WELCOME TO ISSUE THREE

Spring is creeping up on us, with bursting blossom, bright evenings and birdsong drowning out the city sounds. As I write, I am sending sincere wishes that you are well, and there remains plenty of hope in your corner of the world.

The screen has been a portal that connects us and given us the illusion of scholarship and company. Luckily, with our new digital fluency, there have been many exciting printmaking and crafts’ conferences to attend. 

In March, the University of Tennessee, USA, hosted an excellent print symposium called Remote Contact and the talks are all still online for your viewing pleasure here. Southern Graphics held their virtual event, Make Ready, a few weeks later, with some entertaining films, in particular Benjamin Selby’s laser cut mokuhanga, and Joshua Brennan’s fast paced delivery of clever home-printmaking hacks.

The eagerly awaited IMPACT 11 Printmaking Conference  in Hong Kong ran in April, featuring many engaging short films showcasing the state of letterpress and alternative forms of printing in the city. While the International panel of talks and discussion were well rendered, the screen did not entirely do justice to the 70+ ambitious exhibitions originally curated for the conference. Early May saw the Biennial Conference of the Crafts Sciences in Gothenburg, Sweden, which explored how to adequately capture, preserve, use, and reconstruct the essence of various crafts in novel ways.

Much like the virtual gatherings on screen, this issue of the journal also takes us on vicarious travels to Croatia, New Zealand, Poland, and the deep South of the United States. The essays comment on landscape through tales of rivers and flooding, and hint at the stories that places retain as silent witnesses to the past. They reconstruct an unromantic view of Poland and Croatia in the 60s, commenting on patriarchy, alcoholism, and traditional family values. They talk of human rights and how that may be expressed in hybrid forms.

We look forward to gradual easing of lockdowns, and the chance to reach out and touch printed material and engage our senses in multimodal ways. We look forward to gathering and commenting and gossiping about material realities. In the meantime, please consider attending one of our CPD events over the summer and coming to visit us in Bristol where we will host the IMPACT 12 Printmaking conference in 2022.

Wishing you remain healthy and that we meet soon.

Wuon-Gean Ho

London, 17 May 2021

REVIEWERS // ISSUE THREE

Bess Frimodig

Carinna Parraman

Deborah Cornell

Endi Poskovic

Justin Diggle

Laura Morgan

Niamh Fahy

Paul Coldwell

Paul Uhlmann

Ruth Pelzer-Montada

Soraya Vasconcelos

Tracy Templeton

Wuon-Gean Ho

PROOF READERS // ISSUE THREE

Laura Clarke-Oaten

Wuon-Gean Ho