As well as my photo etching, I have printed a series of letterpress prints, each very simple with a line of text which is something which was said to me in my abusive relationship, these have also been printed onto the backs of my photo-etchings. This will help tie the installation together, helping to give context.
Above is just a selection of the ones I printed. When arranging my digital mock-up of the installation I pieced them in with the grid pattern on the photo-etchings. However I have 40 prints of these with 12 or so different phrases. I am going to see how I can integrate more when I actually put these up.
I was planning to print on black paper as well to match the photo-etchings on black paper, however before Christmas, in the end I only had time to print on the white paper because the press I was using broke, the crescent in the roller snapped, and we spent an hour trying to figure out what was wrong before swapping to another press not long before the workshop was closing, and that meant I had two presses to clean. Plus I had to re set up another press which even though I knew the lay out, because it was a smaller press still needed adjusting, and like with everything in letterpress, both are time consuming processes. I was hoping to print the ones on black now, however because the university is now closed due to the pandemic, I am not able to. I have looked into other options, however printing on black paper at home is difficult. The best option I have discovered at the moment, however I am still waiting for a quote, is to get some stamps made and then use a heat embossing process to create white text on black paper. However I think I will still be able to achieve a great installation without it and my concept still obviously works, however I would like to see if I can still create the vision I anticipated and imagined.
On the same note, after printing on the back of my photo-etchings, I was looking into debossing the wool onto these letterpress prints, because I loved the impressions on the back of etchings. I have so far done a little experimenting, however now I have a stack of the same paper I used for my letterpress prints, and some advice from Klara, the Letterpress technician, I going to experiment further to see if I can get the desired result.