Jo Boddy

There are two overlapping sides to my work… I want to experiment, play and present prints in weird and wonderful ways and unexpected places, but I also need to pay the bills which necessitates making things that can hang on walls which if I’m lucky, people might be willing to pay for.

I run a website offering original prints for sale alongside reproduction cards, handmade books and occasionally other small experiments. I also attend craft fairs and apply for various exhibitions via open calls. The work included tends to be presented in a traditional way meaning it’s flat and can be, or already is, framed for wall hanging.

I find the experience of selling work deeply connective. It makes me feel I’m part of a community since my work is all about place. I find sharing my experience of a place on paper, having a conversation about it and hearing other people’s experience is wonderful. I am regularly contacted by people telling me what memories or experiences my work has prompted in them, and I discover new places and information all the time through taking to others.

Occasionally print exhibitions will accept installation and/or sculptural work and this is where I see an opportunity to work on a larger scale and be far more experimental in the final presentation of my prints. What follows is the story of how this came about.

During the 2 years studying for the MA I've been exploring the Swinley Forest (on the Surrey/Berkshire border) which I walk in most days with my dog, and at weekends with my family. It borders our village and is a fascinating place which humans demand a myriad of different things from. It is Crown Estate land which houses a military academy, a farm, an iron age fort, a roman road, several SSSI, SPA and ancient woodland designations, it is a well known mountain biking destination and nationally important for the conservation of several species; 10,000 tonnes of timber are harvested from it each year.

I find this a fascinating place of multiple contradictions, most obviously that the seemingly destructive timber harvesting opens up new habitats for rare ground nesting birds. I am one of many local people who love this forest, although that is too big a claim, it covers over 3000 acres - too large for me know all of it intimately, I love 'my bit' of this forest and work hard at staying well acquainted with it through daily walks and regular sketching.

I use several printmaking techniques with experimentation at the heart of my practice. I am never more excited than when peeling a print from a plate for the first time. For this project I wanted to incorporate every type of printmaking technique I have learned over the two year course. You'll find etching, linocut, lithino, monoprint, collagraph and mud prints taken directly from the forest floor. There are also end grain wood prints made by raising the grain on log rounds foraged from the timber harvesting sites after the machines had left.

The graffiti sprayed onto some of the log ends to identify the end destination of that log pile is fascinating and I'm forever trying to decipher it. Some makes me feel sad, the lesser quality trees destined to be chipped or burned as biomass fuel. I wish they could have been left standing, especially when they are a deciduous species rather than the monoculture pine that's planted in grids just for the timber, but humans need fuel for power and bedding for livestock and the wheels of commerce must be kept turning.

This work presents 'print' in a non-traditional way, as a collaged installation rather than an image mounted in a frame and hung on a wall. The thin but very strong Japanese washi paper that most of the prints are made on gives the work a delicacy yet surprising strength, which reflects the strength of the natural world to endure the pressure humans place upon it. Some of the prints were made specifically for this project and explore the textures and colours found within the wood and bark itself, some of the prints have been taken from editions of more traditional forest imagery and some are monoprints made using materials foraged from the forest itself.

The images presented here are of one piece from this project which was taken back to the forest and photographed in various positions. I chose a place that has a log pile overlooking an area cleared a few years ago which is now rich with ground nesting habitat and from which more mature forest can be seen. This is only a 15 minute walk from the centre of the village where my home is, I will never cease to be amazed that I have so much beauty and richness right on my doorstep!

I don't think I will ever finish exploring this place and my connection to it but I plan to expand my explorations to include other places I have a long connection to. I will continue working in print, experimenting with new techniques and finding new ways to present ideas.