So, I completed printing EPC edition #27 last week, and left it drying under the boards at Spike for a further week, collecting it and trimming the edition yesterday. It’s now packed and ready to post. I hope you like it when you see it.

There’s an interesting quality to photopolymer etching, and it’s been really fascinating to work at Spike making the edition. There’s a deep rooted belief amongst practitioners that these older analogue techniques offer something real, something grounded, something material, that the digital perhaps can’t achieve, but I’m not entirely convinced. It’s maybe a little like those people who swear by vinyl LP records, or shooting on 35mm film. I always wonder if it’s more of a belief system than an observable reality.

That said there is something really beautiful about the bite of the plate into the damp paper, and as you ink up the plate and roll the press you definitely get a sense of something physical happening. I had an interesting debate with a fellow printmaker at Spike, and asked her if she felt the process was to some extent a craft rather than an art. She wasn’t having any of it of course, but I think there is a craft element in play, that sense of the handmade that we are naturally drawn to.

I’ve been having a great time this week, working at Spike Print Studio making the first of what I think will be many etchings. As you’ll know from previous posts, I have several plates on the go, ReVOX and Sennen, but the first one to actually be editioned this week, largely because the plate has great tone and is therefore ‘print ready’ was XGen.

I’ve cropped it to a portrait format, and printed it with a mixture of blue and black inks, that lend it a cool mono feel on a radiant white Somerset paper. I finished printing the edition yesterday evening, and the prints are now stacked and will dry over the weekend. I then need to collect them, trim them, sign and edition them, and post them out to you.