Claire has extensive experience with presses and traditional printmaking processes, so she offered a Collograph workshop during our time in Tolosa. Collography is the low-tech cousin of etching, with cardboard or matte board plates, leaves, feathers, string, sand and other materials that create printable textures. Typically we ink the plates with a roller, then rub off the excess ink with a rag so that we can print the ink remaining in cracks, hollows and scratches in the plates. Usually a thin residue of ink will persist on the flat areas of the plate, which results in a thin unifying grey throughout the print.
Garikoitz made arrangements to do the workshop in the ceramics studio upstairs in Tolosa’s Casa de Cultura – Kultur Etxea (Culture House) where a small press was available, and designed another beautiful, bilingual poster:
Claire only had one participant, Gurutze, an aspiring landscape and garden designer, but I assisted and the three of us did a lot of printing and had many good laughs.
Claire & Gurutze preparing plates.
Gurutze & Claire laughing & working on their plates.
A few plates and test prints.
Placing an inked plate on paper in the press with blankets.
International collography team; Garikoitz C. Murua Fierro photo.
Here are some short video clips from the workshop:
Gurutze printing #1 – onto paper.
Gurutze printing #2 – onto fabric.
Gurutze printing #3 – with leaves.
Claire inking plates.
BoxA is about a 15 minute walk from GKo and located in an old warehouse. It’s operated by a collective – the Association of Young Creators of Tolosa – and has a performance space and bar on the ground floor, as well as a patio and an area that the collective has gradually been developing as a garden. There are always people working in and around the building, and lots of workshops, events and jam sessions; energy radiates from within and without.
