Forgive the tardy announcement (getting better, though - last year it took till March) but we are delighted to announce this year's Hot Bed Press book arts residencies, resulting from the 2015 fair. 

Once again two have been chosen - they are Martin Wilson (of Henry Press) and Mike Ainsworth.  Both receive six months of access to the Hot Bed Press printmaking studio and all its facilities, along with technical support and a materials budget. 

They are planning to work both singly and collaboratively, which sounds exciting.  Both of them edit, photograph and publish photographic topographical of social factors so they will start from there, perhaps setting each other a topography or subject to follow.  They also want to develop their skills as printers in the Hot Bed Press workshop and to investigate combining their photographic ventures with traditional print.  Can't wait to see the outcomes!

I initially began by working with a piece that I had already made and shown at the Manchester Book Fair 2013 that I felt had scope for development.  The piece ‘Crowd’ was made by drawing people on trains, at festivals, in parks and around Sheffield city centre, using these to cut silhouettes from a concertina, creating a book that when displayed recreates a crowd of people.  To develop this piece I began my drawings again in Manchester, on my journeys there every week and experimented with embossing and debossing techniques, to give the piece more texture and greater depth layering the people in the crowd.  The final outcome has been created from three collagraph plates carved into and printed on to cartridge paper, using wooden letterpress to make the cover. 

My second idea for a piece came to me as I walked back and forth from Hot Bed Press; looking down at the ground I noticed the chewing gum that covers the streets, the permanent marks left on our pavements from the crowds of people passing by every day.  After this I began noticing the different shapes and textures in the chewing gum and the ground surrounding it so I took a lot of photographs and made sketches that I could work from.  I started the piece thinking I wanted to continue working with the embossing technique, as I loved the subtleties it provided; however, through trial and error I soon realised intaglio printing from my collagraph plates were more interesting.

When considering my third piece I always knew I wanted to work with letterpress as I am obsessed with fonts and text and was fascinated to learn this technique.  I wanted to round off my body of work again looking at the crowd for inspiration.  Sitting on trains I overheard so many conversations each day, only catching snippets, so I began to write them down.  When I looked back over my notes I realised they were intriguing, confusing and sometimes funny, so I thought this would be a good way to explore and develop my skills in letterpress. 

Working at Hot Bed Press this year has been a fantastic experience, being in an environment where everyone is so friendly, welcoming and helpful I have felt inspired and enthused to work.  As I come to the end of my residency I am eager to continue to develop my practice and skills within printmaking as it has already influenced both my own work and my lecturing in fine art at Chesterfield College.  I have only just begun to explore the possibilities of what I can achieve in printmaking, particularly letterpress, and this is an area where I want to continue to push my ideas.  It's been a busy year for me planning my wedding but Hot Bed has been my oasis of calm away from all the madness.

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Next year's Hot Bed Press book artist in residence will be chosen from those exhibitors at this year's fair who have expressed an interest.  It comprises six months' free use of the printmaking studio and a free table at next year's fair.  Here's more about previous residencies from 2011, 2012 and 2013.  

Hot Bed Press currently chooses an artist for its annual book arts residency from those exhibitors at the Manchester Artists’ Book Fair who are interested in the opportunity.  The scheme is now in its fourth year and the choice of artist is rarely an easy one – a stroll round the fair in any year quickly shows how very wide the range of work is and how difficult it is to compare one approach to book arts with another.  However, Hot Bed Press is primarily about print, so one of the main considerations is that the artist chosen should be someone who will be able to take advantage of – and whose work shows the potential to benefit from - access to a well-equipped printmaking workshop.          

This year Kim Bevan has been chosen for the residency.  She will receive six months of free access to the workshop and a free table at the 2014 Manchester Artists’ Book Fair. Kim has discussed possibilities for her time at Hot Bed Press with the Artistic Director and will start this spring.  We hope she will enjoy her time with Hot Bed Press and we look forward to seeing the work that she develops during her residency.       

The most recent resident book artist at Hot Bed Press, Rebecca Jones, is making a delayed start to her residency.  First it was finishing a degree, and then a short but full-on festival residency in Bilbao - this lady does not stand still.  As with the previous book artist residents, here she is in her own words: 

Hot Bed Press has invited Leeds-based artist Rebecca Jones to be their book artist in resident for six months. Predominately, she will explore notation, scores and the presentation of happenings through book works and print. Rebecca's practice revolves around the deconstruction of meaning and moments in order to judge and evaluate their composite elements. Following this, she explores the reconstruction of that meaning by recombining their parts.

"Words, graphic notation and language are all central to my work.  How an event or happening can be understood and interpreted through these various modes of communication fascinates me.  I often move through genres and forms; the loss and gain through the translation of one medium to another creates valuable subject matter for me." 

During her residency she will also further work upon ideas and research she conducted about the Semana Grande (Big Week Festival) in Bilbao this summer whilst working at Pocagallery; an artists in resident programme which is organised by Hondartza Fraga and funded by East Street Arts.  Upon the completion of her residency with Hot Bed Press, she will present the works at an exhibition and invite performers and musicians to interpret them.

If you've read much of this blog, you might well already be aware that Elizabeth Willow became the second resident book artist at Hot Bed Press.  Let her tell you about it herself:   

After the long journey, on buses and train, then walking past old pubs and dandelion-starred patches of grass, I get there.  Open the front door, up the worn stairs.  Open the next door, into the smell of stone and metal and ink, into the sunlight slanting through the windows, and there is here; here I am, among the kind and beautiful presses, rescued and resplendent; among the other printmakers, turning handles and smoothing paper; here we are in our aprons and smudges of ink.

I have loved becoming intimate with this place, with its corners and cupboards and drawers and depths.  I relish the camaraderie, tea and laughter and frowning concentration; the hip-handed and shaking-headed sharing of work, ideas, mistakes and triumphs.  The opportunity and freedom to be both brilliant and not very good at all, to get better and to learn.

I have loved becoming intimate with this process, with the painstaking, delightful discipline that is letterpress printing; learning the lay of the case, finding myself out of sorts, minding my p’s and my q’s.  Spending hour upon hour setting metal type, any and every story at my fingertips, the meeting of lead and ink and paper.  Thought made real, words weighty in my hands.

I took up residence here, and it has become one of the places that feel like home.  I come and go, past the old pubs and dandelion-starred patches of grass.  I can’t now imagine not having been here before; I can’t now imagine not always coming back.

Elizabeth Willow is a fine artist based in Liverpool, who makes sculpture, installations, performance and, increasingly, artist’s books.  Her work explores our relationship with objects and with place, and is often inspired by found objects, lost things and overlooked details.  After showing work at the 6th Manchester Artists’ Book Fair, she was invited by Hot Bed Press to become Book Artist in Residence during 2012.  Since then she has exhibited her books more widely, and has work in various private and public collections, including The Centre for Fine Print Research and Tate Britain.

Hot Bed Press has chosen to find a book artist in residence from the annual MABF ever since taking over organisation of the fair in 2010.  That year, Parlour Press became the studio's first resident book artists. 

During six months of 2011 Parlour Press were able to make use of the HBP facilities.  They also produced an exhibition of their work for studio users and set up a beautifully constructed reading corner as part of the 2011 Wayzgoose fair at the Casket Works.  Below is their description of themselves in the 2010 book fair catalogue.

PARLOUR PRESS

Parlour Press is a book collective founded on the love of handcrafted books. No ISBNs allowed, we are self publishers. The five are Mandi Goodier, Caitlin Howard, Sophie Lee, Libby Scarlett and Lucy Vann.

We still have the naivety to say that literature, that beautiful places, that observation, that human frailty, that excessive collections, that new experience, that shared experience, that self expression, that fragile talent, that subversive pages, that sharing, that showing, that embracing everyone and everything will somehow make the world a better place to live in. That love and experience needs to be shared, can be spread over everybody like soft butter.  Because we are young enough to dream, because we are old enough to know that time will not wait, we believe that this moment is all we have - we are going to make the most of it.

We wish to share our thoughts, our views, our obsessions, our eccentricities, our expression, our experience, our aches, our pains, our ecstasy, our minds, our craft, our talent, our skills, our passions with you. We hope that you oblige.

Another handful of book artist details added to the MABF exhibitors' page today - I do enjoy all the booking forms coming in, being first to see who will be at the fair this year and what their work is like.

Look at this lovely, subtle morsel of letterpress from Elizabeth Willow's work - Elizabeth was the 2012 Hot Bed Press resident book artist, chosen at the 2011 fair.