#stephen fowler

[lclrgsl]

Stephen Fowler’s carved rubber stamps

[notpainting]

Just ordered this book, boy am I excited!

[jenner-benjamin]

Rubber Stamping

Extract from ‘circles, squares and halves’ zine - rubber stamp on paper.

Extract from ‘circles, squares and halves’ zine - rubber stamp on paper.

Extract from ‘circles, squares and halves’ zine - rubber stamp on paper.

The last day of term was spent taking part in Stephen Fowler’s rubber stamping workshop. Stephen allowed us access to just a snippet of his archive of rubber stamps to experiment with and create our own zines and greetings cards.

What began as a very mindless and therapeutic session quickly turned in to a systematic and obsessive one. I ended up creating a zine that utilises repetition of circles, squares and halves throughout as a skewed homage to minimalism and suprematism. 

I have long been intrigued by Kazemir Malevich’s Suprematist works and enjoyed using this exercise as a way of planning compositions in a playful manner. Malevich’s manifesto ‘The Non-Objective World’ is revered to be one of the most influential theoretical pieces of literature regarding abstract art. He stated that he explored the square as a means to help art escape the restrictions of reality. Further to this he expanded to explore other geometric shapes, predominantly against a white background. 

With only having the one day a week to explore the printmaking studios I sometimes feel restricted to just let loose and play - choosing instead to aim to create finished pieces every week. That is not to say I do not explore processes and techniques, but I explore this with a view to realising a final idea. This workshop has led me to understand that exploring compositions and layouts is as important as the method of print itself. I ought to dedicate more time to explore every aspect of my practice as they all inform and influence each other. 

[ratatoskryggdrasil]

Vintage Black Cat Jazz Bar Poster Illustration by Stephen Fowler.

[arinewman7]

Vintage Black Cat Jazz Bar Poster Illustration by Stephen Fowler

[corinnewelch-blog]

Published Primitive Printmaking

Really chuffed to have some of my prints featured in Stephen Fowler’s wonderful new book ‘Rubber Stamping’. The found object and plasticine prints were created on Stephen’s Primitive Printmaking summer school course at UWE in 2014, and it’s very exciting to see them included in the book. I may be biased but I can highly recommend getting hold of a copy - it’s absolutely jam packed with unusual project ideas and inspiration for all kinds of low tech printmaking. As Stephen explained in an interview with Sarah Bodman in the latest issue of ‘Printmaking Today’: “(the book is) very much in the spirit of ‘60s and ‘70′s Batsford art books - to share an open recipe rather than say ‘you have to do it this way’. It’s about inspiring people with examples and letting them think how they will use the process; it’s a beginning of something rather than an end.”

[natashaphipps]

Print making workshop with Stephen Fowler

Here are some images from Fridays print making! For the workshop we made our very own rubber stamps out of some very ordinary rubbers. I used a scalpel to make the main shape and Stephen Fowler also had some intaglio japanese engraving tool's to make some of the finer lines (I definitely need to invest in one!)

It was truly great to find new ways of printmaking without the need of a studio. 

The whole idea of the workshop was to create images inspired by a song and I already had one in mind from the Secret 7" competition list. I guess the first set of stamps were supposed to be bug wings and the second stamp was a kind of ambiguous creature that has appeared in another project of mine.

Again this was a great workshop and - I love print making !