London Bridge. A plain, modern bridge; a conduit for commerce. I’ve cropped many pictures of it – well, not it but its flow of workers in rush hour, motion blurred, sometimes just feet, illustrating busy to and fro.
And yet, there’s more.
26 Bridges is a project by writers’ organisation 26, pairing 26 writers with artists to create pieces about the (handily) 26 bridges across the Thames. The results were auctioned to raise money for University College London Hospitals towards the funding of a clinical specialist nurse to assist skin cancer patients.
As someone who thinks in images and words, I’m a member of 26. I know fellow member Jonathan Holt from my design work with Bowen Craggs. I also know the craft, elegance and depth of Jonathan’s poetry from his Dark Angels work. So when he approached me to be artist for this, though I had no time, I made time.
While Jonathan was over in the UK from the US, we walked and talked our way across, under and around London Bridge (me with sketchbook in hand), noticing the line, the light, the shadow, the flow of humans, water and time, the zoetrope of stonework, the coping stones I’d hurried past countless times. I had been fascinated by the haberdasheries that had been the bridge’s last shops: line; water; shadow; ribbon; thread.
I returned for a sketch walk. There were experiments and test pieces: drawn; monoprinted; stitched. Our conversation of words and images continued by email, across the Atlantic, across time zones.
As we spoke of stone, I thought of lithography, which I’d never done. So brain-picking two printmaker friends, I signed up for a workshop at Hausprint with master lithographer Simon Burder. I worked with my sketch from under the bridge, where its design by an engineer is most visible and it meets the curve of the tide in loops of chain, its name carved quietly for those who look. Ground stone to water; stone, water, grease; dampened paper… every part of the process spoke of the bridge as I made a limited edition of four.
We found ourselves with two pieces, a drawing with monoprinted ribbon and stitching and the edition of lithographs. Stone and liquid kept returning as the visual theme that brought everything together so it’s two of the lithographs that will be auctioned.
It’s been a joyous creative collaboration.
Visit the project page on the Bloomsbury Festival website.
