In 2024, »Feste Drucken« was hosted by the Tucholski House in Loitz, Vorpommern – a former 18th-century hotel that is now used for cultural events. The house has a very unique charm. It seems that it has been several times remodeled and expanded over the decades. The house is a patchwork, a labyrinth, a small universe: crooked, winding hallways, rooms that seem stuck somewhere in the 1970s, old Art Nouveau doors. And then, at the back, the house suddenly opens up into a huge ballroom with a parquet floor and a gallery. A lush garden with old fruit trees where starlings chatter, and behind it, the river Peene meanders slowly and lazily.

I was completely fascinated by this place and wanted to capture this feeling of getting lost in the house. Because of the many staircases in the house, there are plenty of opportunities to walk in circles. I turned one of these circular paths into a short animation using monotype drawings.

I don’t usually work much with animation, and I really enjoyed trying out this medium.

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2023 I took part in the printing festival "Feste Drucken" again (of course I did, how could I miss that!). One workshop of the festival was about experimenting with gel print – which is a monotype technique using a gelatine plate. If you search online you’ll find plenty of examples, videos and instructions about that technique.

Since then I knew monotype on glass or wood. On a gel plate it is much easier to create imprints of objects or to use stencils. There is no printing press needed and it works well with just acrylic paint (can be the cheapest). The process is very quick and so it is easy to experiment and play around without thinking too much.

The festival’s motto this time was »In between«, and there was a very interesting lecture about white space as a design tool. Inspired by it I used the gel print to experiment with white space, positive and negative forms and transparent colour layers. I mostly used paper snippets that were leftovers, creating these abstract compositions. It was very refreshing and I had a lot of fun.

Unfortunately I only have these low quality photos of the prints. I hope you still get an idea of what they look like.

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