Blog - Elle Anderson

For my latest studio work I did 3 trails:

Fresh plant prints
Preserving jars
Foliage in the largest jar

1. Fresh plant prints screen images - To play further with the fresh plant imprints I scanned them and manipulated them to create screen print images. Manipulation I did was:

Changed them to B&W images
Played with tonal values - to increase or decrease black or white areas
Alter size
Reversed the B&W images

I selected fresh plant imprint images that I felt had resulted in subtle but beautiful images, such as: Christmas rose Helleborus niger Hazulnut Corylus avellana Elderberry Sambucus niger Mandeville Mandevilla suaveolens Some of these were enlarged from their original size and a couple were printed as negatives, to see how this would result once printed. the original fresh plant print of the hazulnut on right with the screen print on left These would work with similar work I have already done: Screen print on glass with an embossed image of the plant on paper behind the glass. But because I have already explored that I do not want to go down that track. I may investigate something else - what? am not sure, will put it in the memory banks and something will spill out one day. 2. Preserving jars - Having been a ‘preserving girl’ for a long time with all sorts from my garden and loving the connection to the old world with these jars and their solidness I wanted to incorporate them somehow into some work. fresh hellebore plant print in a jar These jars say preservation/conservation, keeping safe for the future, specimen/collection jars, past memories, also a little bit witchy; collection of things for spells or medical potions. As a gardener and a plant collector I belief I also become a plant preserver, a conservationist of plants. I ‘collect’ plants in my garden because I like them for a multitude of reasons, such as of childhood or previous houses/countries memories, seasonal variations or the fruit they bear, just to name a few. So the connection between the jars and the plants in my garden seemed to be a great fit. As for the witch part, I see it as my intense scientific interest in plants, how they work, grow and simply be every season and off course I have the obligatory broom stick by my front door. The idea was to screen print the jars onto paper and then over print these with fresh plant prints, so that they would be ‘preserved’ in the jar. Initial result are not too satisfactory, they feel over thought, too fussy. I will either overprint with another screen or add hand colour or reverse the plant and create an embossed image on front. The reverse of these images are beautiful, simply embossing and that maybe what I will use. Food for thought to see if anything else can come of these screen image jars - maybe simple jars?? 3. Foliage in the largest jar - I selected a few large leaves that had started to wilt with the long hot summer we are having (as many plants are struggling and dying off earlier than normal). Some of these looked like strange creatures, I liked this, it felt more like a scientific collection of strange plants, rather than a beautiful found specimen. This worked really well as a screen print rather than a straight photograph - the screen print of aHosta leaf has more of an unrecognizeable look to it, feeling very much like the drawings by Leonardo Da Vinci of the human body. As if I had taken portions of his body drawings and placed them in the jar. It was interesting to see the 6 different ways I had played with a couple of these images and how different each image read: