The Making of Macroscopic-Microscopic

The basic idea of Microscopic-Macroscopic is a series of photographs getting closer and closer into a landscape until it becomes microscopic, and a microorganism appears by the end.

My photographs were taken on a walk, at intervals at first, then closing in on an area of the ground, samples of the ground were taken and put under a microscope. These images are one RGB separation, I used red and blue to create the stencils for the screens, which were printed green ink for the blue separations and blue ink for the red separations.

The paper I chose, Ino Shi, is thin and would fall over when you walk past folded paper standing up. I researched the use of starch and found Konnyaku, an archival type of plant starch that reinforces Japanese papers and makes them almost like fabrics.

The letterpress process was difficult working with this paper, and perhaps not helped by adding extender to the ink. The title is in a light green and the smaller text in a dark blue.

The covers are made mostly out of grass with some leftover of my handmade paper from January, and Konnyaku (starch). I used grass that had been freshly cut at the School of Art.

I boiled the grass with just water for about 15 minutes, then saved the water as ink for a future project. I beat the strained pulp on a wooden board for about 5 minutes, and I probably should have continued for 10-20 minutes. Beating the pulp is more effective than using a blender (which was my method in January), because it breaks down the fibres rather than cutting them shorter.

The starch made the paper noticeably stronger, it remains translucent but not delicate.

This paper is closer to what I wanted to make in January, but I did not know about Konnyaku back then, and this paper might not have worked so well without it.

I used 1/4 tsp Konnyaku to 125 ml of water to strengthen the paper, I worked with about 4 pages at a time. I did not crumple the paper, which can add flexibility, because it would mean the book would fall over even more easily.

Macroscopic - Microscopic, March 2024 16.3 x 392 cm 20 Screen Prints and Letterpress on Ino Shi with Grass