Jona8than Green Art and Other Things

Haven't wrote here in a long time. The usual from me. Never great with keeping in touch.

Instead of trying to catch up on the past few months, I think I rather just write of my current position. Which is sitting in my studio at The Banff Centre. Waiting for the refractory on my wax cast of a light bulb, it will eventually have the wax melted out and cast in bronze. A bronze lightbulb. It was intended for the ballast of a killick. Unsure if it will end up that way now. Going to slip cast a bunch of lightbulbs in porcelain and use them for the killick now I believe.

I have some other bronze pieces that I would like to do while here. I wonder if I will get them done or not. Always complications and delays. I would like to make a compass dial in bronze, but with its centre being of “North” orientation. A compass for the North Pole. I could make it in wood, but the significance of bronze seems better suited for it. Be a simple relief mould casting.

My wooden sextant is almost done, it has taken some time now and needs a few more little things to complete it. I have to complete the scope, do some more sanding and then stain it. It's not as big as I originally wanted, but it is sizeable. Could of been better made, but not bad for an amateur. It seems my work has been focused on items of anchoring and items of navigation. Holding and wanting to go somewhere. That seems about right.

I have a residency for September at St. Michael's Printshop. The ol'haunting grounds. I think it will be nice to get back there for a while, just churn out a bunch of etchings. Been aching for etchings lately. I have thought of putting in for a grant so I can do 2 months before my residency at St. Michael's – 3 months in total. That would be swell. I have to write a proposal soon. I have to pass in a final report even sooner.

Started a ship in a bottle, that is going slow. Haven't been spending as much time on it as I should. Hopefully will find some time to just work on it, when the sextant is out of the way.

You can see a theme emerging of course, a using and revisiting of nautical objects. I am unsure what the final outcome will be when it is done. As you have read, there are lot of things that will combine. Will try to write some more soon.

“Polaris Destroyed” is a series of prints that will be started during the residency. Consisting of 6 etchings, from small to medium size, and one very large etching of a full plate size or greater. The works are based on the 1871 Polaris Expedition towards the North Pole and the events that befell them.

The intaglio prints will be printed on paper- chine colle - in low edition of seven each. Their creation will consist of many traditional intaglio techniques from drypoint, etching, aquatint and some mezzotint. They will be printed in a limited colour palette, of somber tones. The large print will consist of at least a full plate that will be etched with the plate cut in half. At the moment I am leaning towards zinc due to the low edition.

“Polaris Destroyed” is based on the 1871 Polaris Expedition under the command of the explorer Charles Hall. It is the second part of a body of work of mine which starts with “Polaris Lost”. This second part will be focused on the ship's events after the death of Charles Hall and the lost of crew on a ice floe; specifically on the ship being trapped in ice and the eventual running aground of the ship.

This work will be exploring the notion of the tragedy in Romanticism. It will use image making techniques of the romantic school of art, in particular the Hudson River School and the artist William Bradford. I wish to contrast the ideas of Romanticism against the facts of the narrative and contemporary issues.

Print is to me is not just an way of distributing ideas and mark making, but an approach to art making itself. To paraphrase William Kentridge – substituting printmaking for drawing. "So [printmaking] is a testing of ideas: a slow-motion version of thought...The uncertain and imprecise way of constructing a [print] is sometimes a model of how to construct meaning. What ends in clarity does not begin that way." Print allows me to be intuitive but with a resistance, a resistance from the materials or processes at times, that then affect the piece. The narratives that intrigue me are hardly ever the ones that go straight on course, but rather where problems persist.