PLEASE NOTE: This blog is now archive-only.

For information on Paddock Printmakers' current work and the 2009 Thomas Paine prints, book, exhibition and festival, go to www.paddockprints.wordpress.com

The Paddock Printmakers are gearing up for their 2008 Artwave exhibition, 'Good Impressions'. This year we've moved to the Hop Gallery. For those who know Lewes, the Hop was known until quite recently as the Star, and occupies the building that was once Beards' Star Brewery. It's easy to find the Hop Gallery; from the traffic lights in the High Street at the top of Station Street, just walk 30 yards up Fisher Street and look out for a little archway on the left, just before the pavement runs out. Another entrance to the Hop is in the alleyway, off Fisher Street, that leads to the Lewes Arms pub.

The Lewes Artwave festival runs from Saturday 23rd August, but the Printmakers' exhibition doesn't start until Thursday 4th September. This means you'll have a chance to see lots of other shows, go home and have a sandwich, and arrive fresh and revitalised to view the wealth of good work on show in Good Impressions. We'll even send you an invitation to the private view on Wednesday evening, if you drop us an email at pprints.f@ukonline.co.uk

The Printmakers have produced three books featuring hand made prints of buildings in Lewes: 'High Street', 'Cliffe' and last year, 'Public House'. The annual exhibtions have been based around these books and the original prints. But the group have interests in many other subject areas too, and this year the show's aim is to exhibit the broadest range possible of members' work.

The work of more than a dozen printmakers will be on show, handmade prints, woodcuts, collagraphs, linocuts and monoprints, and on sale at very accessible prices. Also available will be Paddock Printmakers' 2009 calendar, featuring many of the original prints of Lewes pubs from last year's Public House exhibition. The High Street and Cliffe calendars sold very quickly, so visit the exhibition early in the run if you want to be sure of getting one.

More information on the artists and their work etc. will be posted here as it becomes available

A Few Public House Books Still Available

If you weren't able to make it to the exhibition, but were interested in the Public House book, or in any of the individual prints, you can contact the Printmakers with your enquiry at:
pprints.f@ukonline.co.uk

Done (though probably not quite dusted)

The Public House exhibition closed last night, and we're really pleased with the way it all went. We've sold prints of pubs, prints of other things, and a healthy number of the book's limited run - we might even cover costs if the wind stays with us! For the Printmakers taking turns to invigilate at the show, it's good to talk to visitors about the prints and techniques and to get their views of the work. In fact it's a pleasure, when most of the feedback is so positive. One encouraging observation: most who came spent quite a while looking at all the prints - there were very few visitors of the head-around-the-door-oh-no-not-my-sort-of-thing variety.

So, there's much to discuss when the group reassembles in October - what will be the focus for the next exhibition, will we publish a Public House calendar . . . . .?

Don't forget: the Paddock Art Studios exhibition for Lewes Artwave runs from Monday 10th to Saturday 15th September, displaying work by Paddock students and tutors.
www.paddockartstudios.co.uk

Some Pages From The Book

Above are some pages from the limited edition Public House book. The book is beautifully handbound, and measures 10x13 inches. All of the original prints in the book are in the exhibition at the Hibbert Room in Lewes (details below), and they vary in size from 6x8 inches to 20x9 inches.

More About The Book

Here's an extract from the introduction to the Public House book:

This book features images of Lewes’s pubs, each one originally a handmade print by one of the Paddock Printmakers. The group meet at the Paddock Studios in Lewes, with tutor Carolyn Trant, to work and experiment with wood and lino cuts, wood engravings, collagraphs, monoprints, acetate engravings, and many variations and combinations of those techniques. The prints were produced during 2007.

This book is published in a limited run of fifty-four.

Public House is the third book produced by the group, celebrating local distinctiveness. The first two, produced in 2004 and 2005, showed prints of shops in the High Street, and Cliffe High Street. Already many of these premises have changed hands or use, so these books are documents about how things looked in a particular year.

Pubs change more slowly but we have included details of some now gone to show how the town has evolved, a subject of ever-increasing interest as the volume of building development continues to grow.

The text for this book draws on previous local history works. We are indebted to Bill Young and Bob Cairns’ Lewes Then and Now, Colin Brent’s Guide to the Town of Lewes, conversations with local historian John Bleach, and particularly Leslie Davey’s study The Inns of Lewes - past and present, revised in 2003 by Andrew Whitnall. You are encouraged to seek out this fascinating guide, republished by the Friends of Lewes and available from local outlets.

Text by Paddock Printmakers.
Hand-bound by Rachel Ward-Sale at Bookbinders of Lewes.
Layout design and print coordination by Peter Flanagan.

To purchase individual original prints and for other enquiries, email pprints.f@ukonline.co.uk

Under Way

Friday went by in a blur, hanging the exhibition during the day, then the private view in the evening. Our neighbour exhibitors, next door in the Westgate Chapel, are welcoming and friendly, and joined us in an extended game of Hunt The Fusebox when an attempt to change one lightbulb resulted in most of the lights in the building going out! Later in the day, the picture hanging team also managed to get themselves locked in, holding a key which only works from outside . . .

The PV was a great success - lots of people came, many compliments were paid, and sales of the individual prints and the Public House book got off to a steady start. The Printmakers' public clearly are a discerning bunch!

Above are a few quick snaps taken just before opening.

Twenty One Pubs - Twenty One?

Well, ok, there are twenty, but the twentyfirst was once a pub and is still a jolly nice place for a quiet drink and a chat. Each of the twenty one is lovingly reproduced in colour and line in our Public House book. When you look through, you'll see we've also added a few interesting details about each inn and those that were once nearby, so you can enjoy the prints and at the same time arm yourself with some facts with which to wow the regulars down at the Whippet and Duck. Here's the full list of pubs featured in the exhibition and book:

The Kings Head
The Lewes Arms
The Swan
The Elephant & Castle
The Meridian
The Crown
The Black Horse
The Tally Ho
The Pelham Arms
The Royal Oak
Shelleys
The Lansdown
The Brewers Arms
The Volunteer
The White Hart
The John Harvey Tavern
The Rainbow
The Snowdrop
The Lamb
The Gardener's Arms
The Dorset

Public House - The Book

We've produced books of previous shows, High Street and Cliffe - see the 'Previous Books' entry below. Those were concertina books, 14 feet long, and each edition took around 1,300 hand creases. Every single crease had to be accurate to less than a millimetre, to prevent the whole book from adopting a very unattractive drunken skew. So this year our wrists cried "Enough!" We are having Public House handbound as a conventional book, by Rachel Ward-Sale at Bookbinders of Lewes.

The book is again a limited edition, this time of 54. As of this morning (Monday 20th) Rachel has completed sewing the inner page sets, and was about to start constructing and embossing the covers.

Public House features prints of each of the twenty pubs in Lewes, as well as some of the pub signs. Using the conventional book format has allowed us to feature many of the prints at actual or closer-to-actual size - the page size is a chunky 250 by 330mm. The book will be on sale at the exhibition, and advance orders are already being taken. If you're interested, email pprints.f@ukonline.co.uk

Five Days To Go, Ducks In A Row (well, almost)

The exhibition opens this Saturday - Friday will be taken up with hanging, arranging and, in the evening, the Private View. Measuring up this morning, everyone at the Westgate Chapel is very welcoming, and the room has not shrunk since we last saw it.

The Printmakers have all signed up for invigilation - looking after the exhibition for a morning or an afternoon during its run. The organised folk have their prints and frames and cards arranged neatly in boxes by the front door, ready to be taken to the Hibbert Room on Friday morning. The rest of us are looking for frames, looking for tape, looking for paper, and trying to recollect life before the house took over from the occupants. Some are still working on prints, but let's not go there!

The book is also on schedule - more in another post.

If you have six minutes, and a general interest in marks on paper, take a look at this Short Letterpress Documentary