Tag Archives: print

Making Meaning Podcast Episode 25 with Mandeep Dhadialla

Posted in career, creative business, podcast by

Mandeep is a printmaker and workshop leader who works under the brand The Laughing Cactus Print Studio. She’s also local to me and we’ve been working together a lot over the last year or so on community projects and sharing thoughts on our respective creative practices. In this conversation we talk about the themes Mandeep is currently exploring around stillness and displacement, about belonging and moving between two countries. We talk about community practice and the impact it has on our work and the benefits of the collaborative work we are currently involved in. 

Mandeep Dhadialla is an artist printmaker living and working in Leicester. Her work revolves around linocut printmaking, including on textiles, and making handprinted and hand-bound books. Spending her formative years as a child in Kenya and migrating to England in her early teens influences her practice. She explores concepts of home, place, safety and comfort within her printmaking practice, experimenting with combined monoprint, linocut and collagraph print techniques – more recently on the idea of Stillness in Displacement, of how landscape provides the constant anchoring between inner emotional displacement and outer physical displacement, a parallel in narrative between migration, the pandemic and landscape.

Mandeep has sixteen years’ experience of teaching with museums and arts organisations. Her own printmaking practice continued to develop exhibiting widely in shows including Society of Women Artists. She achieved the Runner Up award at Sock Gallery and Highly Commended in their recent Summer exhibition. She received an Honourable Mention Award with Circle Foundation for the Arts, Kenya, and achieved Commended in Teesside Print Prize 20. She is a member of Leicester Society of Artists. 

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Mandeep’s Website
Mandeep’s shop

Other links

Mandeep runs a print club – members receive four original prints a year through the post. 

You can sign up to her mailing list here

Maker Membership

My Maker Membership is now open for all makers wanting to explore their motivations and to build meaning and research into their practice and be part of a supportive creative community. We meet once a month and I share resources, tips and research to help you develop your own work. Find out more here.

Sanctuary Stories Community Project

Posted in Collaborations, Community, Projects, Social Justice by

I’m working on a new community project this summer in collaboration with Mandeep Dhadialla / Laughing Cactus Print Studio. Mandeep is doing most of the workshops including leading this one using print making and book construction, and I’m adding in some textile elements and stitch in future sessions.

Sanctuary Stories is a project for ArtReach, working with their Roots group for people from sanctuary-seeking backgrounds. Their work will be shown in Leicester Library as part of Journeys Festival in August.

 The Roots group are local participants from around the world, who come together to learn new skills and engage in cultural activities throughout the year. The project, Sanctuary Stories, is all about inspiring conversations around stories of individuals from sanctuary seeking backgrounds, and their connection to community, home and environment. 

Mandeep Dhadialla

In this project I’m more behind the scenes while Mandeep does most of the workshop side. The project concept was developed by her with project planning and support from me and I’m really enjoying this way of working. I’ve got a couple of decades of experience in running arts projects, exhibitions and engagement activities so it’s great to be able to collaborate and share with someone else. Mandeep is also working with me on Community Spirit project. I’m keen to do more of this kind of project management where I get to be creative and not just admin, and work with great groups on meaningful projects. I also worked for ArtReach a very long time ago on a great museum project so it’s good to be involved with one of their projects again.

I’d love to work on more community projects around my on practice and the themes that inspire me with local and regional groups. Please get in touch if you think this might work for your organisation. You can find out more about the kind of things I love to do here.

Prints from Textile

Posted in My work by

I’m pleased to say I’ve now got some of my print pieces available on the lovely Made by Hand Online shop, the home for amazing craft.

The prints are part of a continuing research project to find ways to preserve and record textile processes. I use print as a way of taking a record of the patchwork with the tacking and papers still in place. The sepia ink gives the print a feeling of an x-ray and the details of loose threads, weave and paper texture invite you to look closely and see patchwork in a different way. I’ve also created a series using embroidered textiles, some of which also have am altered textile piece alongside the print. You can see more of my print work here. If anything that’s not in the shop catches your eye please get in touch and I can let you know what is available.

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Membership

Get more of this kind of insight, exploration and discovery about my work by joining my membership on Patreon. This is where I share my current work in progress, behind the scenes in the studio and what’s on my creative mind. Members also get discounts on workshops and products, and it costs just £4.50 a month.

Mini Prints

Posted in My work by

I want my work to be accessible to as many people as possible, so I have started producing mini prints from professional photos of my pieces. These are professionally-printed on high quality archival paper and each print is around 6x8inches (or a little smaller depending on borders) so somewhere between postcard and A5. These three are now in my shop, although two are almost sold out. They are priced at £15/16.

Each month my Patreon Silk members get a print posted directly to them. It does work out slightly cheaper to get this through Patreon and you will also get my monthly digital letter / mini magazine. Original one-off mono-prints are also in my shop too.

Antiphony exhibition and talk

Posted in Collaborations, creativity, Exhibitions, My work by

I’m pleased to be taking part in the Leicester Print Workshop members exhibition this year. I am working in collaboration with Gillian McFarland to produce a changing artwork installation which will develop from week to week as we share ideas, develop and pass things to and fro and create new pieces inspired by two found objects.

The exhibition opens this weekend (17th-18th November) with the Print Festival and Gillian and I will be giving at talk on Saturday 17th November at 4pm about our work. There is also an exhibition preview on Friday 23rd November – details below. The exhibition continues until 26th January 2019.

Gillian McFarland and Ruth Singer work in collaboration as McFarland & Singer alongside their distinct and established solo artistic practices. They began working together in 2014 while sharing a studio; a space that allowed them to share ideas and approaches. In addition to the work created for this residency, McFarland & Singer have a strong convergence of interest around the archaeology of stains and marks of time. 

This work is an ongoing collaboration, passing to and fro between us as we each explore related, but separate ideas. The piece begins with two found objects from a charity shop which we both respond to initially, through discussion and making alongside each other. This work will change every week as we add new prints and related pieces of work. This work is displayed in file trays to represent the orderly collation and separation of ideas. Feel free to take the pieces out of the trays and move them around and change the order. We will use this intervention and selection as part of the process of making new pieces each week. 

 

Leicester Society of Artists Annual Exhibition

Posted in Exhibitions, My work by

I am pleased to be showing a group of new work in the annual exhibition of Leicester Society of Artists at New Walk Museum, Leicester. This group was previously shown in my solo exhibition Emotional Repair.

The exhibition opens 9th November – 8th December.

Traces 1 – Blind Embossing on paper

Traces 2 – Monoprint on paper

Traces 3 – Textile

I believe this tray cloth was made by my paternal grandmother who died before I was born.  I have recorded and preserved the stitching using printing techniques before unpicking the colourful embroidery and leaving just the traces of needle marks and thread shadow behind. By reworking my grandmother’s work I hope to give it a new life, a new meaning. The processes I use to make these pieces honour the invisible traces of textile inheritance my grandmother left me. 

These works are for sale from the museum during the exhibition.

Traces 1 – Blind Embossing on paper £300 framed.

Traces 2 – Monoprint on paper £350 framed.

Traces 3 – Textile £500 framed.

Work on paper – new exhibitions

Posted in Collaborations, DNA, Exhibitions by

This week I’ve installed and launched the exhibition of our joint McFarland & Singer artist residency in the Genetics Department of the University of Leicester. The work on show is very different from my usual work and includes work in glass and on paper as well as the amazing collaborative petri dish project.
My own work for this exhibition includes new work on paper including prints and drawings including pieces inspired by our research in the university herbarium combined with drypoint printing. I have also used scientific equipment to make textured patterned pieces. The exhibition also includes collaborative pieces Gillian and I have made together combining print, puncturing and stitch. The exhibition is now open daily 7am – 10pm until 22nd December and then again 2nd – 12th January at the Charles Wilson Building (Foyer) at Leicester University and is free to enter. Works in the exhibition will be listed for sale later in the year. A catalogue is available for £3 (+p&p) on request.

 

 

Ruth Singer and Gillian McFarland-Boyle artwork
Ruth Singer and Gillian McFarland-Boyle artwork
Ruth Singer and Gillian McFarland-Boyle artwork

 

I also have other print-based work on show in Leicester Society of Artists exhibition at New Walk Museum from 17th November t0 16th December. These new pieces are created using patchwork, print and stitch. These pieces are part of a new ongoing series of work exploring textile processes and the stages in production of stitched work. These pieces were included in my recent Fragments exhibition.

New experiments in printmaking

Posted in career, My work by

Last year I joined Leicester Print Workshop (LPW) with the specific aim of exploring textile screen printing in more detail to add to my portfolio of textile skills. Alongside screen printing I have also been exploring different types of print making on paper and other materials which I am slowing adding into my working practice, particularly for my Genetics Artist Residency project. It’s such a different way of working for me but one full of possibilities and it is taking me in directions I couldn’t have imagined a year ago. I’m feeling inspired, challenged and very keen to continue learning and exploring ideas in a new way. Working with Gillian this last year or so has also opened up my way of working, allowing me to think beyond textiles and craft and explore ideas without the emphasis on product or materials. The craft world can be very materials-focussed and I’ve felt a little troubled by working without thread or cloth but it is ultimately very liberating. It’s not really in my nature to be bound by rules of what I ‘should’ be doing.

I recently organised a taster session for Leicestershire Design Factory members at the LPW to share some of the excitement of new printing techniques and try some tests and experiments myself including test printing a version of my floral trowel embroidery.

Screen print
Tool Shed stitched artwork by Ruth Singer. Photo by Joanne Withers