Black Heart Press

Heart of Glass

I guess I’ve mentioned it before, my day job is working for Finnish artist Tuula Lehtinen - while I consider myself a printer and take great pride in the nice editions we’ve produced over the last two years, I also enjoy the variation that comes with the job - we’re currently working on a larger public commission with a wonderful medium that Tuula is using quite a lot: Italian smalti from Orsoni, a factory in Venice that produces smalti, glass tiles for mosaics since more than 200 years.

These glass tiles come in over 2000 colours, many of them custom made - in the shop we use about 180 different shades. Pictured above - the cutting block on which I break some of the larger tiles into square tiles for detailed work, a some of our colour palettes (with Tuula’s birthday cake in the middle - should have photographed it while the cake was uncut, but we were too greedy and it was also way too delicious..), and, since I can’t write about the current project just yet, the final two pictures show “Leila’s Garden”, a 2005 mosaic commission Tuula and her team made in Tampere’s Pikkupalatsi.

There’s printmaking in these projects too, instead of projecting / tracing Tuula’s sketches we use large format digital printing on thin concrete boards, but that’s not what this post about - it’s the colours of the smalti, so awesome. And here’s your reward for reading all this way: a link to the Orsoni Colour Library - one of the most awesome places in the world, if you love colours - a part of their foundry where the sheets of glass are stored before they get broken into the small tiles you’ve seen in my photos.

CONCRETE MONOTYPING

Printmaking purists, brace yourselves, this entry is for once not about Renaissance prints, but about a rather contemporary fringe of the printmaking world, something we called “concrete monotyping” while working on it.

A huge public commission by Finland-based Swedish artist Tomas Byström, a 450sqm facade for a school in Tampere.

The design is drawn by the artist into the mould for casting the concrete elements, using a special retarder, the yellow lines in the first picture, that will “etch” into the concrete, preventing it from setting. Then the concrete is poured into the mould, reinforcing steel bars are added and all that. The concrete is a special mixture, using black stones as an aggregate, and rather fine white cement.
Once the element is cast it sets overnight, then taken out of the mould and waterblasted, removing the concrete that was prevented from setting by the retarder, and the drawing appears, lines etched a certain depth into the concrete, showing black because of the stones used to make the cement.

A crucial point in the production of these elements was the registration between elements to ensure line continuity, proper angles and all that. I’m thrilled to have played a part in the making of, the first photo shows Tomas Byström and me working on an element, the second photo shows one of the smaller elements after wash-out, the third photo shows the current state of construction in the Vuores area in Tampere, with all the triple checking for registration paying off beautifully.

All photos (c) Tuula Lehtinen.

Further reading:

 More concrete related prints from Finland:
http://www.graphicconcrete.com/index.html  
(They screenprint on the concrete while it sets, among other things - and in the case of retarders, also before) 

Too obvious, but still:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KeN9c2GYJkk 

Depicted in the middle: my printmaking partner David’s cloth for wiping the edges, back and front, a thing of beauty. 

Wish I had more time to write some properly researched entries, but swamped with work in the printshop this week, and after a nice hot sauna in the evenings (we’re in Finland, after all) there’s no brain energy left for writing.

Oh well, a tiny little thing:

Printmaking lingo: Trauerrand (German)

Best translated with “mourning border”, the black border around a card commemorating a death or funeral. In printmaking it is used for a print where the printer has forgotten or neglected to clean the edges of the intaglio plate, resulting in an unwanted (black) “frame” around the image.

Etymologically, the word Trauerrand comes from the Totenzettel, small, often folded cards that gave a short (or at times lengthy) description of the life of the deceased, the dates and or comforting quotes. They were given to attendants of the funeral service in church or were being mailed to notify those living further away.
Varying in decoration, yet some sort of a black border (the Trauerrand) unifies most of the Totenzettel, with -of course- more than enough exceptions.

Thanks for reading this far, I’m trying to remember what point, if any, I was going to make. Nevermind, please point your attention back to the Totenzettel depicted above. Not only is the lovely lady mourned here named 

Maria Teresia Ursula Walburgis Aloysia von Eschenbrender

no, her Totenzettel is also an amazing piece of printmaking history:
The front side is a wonderfully misaligned engraving with perfectly wiped edges, the back is a letterpress text about Frau von Eschenbrender who passed away on the 6th of September 1826 at half past eleven, printed in a way that gives a whole new definition to “kiss pressure” (etymology of that will follow in another educative post soon, I’m sure) and a floral Trauerrand.

Printed at the shop of F. Creuter in Cologne, I bet the engraving in the front was pulled in advance until the plate wore down, then the letterpress added when a certain amount of Totenzettel with this design were ordered. Will do some research on that, when less tired.


If in the mood for more:
A wonderful collection of Totenzettel from 1694-2012 from the archives of the University Library of Cologne, where the above shown Totenzettel was taken from:
http://totenzettel.ub.uni-koeln.de/ 

Tuula Lehtinen
“Viipuri-Kelkkala II”
photogelatine-aquatint, aquatint, etching, photo etching, photoglyphique engraving
Plate size: 50x25cm
Tampere, 2012 

This is what I’ve been working on recently, one of six prints from Tuula’s “Viipuri” series. Viipuri, also known as Vyborg was Finland’s second largest city, until it fell into Russian hands during the Winter War. The artist’s mother was among the many Finns that fled westwards. and these prints are based on Tuula visiting Viipuri together with her mum for the first time since 1939.

Nerd side info: printed with Charbonnel Aqua Wash inks on white Hahnemühle paper, from five steelfaced copper plates.

Further reading:

Tuula’s flickr for studio insights and tons of works:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/68348785@N07/

Website:
http://tuulalehtinen.fi/ 

Learn about Vyborg:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vyborg

Very sad and melancholy tango about missing Monrepos, a park in Viipuri:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jVLZbmMd7Hc

It’s proven: printshop mascots improve focus, morale and output by 100%, if not more. This little rascal is Amelie aka Printshop Dog (recently promoted from Printshop Puppy), and when she’s not sleeping in the middle of everyone’s way she’s either chewing on something she shouldn’t or having a pillow fight with herself.  

Maybe mascot is the wrong word. Maybe it should be printshop power animal.. Hm.
What’s your printmaking mascot / power animal? Hit me @blackheartpress or via ask.
 

Time for some original content.
It’s been a while since I wrote about a printmaker / print that caught my interest, mostly due to being swamped with work. I was in Tampere, Finland those last days and had the chance to see the openings of the Pirkanmaan 5. Triennaali before catching my train back to Helsinki.

The works of Tomas Regan (*1979) caught my eye - very beautiful portrait etchings, approximately life size, printed from three copper plates onto one long sheet of Hahnemühle paper. The photos I made are absolutely dreadful and do the prints no justice at all, I’ll probably repost if good photos surface online - yet I still wanted to show this portait the artist made of his partner and son, and the tiny memento mori in the upper left corner. 

 

Further reading:

Tomas Regan, portfolio from ~2010:
http://haamu.com/portfolio/  

A slightly better photo of another one of Regan’s prints in the exhibiton:
http://pirkanmaantriennaali.fi/sites/default/files/TReganPTr5.jpg  

The Pirkanmaan 5. Triennaali website, Finnish only:
 http://pirkanmaantriennaali.fi/

Whenever I hear printmakers being all anal about working archival, my inner self cringes and yells out

GORDON MATTA-FUCKING-CLARK!

The guy was brilliant, made art that he knew would most probably be destroyed only weeks after completion and turned out to be as archival as all human beings.. 

So please, if you have a great idea, just go do it, and don’t go all “art history is the history of works that have survived throughout the centuries”. To illustrate, here’s three photos of Finnish printmaker Valtteri Halmetoja laying down some moody, absolutely unarchival tunes in an abandoned factory complex in Tampere, at 10:30pm. 

Further reading:

http://arttattler.com/archivemattaclark.html

Valtteri Halmetoja
“ELÄMÄ ON KUIN PIERU, TEHDÄÄN KIMPPALOTTO”
Woodcut, Tampere 2009
Edition of 5, printed on Japanese paper.

As we all know, Finnish is a pretty awesome language. (For those who didn’t know yet - let the LA TIMES inform you: http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/jacketcopy/2008/11/why-finnish-is.html). It is also a pretty difficult language at times, even for the natives. The woodcut pictured above is by Finnish artist Valtteri Halmetoja, a description of it was written by Finnish art critic Veikko Halmetoja and given to Minna Sarvanne, who cut her version of the image based on Veikko’s text.
This was also done the other way round, with Minna providing the original image and Valtteri doing a lino cut after Veikko’s description.

For more information on (and additional images of) the “Rikkinäinen puhelin / Broken Telephone” project visit:
http://www3.jkl.fi/taidemuseo/graphica_creativa/2009/broken_telephone.htm

Valtteri doesn’t only make far out woodcuts, he’s also a really cool guy who invited Swedish artist and printmaker Magnus Dahl & yours truly to enjoy the comfort of his sauna and Finnish jazz records after a long day in the printshop. Those Fins, they truly know how to live.

Further reading:

Learn useless Finnish:
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Learn-useless-Finnish/102594753145129