Print Shop Chat with artist Ploterre.
Ploterre is the alias of Rebecca Kaye, an artist based in Edinburgh with a background in both mathematics and design. She combines her passion for the natural world with curiosity about unearthing data to create beautiful prints. With the release of her 'Wainwrights' limited-edition Risograph, we chatted about all things numbers, art and the outdoors.
What inspires you as an artist?
The natural world is central to everything I create and my main point of inspiration. It’s the place I’m spending time in when I have an idea in the first place and it’s also the subject matter of my work.
But I’m also inspired by a whole range of seemingly unrelated things such as other artists (specifically mid century design), architecture (specifically plans and maps and the proportion of an object in a space) as well as films (specifically Wes Anderson and the worlds he creates - natural or otherwise).
What sort of data do you work with to make art?
This question really got me thinking as although data is also central to my practice, I see it more as a way to understand the world, just as you would with words in a book. So essentially, I’m never drawn to data and data is never the thing that comes first. My pieces are always sparked by a curiosity from within the natural world and then I search for material that helps me understand and answer that curiosity.
Although I also read books and journals around the topics I look into, I feel that data allows me a bit more control over the stories I find, which I’m definitely drawn to that. I can look for my own patterns and associations, especially if the dataset is big enough, and therefore bring my own take to the research.
So I guess, you could say I’m drawn to detailed data!
In what ways can art inform research and vice-versa?
At first glance, art and data or maths, may seem like quite disparate fields but I don’t see it like that at all. They both involve a drive to understand something and in the most simplistic terms, are both largely based around finding patterns.
I think the artistic process, how you question and approach something, can definitely inform research and as most art practices are enquiring practices, research is central, I think, to almost all art. I think mine just brings that research further to the fore.
Your Wainwright’s Risograph has been hugely popular, what prompted you to create this spectacular print?
To explain my process, to help answer this question, I take a walk, a swim or a cycle, and something catches my attention. I find out more through a long period of research and then create a sketch that I feel helps to communicate the essence of whatever it was that caught my attention.
This next step is really fundamental but I often gloss over it. As this sketch is going to ultimately be scaled to the information and observations I’ve found during my research (such as the lines within the mountain that are scaled to every Wainwright), my next step is to recreate my initial sketch using formulas so that I can link my drawing to the data.
And this is where you realise that you REALLY need to understand a landscape. If you’re trying to describe a mountain, a tree or a cloud, using a formula, you need to really look and figure out how the scree changes when the mountain steepens. Where the branches split and whether they’re symmetrical. Or whether clouds always taper or if they just suddenly disappear into thin air.
So to return to the Wainwright question and to the earlier question of being inspired by other artists, as well as spending a lot of time outdoors trying to figure out every eventuality of tree branch patterns and rock formations, I also look at how other artists see the world and the patterns in their work.
Alfred Wainwright was one such example. His line drawings are beautiful in their own right but when you really observe the landscape and return to his work, it’s very clear to see how well he really knows the place and how much he’s really observed. And as I was spending so much time pouring through his sketchbooks for a different project involving Munros, I wanted to also honour the Wainwrights in the same way. But as I don’t like to create art from an area I’m unfamiliar with, I spent a couple of weeks cycling from my home in Edinburgh down to the Lake District and through the landscape surrounding the Wainwrights to really feel the terrain.
And there’s no better way than to understand how hilly a place is than from the saddle of a bicycle.
How do you engage with the outdoors when creating artwork?
The engagement or the experience always comes first. I’m experiencing the landscape and I’m curious about a very small part of it, and that drives me to find out more. The Wainwright print was the only print that was almost sparked by experiencing a different landscape (namely the Munros).
I’d never create something that I hadn’t experienced personally. Firstly, as it feels a bit fraudulent and I don’t think I’d be the best person to create something that perhaps holds a special place to someone if I’d never even visited. Plus, there are so many places and environments that I do experience that there’s no reason why I wouldn’t focus on those. And also, returning to the data question, if I’ve experienced a place, when I’m looking at patterns, I’m also sense checking my findings.
On the odd occasions where I’ve spotted errors in the data, by knowing something about the topic, I don’t end up creating a print announcing that Scafell Pike is bigger than Everest!
Do you have a preferred printing-process? How did you find the process of Risograph?
I began making prints around 17 years ago, when I learned to screen print. And so I suppose a part of my is always drawn to that. However, thinking in layers, means that my work can also fairly easily be produced as a risograph or letterpress print.
All of these processes are kinder to the environment as they’re hand driven and use natural materials (Risograph often use soy based inks and banana leaf stencils), but I also try to make my prints as affordable and as accessible as possible and Risograph prints are a great way of being able to achieve this.
What’s your favourite outdoor spot in the UK?
I’ve spent quite a lot of time in Orkney - I’ve probably spent a couple of weeks there every year for the past 15 years and still feel like I’ve seen very little. The mainland itself is pretty big (especially when travelling by bicycle) and so varied as well as their being so many different Islands that again have such different personalities.
So Orkney is the place that keeps drawing me back. But if I had to chose one place that I spend a lot of time (as it’s close to home), I’d say North Berwick, for the fact that its a nice cycle with quiet roads with surf-able beaches en route and good coffee to end with.
What do you get up to when you aren’t creating?
Spending time outdoors, either cycling, surfing or walking. Which inevitably sparks new work so I’m never far from creating.
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