Here and There
It has been very nice having James in residence. For one thing, we are more inspired to go on outings. Last week we journeyed to Semur-en-Auxois, about 40 minutes southeast. It is one of our favorite nearby locations and is home to our most beloved restaurant. We have not often gone there just to walk the streets and window shop, which we were happy to do with James, who is looking for many different things to fill their house. Semur is a Medieval town encircled by the Armançon River. The town itself has been a monastic center since the ninth century.
The church of Notre Dame (built in the 13th and 14th centuries) is splendid but the cobblestone streets and various towers are even more interesting to me. The town in early times was an important center for the Dukes of Burgundy who in the middle ages were more powerful than the king of France. Burgundy at the time ruled over parts of Belgium and the Netherlands as well as a large swath of what is now France.
Our local town of Noyers-sur Serein is quite a bit smaller than Semur. In Noyers most of the buildings were constructed in the middle ages making the architecture consistent throughout. In Semur the city grew up around the medieval core and buildings from every century live in harmony next door to one another. The modern life of the place inhabits these beautiful buildings from down through the ages, and is chic, up-market and hip.
This spring I have been exploring Gelli Plate printing, using a tool I've owned for several years, but have never really understood until lately. It's quite versatile and simple to use. It is basically a gelatin plate which creates a surface to print from. The plate is inked up in various ways using water-based inks or paints and monoprints are pulled from it. An image can be built up in layers. Stencils, stamps and botanicals can be used to create imagery, and photo or magazine transfers are possible, although I'm not so much interested in that. You can paint on the plate with a brush, or roll ink directly onto it with a brayer.
Once you get into it, it's hard to stop, as each image is a bit of a surprise. I have been using pages from an old ledger that my friend Nelly gave me awhile ago. The prints can be made onto almost any kind of paper. I like the extra marks that here and there show through from the printed pages. I decided to make a book with a leaf theme. I printed up lots of different pages and began to collage some of them together.
The look is a little grungy and haphazard, but that's the style you get with the gelli plate and is à la mode.
Some of the images come out in totally unexpected ways. If you don't clean the plate at the end of a session of working, the residue will come off the next time you pull a print making for very interesting unexpected marks.
Daniel arrived in town mid-week, sending Louÿs into a kind of ecstacy. He can't believe his good fortune to have all his people around him and with the beautiful weather, doors flung open, to be able to run through the garden, into his people's house, through the veranda, up the stairs to visit the grand-people and then out the front door again to take another round. What bliss!
Happy spring to all!
