The sun is out and Hot Bed Press is hot with activity. We have taken over the workshop for 2 full on weeks of courses. This week Intro to Print and Letterpressed Books are busy finishing off their week. It’s been an exhilarating and exhausting week for those on the course, but the energy and enthusiasm are palpable.
Last weekend we welcomed Kip Gresham, (and assistant Alan), as a special guest from The Print Studio in Cambridge bringing us Painterly Photopolymer a really seductive and expressive medium full of tone and atmosphere. This sat perfectly alongside Expressive Letterpress with David Armes bringing his inimitable style and panache to making funky graphic/fine art compositions with wooden letterpress.
This week is just as full with Screenprinting all the way through to CMYK separations and printing with Mandy Tolley and Andy Magee, (our Operations Manager), and Etching through to Photo-etching with Sean Rorke, (our Artistic Director). The screenprint course is full but we have 2 places left on the etching course.
The following weekend on 13th & 14th August we are really pleased to welcome Anne Desmett back, (she was last here way back in 2008, coinciding with her major retrospective at The Whitworth Gallery). Anne brings a wealth of knowledge and expertise on Wood Engraving. This course filled in days of advertising so we are bound to run this again when Anne is next available. Alongside that, (yes it really is all go), we have Expressive Screenprint; showing how to work like Howard Hodgkin, Albert Irvin or Neil Canning. Not your usual painterly screenprintign; this brings a more expressive vibrant layering of colours and brush strokes. we have a few places left on this course.
We round up the Summer School with a special talk and demonstration on Stone Lithography with Lee Turner from Hole Editions in Newcastle on Friday 19th August and then 2 more special guests; Kevin Holdaway will visit us from Leicester to offer a unique take on lino with CMYK lino and Justin Sanders is coming over from Birmigham to run a Mezzotint course; the first time we have run this for many years. The sumptuous working back from black plates to real tonal depth is a marvel. For this last weekend, with 2 weeks to go there are just a few places on both courses.
This special busy summer is part of our drive towards developing our building; The Casket Works into a state of the art print studio. It’s so good to be able to teach people new skills and introduce new processes and ways of working whilst fundraising for Hot Bed Press’s future. This is the unique way we have been able to expand and fully fund our organisation without regular funding, for the last 10 years whilst growing rapidly and improving all the time.
Thanks to everyone who has been on courses and for members for being understanding of our needs to pull out all the stops in moving forwards. Business will be back to normal, whatever that is, on 15th August.
Sean Rorke – Artistic Director
