Rustnstuff: Hope

Showing posts with label Hope. Show all posts

Wednesday, January 28, 2026

In the house and on the verges - beauty and hope

Bringing beauty inside can be such a joy as you can see in the colours and textures of the flowers in the opening photo and those following. I love how the colours of paintings and glass splashback combine with the natural beauty of the flowers. Flower arrangements by Fiona - bringing beauty in for my birthday.

The verges on this morning's walk offered more fragments of colour and beauty.

Fallen blossoms in the roadside gutter have such gorgeous texture and subtle colour.

I took the following photo of a stamped ceramic tile and a crystal to simply round off todays blog.

May we pause now and then to let the light in to offer us hope.

Friday, January 22, 2021

For friends

For many there was a great sigh of relief when Joe Biden and Kamala Harris were inaugurated without violence; and graciously offered hope and anew way to many.

I knew I wanted to print something to mark the day and to be able to offer them to friends; and so these micro-posters (aka postcards) rolled off one of DEP's presses. I started with words picked up from friends' messages as you see below; and then picked out the words that would act as shorthand for the statements.

As you see below the posters took on many shades of colour; but the colour that they were printed in is strong purple. Purple for suffragettes; purple for Kamala's coat; purple for the equal place of women in society; and purple for ............

And there was even a bit of metal dusting on a few!!!!

Because one does not want to waste ink in the end I printed some paper scraps from the cutting bench so that individual words were also captured.

We can breathe again; we can hope; and we will persist.

Sunday, March 29, 2020

"so is hope"

There have been many steps in the creation of this poster - much waiting for ink to dry and for paper to flatten; but today we got to print the words - "fear is real ... so is hope".

This poster was created to reflect what a lot of us feel at the moment - fear; and yet we need to balance that deep and at times dark fear with the bright light and promise of hope. It also reflects words or encouragement stencilled on a crumbling distressed urban wall.

Yesterday, with Fiona's help, I chose and set the type for the words. We chose letters from the wood type draws we refer to as our random and orphan letters - not a full set of any font. We chose to use these because we wanted the words "fear is real" to be like a ransom note - sister overtones. We chose to use the large Italian type for the word "hope" so that it would dominate and be strong.

The typewas set on the bed of the larger proofing press and the letters were held in place with strong magnets. It was left yesterday because there was not the time to print.

Today I printed - whilst I say I it really is about we. I chose the colours; but when printing an A3 poster with lots of ink and pressure it does require a couple of sets of hands. After a few proofing runs we were ready to print.

I was hoping for three quality prints on the five collagraphs I had printed; and in the end we got 4 really good prints and one good one - not bad given I was using large type and the fact that the Italian type is higher than the other wood type.

The posters will now dry for a few more days before being put under weights again. The will be marked with the Deckled Edge Press chop and editions as these posters will be for sale. Though I suspect a couple of the proofs will be gifted.

Friday, March 27, 2020

Hold fast to hope

I have been in the letterpress studio. as you can see. I used time to sort and number some collagraph prints from an early series called Urban Elements. I hope to get these mounted and maybe framed in the future.

Having got that task sorted and because the background collagraph prints to my A3 poster were not dry I decided to print a post card. Given the current times I thought a message of hope was appropriate to send out into the ether. Hope is so important at the moment. And whilst it is not a strategy without it what does the future look like.

I printed 20 in all - two were really just proofs. A few process photos follow.