and I do think  of painting as an active tradition that can still continue to be stretched and pushed.