diononelchoisland: Elcho Elements - March Print Workshop

Such was the success of our print making workshop in February (and so high was the demand from our artists) that we asked Basil Hall to return to Elcho 4 weeks later to do another reduction woodblock workshop. This time Basil brought with him fellow printmaker Sean Smith.

With the second workshop, Basil and I thought it would be interesting to give the artists a theme to explore and respond to, with the hope that we would end up with a suite of works. After much discussion with the artists we devied the theme - Elcho Elements. The idea here was for each of the participating artists to create a work that expressed their relationship to one of the four elements of nature which make up life on Elcho - earth, wind, water and fire.

The artists and the printmakers worked diligently and by the end of the week we were all delighted to see a suite of 9 limited edition prints emerge. The suite, now known as Elcho Elements, features work by 7 emermging Elcho artists who have not been exhibited before. The striking works generated a new buzz on Elcho and beyond and offers for exhibition (in places such as London and Darwin) were forthcoming.

Check later posts to see what happened to the Elcho Elements prints. For now, here some pics of the March workshop:

- carver and painter Judy Manany tries her hand at creating a woodblock