a poem by John Glenday

Etching of a Line of Trees

in memoriam John Goodfellow Glenday

I carved out the careful absence of a hill and a hill grew.
I cut away the fabric of the trees
and the trees stood shivering in the darkness.

When I had burned off the last syllables of the wind,
a fresh wind rose and lingered.
But because I could not bring myself

to remove you from that hill,
you are no longer there. How wonderful it is
that neither of us managed to survive

when it was love that surely pulled the burr
and love that gnawed its own shape from the burnished air
and love that shaped that absent wind against a tree.

Some shadow's hands moved with my hands
and everything I touched was turned to darkness
and everything I could not touch was light.

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from Grain by John Glenday, Picador £8.99 with a nice cover.

The best thing I've ever read about the process of print.

For What It's Worth

One of my etchings, Orchestra of dreams, is going to be auctioned off at For What It's Worth, a pop up exhibition in aid of the arts. The show opens this Thursday at 6pm, at Meanwhile Whitechapel - 3-5 Whitechapel Road, London. It promises to be a good show - Phoebe has a beautiful print of a parade in it - and a good cause too, all money going to the Art Fund charity.

Orchestra of dreams is A2, printed on Somerset paper. Edition of 10, signed and numbered.

Three kings

An etching for christmas. Follow the light my friends.

HAPPY CHRISTMAS

Bacteria series

This is a set of three etchings I did in March. Each one is a different microscopic image of bacteria - cholera, plague, and pneumonia - made up of bodies. Bacteria are far, far older than humans in evolutionary terms. We're relative babies. These etchings show the human species tangled up with illnesses from our short history.

For bigger versions, please go to my flickr

http://www.flickr.com/photos/55003523@N05/

What a Life etching

One of my etchings. For a print project in the first term, we were given a couple of sentences from surrealist narrative 'What a Life', a story created to go with images from a department store catalogue. We got the words, and a randomly picked copy of Sunday Times magazine from the 70s, to take imagery from. My sentence was about stumbling upon a beautiful lady asleep and dreaming - my magazine had an advert with an orchestra in, and lots of ship logos, so I chose to show her in her dreams. She's in the crow's nest.