First Impressions: 19 printmakers meet 19 artists.
‘First Impressions’ is the third project that we have run in collaboration with Eames Fine Art, a print making gallery and studio based in Bermondsey. In 2017, we ran ‘26 Prints’, in which 26 of us responded with sestudes to a print from either a live or dead print maker (some people found themselves responding to the likes of Goya, or Dürer). During Covid, we ran ‘A Common Place’, in which only live print makers took part, because the idea was for both the artist and writer to create a piece to celebrate the place they held in common as being meaningful.
With ‘First Impressions’, the idea has been to celebrate the artist’s studio. A print maker’s working space is an amazing place, typically including magnificent printing presses, amongst many other materials, and in each case, 26 writers have visited print makers wherever they are based, which has taken some of us to Cornwall, Aberdeen, Shropshire, East Anglia, even Madrid. Whereas we often, for obvious reasons, have 26 writers in our projects, in this case we were limited by the number of artists that signed up for the project. In the end, we had 19 pairs, and therefore 19 creative responses.
The heart of the response has been a sestude, but also a longer, 500 word prose piece giving each writer the opportunity to create a blog style reflection on the time they spent with their artist. All 19 encounters were also captured on film, through simple iPhone video footage, and sent to Mike Southon, who is a documentary film maker who has created many films for Eames Fine Art, including one for ‘A Common Place’. Mike’s film is a thing of beauty, giving space and air to each collaboration. It is a marvellous meditation on the nature of print making, with each sestude being read on the film by its writer, as the words appear on screen.
Writers and artists alike gathered for a private view of the film at Eames studio on Tanner Street on May 1st, a wonderfully warm and intimate evening to put the seal on another highly enjoyable shared project.
We’re massively grateful to Rebecca and Vincent Eames for their continued support of 26, and to the whole of their team for the administration of the project and their generosity as hosts on the launch evening.
We’re also very grateful to one of the writers, Joni Brown, who designed a wonderful booklet including all the sestudes and a reproduction of the most relevant piece of work from the artist (normally the one they were working on when visited). The remaining copies of the booklet will next see the light of day at our next Wordstock event where they will be available for sale to everyone.
– Martin Lee
Please find the poems, art, and film on Eames’ website. All the works are wonderful, and the film is an hour very well spent – the perfect way to enjoy the work of your fellow writers, as well as a great opportunity to see these studios, which are normally hidden from sight.
You can also listen to the recent Why Words Matter podcast episode dedicated to this project. One pair from the project, writer Lisa Andrews and artist Grace Hailstone, are in conversation along with Vincent Eames, and co-project lead Martin Lee.
First Impressions Film Trailer: