not keeping it semple
I print under the name Semple Press as a nod to the private press movement, as that’s how my letterpress work started out. Learning to print letterpress was an escape from the screens of my day job as a graphic designer. Playing with the heavy physical letterpress spacing, leading and furniture that translates into (invisible) white space on the printed page, has made me a more intelligent designer. It’s also made me a better writer. Over time it’s also turned me into an artist… and now I’m a PhD candidate at the University of the West of England.
My MA work focussed on a 2021 residency at the Cabin in Bucks Mills, and the artists Mary Stella Edwards and Judith Ackland who stayed and worked there for five decades in the twentieth century. Post-MA, I became interested in the diversity of life on the beach at Bucks Mills, and in the woods and cliffs above. I am ‘reading’ the landscape through Mary Stella Edwards’ poetry and Jane Bennett’s Vibrant Matter: both regard human-made objects and natural objects as actants in the world, and so both turn the human relationship with the natural world on its head. In the light of the worsening climate crisis and extreme biodiversity loss, this is an exciting way of being in the natural world and has given me a lot of scope for experimentation and play.