Artist Spotlight: Jess Bugler

In this week’s blog we caught up with Flourish 2024, Printmaking in Excellence, runner up & recipient of the Hawthorn Printmakers Award, Jess Bugler. We asked about her work and practise as well as finding out about her Flourish submissions. Have a read of our latest blog to find out more about Jess and what she had to say:

Jess, many congratulations on winning the Hawthorne Printmakers Award. Can you tell us a bit about your winning piece, the inspiration behind it and how you developed the concept?

My print installations Forest Ghosts and Forest Books are about the nature of aloneness. They were created from a series of carborundum collagraph plates, featuring a wooded enclosure slowly opening.

Forest Ghosts is made up of ten ghost prints, printed from the carborundum plates using the intaglio method, thus allowing just a trace of the original dark forest images to remain. I then waxed the prints to make them translucent and hung them on top of each other, so the viewer can see through them, and feel the sense of the forest.

Forest Books is the tonal reverse, here I took monoprints from the plates during the wiping process. Then collaged them into four large concertina book structures, bound with black tape and displayed nailed to the wall half open, where they maintain a concrete and dramatic presence.

Both works were created as part of Alone Together, a collaborative Arts Council England project about the nature of aloneness, following our shared but unique experiences in lockdown. For this project, printmakers Leonie Bradley, Prerna Chandiramani and myself considered aloneness as a spectrum from isolation to solitude. For my pieces, I imagined this spectrum as a wooded enclosure of trees, slowly opening. The wooded enclosure itself coming from a personal memory of intense isolation.

How did you develop the concept?

To develop this exploration of aloneness, I started drawing the trees in charcoal and trying to capture a sense of them as an impenetrable barrier, enclosing and overwhelming. I remember looking at Max Ernst’s-The Forest and the Dove and his idea of the savage forest. Then Jitka Hanzlová’s forest series. I also had a series of charcoal drawings of conifer trees, I had made on a residency, which showed spiked branches forming ladders towards the sky. And I brought these images together to create a series, marking the transition from a stifling enclosure to an open space. I then re-created them as a series of rough sculptural carborundum prints which formed the basis for Forest Ghosts and Forest Books.

I also spent time reading and thinking deeply about my own relationship with aloneness. Writer, Rachel Cusk, wrote about the ‘gift and burden’ of being alone. I was struck by this, and I wanted to convey this dichotomy in the contrasts between the two installations Forest Ghosts and Forest Books: contrasts in both weight and tonal distribution. There and not there. Permanent and passing through.

“I saw…that I was alone, and saw the gift and burden of that state, which had never truly been revealed to me before.” Rachel Cusk, 2021

   

What techniques and materials did you use in your submission?

In Forest Ghosts, the ghost prints of the carborundum collagraph plate are used. So, these prints are the fourth print emerging from the press after inking, creating a series of shadow-like images.

In the case of Forest Books, I approached the image-making differently. Again, the carborundum was inked but, prior to putting the plate through the press, and before the actual surface was wiped back to its eventual pale state, I monoprinted from it by hand. Under the light pressure of my hand the carborundum tree forms refuse to surrender their dense deposits of ink, but the smooth plate relinquishes its partially wiped and expressive inky residue easily. This explains why the tonal relationship in the book pages is the reverse of those in the Forest Ghosts: the trees light in one and dark in the other.

The substrates are in contrast too. I waxed Chinese paper for Forest Ghosts, which gives a slightly translucent weightlessness to the work. This speaks of airy impermanence and the movement through a thing. By contrast, the double-sided book pages on the wall have a solidity to them, they are more definitely present. The chaotic disquiet of the monoprinted book pages required order as well so I imposed a boundary of black binding tape on every edge, which adds to this more concrete quality.

Why did you choose these particular methods?

I vary the print processes I use, exploring their possibilities as I work to find the process which speaks to the project. When I started drawing in charcoal, the heavy blackness achieved in Hughie O’Donoghue’s carborundum prints came to mind. So, I experimented painting with a carborundum grit mixture on displayboard and found it captured a visceral quality that felt sculptural.

For a previous project, I had printed on Chinese brush painting paper and waxed the prints, so to capture this idea of a translucent shadow for Forest Ghosts, I repeated this process. Then as I printed, I found myself saving the monoprints I created during the plate wiping process, I loved their singularity and the found marks they acquired. These in turn became the inspiration for Forest Books.

I try to work as sustainably as possible, so using cardboard plates and carborundum, also helped me avoid the more carbon intensive materials of other print processes and chemicals which are difficult to dispose of safely.

Were there any challenges you faced during the process?

I tend to work intuitively and then reflect later. This means I often work without a clear idea of the final result. While creating, Forest Books I loved the monoprints but was not how to use

them for a long time. It was and always is a bit of a leap of faith. Sometimes ideas don’t work. For example, with Forest Books, my first books were too precise and ordered and felt too flat. So I had to try again, this time allowing the prints themselves to dictate their size and shapes of the pages of the books.

Your work has a unique style. How would you describe it and how has your style evolved over time?  

This is a hard question to answer. My style is sometimes abstract, often but not always monochrome and frequently plays with movement and the 3D.  I am excited by working outside the frame and creating prints which cross into sculptural experiences.   My style has evolved, as I have moved from controlled reduction linocuts to more expressive prints and installations.   

I think of myself as a Fine Artist Printmaker, in the sense that I try to use the concepts and language of print to create experiential pieces.  The subject leading the way to the print process but then the outcome being some exploration of the nature and possibilities the process can create.   

Are there any particular artists or movements that have influenced your work?

I am inspired by many artists, Doris Salcedo, Rachel Cusk, Rebecca Solnit, Phillip Guston, Edvard Munck, William Kentridge, and Louise Bourgeois to name just a few.  I am always trying to do as Bourgeois suggests and, “physicalize the problem.”     

What draws you to printmaking as a medium?

What do you find most rewarding about it and are there aspects of printmaking that you find particularly challenging?

There is something in the steps of the printing process and the relationship between the artist and the printing press which I find addictive. Jennifer Jones talks of printing as the art of letting go–as it occurs inside the press “beyond the realm of looking” and this resonates with me. I still find it is so exciting, when the final print offers something unexpected.

The challenge for me is always being patient and keeping clean! I watch other Printmakers who finish printing without having a spot of ink on them. In contrast, I work much more consciously to be careful and clean and not get carried away by the excitement of the idea.

Can you walk us through your typical creative process?

My typical creative process is not very straight-forward. With a new project or idea, I often spend some time drawing or just playing. I sometimes start with something left over from a previous project, something I didn’t quite resolve, or an accidental print which feels like it has still got something to say. Then I experiment and reflect. I have a proper William Kentridge “room of failures”. But gradually I find a path forwards. I read and study other artists, as I develop a project and write down ideas that seem to hold something. I also write lots of lists of what I need to do. It is a bit chaotic to be honest. But as deadlines approach, things come together.

How do you stay inspired and motivated in your artistic practice and deal with creative blocks?

Like most artists in Britain, my creative practice doesn’t sustain me financially, so I work and teach as well. This means that every moment when I can get back to my practice feels incredibly precious.

To stay motivated, I like to have projects lined up so that I can be considering them and be excited by their possibilities as I work on other things. Deadlines are helpful because that pressure allows me to prioritise my practice and even when panicked, this is a good thing.

Creative blocks too seem to be part of my cycle of working. They aren’t easy but I have learnt to just push through. I keep drawing, keep playing and keep printing and trust things will come together!

What role does storytelling play in your work?

My work explores the dissonance and complexity of modern life, using the concepts and language of print to conjure internal worlds and interrogate predicaments, rather than telling linear stories.  A recurring theme is our individual and collective fragility and its repercussions. 

 

 How do you see your work evolving in the future?

My focus continues to be within the expanded field of printmaking. In the future, I want to push my practise further in this direction, both working in 3D and creating more exciting experiential print installations.

A print technique I am excited to explore further is Takuhon. It is a Japanese print process, which uses paper and sumi ink, to create 3D prints of objects. I teach this process and have used this it in small projects as part of my own practise. But am waiting for the right project to come along, which will allow me to develop a more substantial body of work using it.

I am also currently working on a new collaborative project with Artist Flora McLachlan, called Edge of Land, about the marginal landscape of the Cardigan Bay Coast. I have a sketchbook full of ideas and am looking forward to transforming these, into prints and installations which speak about the towering cliffs and wild seas of this edgeland.

Are there any tips or lessons you’ve learned that you’d like to share to aspiring printmakers?

My advice to aspiring printmakers would be to have realistic expectations, about the challenges of having a career in the Arts. It is very difficult for it to be financially

sustainable. So, make sure you ask to be paid for work you create and vote and campaign for greater investment in the Arts.

Then, if you can, join a good print studio and connect with the community of print artists.

Finally, within your own practice, have confidence in your creativity, reflect, experiment and persist. And be as sustainable as you can.

How has participating in the Flourish 2024 exhibition impacted your career and artistic practice?

It has been a wonderful opportunity to participate in the Flourish 2024 exhibition and to win the Hawthorn Runner Up Print prize. It is incredibly encouraging to have the validation of such a prestigious prize and from such amazing Judges. It is also an honour to be exhibiting alongside a group of such incredible printmakers.

 

Securing the 2nd place position is Jess Bugler recipient of the Hawthorn Printmakers Award. Her exceptional talent and dedication to the craft of printmaking stood out, earning this accolade. As the recipient of the Hawthorn Printmakers Award, Bugler will receive £50 worth of materials from Hawthorn Printmakers, along with a year’s membership at West Yorkshire Print Workshop and a residency with complimentary access to facilities.

The Flourish exhibiton was showcased at the Huddersfield WYPW gallery in June. It will then go on tour at Hot Bed Press in Salford 9th-23rd August and conclude at 20:21 Gallery in North Lincolnshire in the Autumn.

You can find out more about Ian’s submissions for Flourish 2024 here.

For more information on all the shortlisted artists and work take a look at our dedicated Flourish 2024 page here.