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Posts Tagged ‘Ane Thon Knutsen’

Woolfians meet again after 4-year in-person break

Posted in 32nd Annual International Conference on Virginia Woolf, events, Virginia Woolf, tagged , , on Saturday 17 June 2023| 6 Comments »

Conference logo designed by Farrah Alkhadra

After four years, we finally met. In person. Elbow to elbow. Face to face. Sitting together. Dining together. Walking together. Rooming together. Collaborating together. Smiling together. Kvetching together. It was bliss.

It was the 32nd Annual International Conference on Virginia Woolf, June 8-11 at Florida Gulf Coast University in Fort Myers, Fla., with its theme of Virginia Woolf and Ecologies.

And it was the first in-person gathering of this bonded but welcoming group of Woolf scholars from around the globe since the 2019 conference, Virginia Woolf and Social Justice, at Mount St. Joseph University in Cincinnati, Ohio.

The organizer and the panels

This year, Laci Mattison was our leader, planning and orchestrating a conference that met — and went beyond — everyone’s expectations. The associate professor & B.A. English program co-Coordinator of the Department of Language & Literature at FGCU planned a conference that included panels ranging from “Vernal Woolf” to “Liquid Woolf” to “Mindfulness and Woolf” and everything in between — including a hands-on craft worshop.

The plenaries

Then there were the plenaries — five of them! They included:

  1. Jean Moorcroft Wilson, widow of Cecil Woolf, Leonard and Virginia’s nephew, gave a talk on “The Legacy of the Woolfs’ Hogarth Press: Through Family Eyes.”

    The legendary Jean Moorcroft Wilson talking about “The Legacy of Leonard and  VirginiaWoolf’s  Hogarth Press: Through Family Eyes” with her usual wit, whimsy, and brilliance.

  2. Asali Solomon talking with great humor about her latest novel, The Days of Afrekete, which incorporates themes of Mrs. Dalloway and more.
  3. Claire Colebrook on “Ecology and Archive,” an ethereal topic way over my head.
  4. Jessica Martell and Vicki Tromanhauser on “Virginia Woolf’s Food Ecologies,” taking apart the British Empire’s industrial food production and adding Woolf’s use of food in her writing.
  5. “Sensuous Pedagogies: A Roundtable,” with Ben Hagen, Beth Rigel Daugherty, Catherine Hollis, Mark Hussey, and Vicki Tromanhauser. This roundtable explored the assignments in Hagen’s The Sensuous Pedagogies of Virginia Woolf and D.H. Lawrence in terms of teaching and learning as problems of sensation, emotion or intensity.

The exhibit

Ane Thon Knutsen with her exhibit of “Blue and Green” at University Archives and Special Collections in the Bradshaw Library at FGCU.

Ane Thon Knutsen, a Norwegian artist and designer who specializes in letterpress, exhibited her most recent large-scale work, which brought Woolf’s short piece “Blue and Green,” published in Monday and Tuesday (1921) into the room and up on the walls. More on this later.

Recent virtual conferences

Between the 2019 in-person conference, the 29th, and this year’s came these:

On the way to dinner out, a group of Woolfians spotted a rainbow and happily posed with it.

Happy faces from around the globe dining out in Ft. Myers, Fla.

This year’s Woolf Players ready to read their favorite Woolf passages at the traditional Saturday evening banquet.

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Virginia Woolf installation by Norwegian artist opens @fgcu

Posted in 32nd Annual International Conference on Virginia Woolf, art, art exhibits, short stories, tagged , , , , on Saturday 25 February 2023| Leave a Comment »

Norwegian multidisciplinary artist Ane Thon Knutsen is at it again — at combining Virginia Woolf and the letterpress, that is.

This time, the Oslo Academy of the Arts professor has debuted her installation, “Printed Words: Adaptations of Virginia Woolf,” at University Archives and Special Collections at the Florida Gulf Coast University library.

The Feb. 23 opening reception introduced the installation, which will be on display from now through the 32nd Annual International Conference on Virginia Woolf:
Virginia  Woolf and Ecologies, June 8-11. Registration opens in March.

In “Printed Works,” the self-taught typesetter who has exhibited other letterpress projects and installations related to Woolf, adapts a selection of Virginia Woolf’s self-published short stories.

“Knutsen’s artistic research aims to point out the influence typography, particularly typesetting, might have on the content of the text. It speaks to the power of designing and publishing one’s own work,” notes the FGCU Special Collections and Archives website.

Her first Woolf project: a book

In “A Printing Press of One’s Own,” which premiered at the 27th Annual International Conference on Virginia Woolf” at the University of Reading, England, in 2017, Ane produced a hand-set volume that includes Ane’s personal essay about her experience finding a space of her own in which she could pursue her passion — typesetting.

Ane Thon Knutsen with her hand-printed volume introduced at the 2017 Woolf conference, “A Printing Press of One’s Own”

According to Ane, “The book is an essay referring to A Room of One’s Own (1929) by Virginia Woolf. The essay reflects upon women’s role in letterpress, and the importance of a room of one’s own in artistic practices.

“In this book I am investigating the first books printed by Virginia Woolf at the Hogarth Press, both in practice and in the written ‘dialogue’ between Virginia Woolf and myself, as we are both self-taught typesetters.”

Her second: up on the walls

In the winter of 2019, Ane had a major installation of Woolf’s first short story, “The Mark on the Wall,” (1917) in Kunstnernes Hus, an art institution in the centre of Oslo.

As described by Nell Toemen, who visited the exhibit and shared her thoughts with Blogging Woolf, Woolf’s story was “handprinted on I don’t know how many papers, white and off-white, neatly arranged so as to fill all the walls. If you would walk the room in eleven rounds you would be able to read the whole story. Reading it this way is an absolutely different experience than reading the story in a book.”

Page 2 of the “On Being Ill” project

Her third: via Instagram

In March of 2020, as lockdowns due to the COVID-19 pandemic spread around the globe, Ane used her printing press to print one sentence on one sheet of paper every day from “On Being Ill,“ Woolf’s 1930 essay.

She shared each page on Instagram and she shared her thoughts about the project with Blogging Woolf.

At the time, she said she was using her printing press to print one sentence on one sheet of paper every day from “On Being Ill” “until we can go back to normal. I hope I will not make it through, as we’re counting about 140 sentences, and the paper is restricted to leftovers from my stock.”

About Ane Thon Knutsen

Ane is internationally known for her letterpress-focused installations and artists’ books. The associate professor of graphic design at the Oslo Academy of the Arts has won numerous awards for her work. She owns and works from her private letterpress studio in Oslo.

 

 

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On Being Ill: printing 1 sentence on 1 sheet a day throughout Norway’s coronavirus quarantine

Posted in art, coronavirus, essays, in memoriam, On Being Ill, Virginia Woolf, tagged , , , , , on Saturday 28 March 2020| 1 Comment »

Ane Thon Knutsen in her home printshop

Editor’s Note: Today marks the 79th anniversary of Virginia Woolf’s death, and as this post shows, she and her work continue to inspire artists and writers across the globe.

Virginia Woolf’s numerous experiences with illness led her to write the essay On Being Ill, published in 1930 by the Hogarth Press. Inspired by this work and the current coronavirus, Norwegian typesetter Ane Thon Knutsen, who has two projects focused on Woolf under her belt — A Printing Press of One’s Own and The Mark on the Wall — has now begun a third.

Woolf’s exploration of the consequences of illness

“Due to Covid-19 I have cast my eyes upon On Being Ill,” Knutsen explained. “This felt like something to get me through.

“The essay is about the consequence of illness; loneliness, isolation and vulnerability. But when we are forced to stop and slow down, we may notice the beauty in the small details of the world around us, and that our everyday, ordinary life is what we miss the most,” she said.

Working from home under quarantine in a printshop of her own

Ane Thon Knutsen’s letterpress

Knutsen, mother of a four-year-old, says her project allows her to combine motherhood with work under Norway’s self-imposed quarantine. The country made the move, which is in place at least until Easter, to stop the rapid spread of the coronavirus.

“I like being alone working, and I am blessed with a workshop at home. So I contemplated a Quarantine project that works with the circumstances,” she said.

Her project: using her printing press to print one sentence on one sheet of paper every day from On Being Ill “until we can go back to normal. I hope I will not make it through, as we’re counting about 140 sentences, and the paper is restricted to leftovers from my stock,” Knutsen explained.

Published on Instagram

Five days ago, she began posting a photo of each page on her Instagram account, @anethonknutsen. As of today, she is on sentence number six. The project, she says, “will present a very slow reading of the story.

“In the end (when that will be, who knows), I will make a box with all the sheets — like a calendar of sorts. Hopefully I will exhibit it as a wall piece in the future,” she said.

The project is set in 10-point Goudy Old Style. For the ink, Knutsen has “mixed a rich gray ink… inspired by the dust jacket by Vanessa Bell, and the colour of the lead type. It softens the appearance of the words on the page,” she explained on Instagram.

She hopes to print 20 copies, in a 208 mm x 135 mm format, the same as Woolf’s 1930 edition.

Sentence two from Virginia Woolf’s “On Being Ill”

Sentence one from Virginia Woolf’s “On Being Ill”

A tray filled with type set for Ane Thon Knutsen’s letterpress

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A first-hand impression of “The Mark on the Wall”

Posted in Virginia Woolf, tagged , , , , on Sunday 17 February 2019| 4 Comments »

Common reader Nell Toemen had a real “Woolf-week” in January by first traveling to Oslo, Norway, to visit the opening of Ane Thon Knutsen’s PhD. Exhibition, “The Mark on the Wall, and then traveling to London for Virginia Woolf’s Birthday Lecture by Stuart Clarke.

She shared her impression of Ane’s exhibit with Blogging Woolf. We are happy to include it as follows:

Nell’s first-hand impression of Ane’s exhibit

First there was some of her ‘Woolf-work’ in the Oslo National Academy of the Arts reflecting process, research, previous work and documentation). That same evening there was the official opening of the major installation of “The Mark on the Wall” in Kunstnernes Hus, an art institution in the centre of Oslo.

It was a surprise, this major installation, the result of Ane’s enormous work of typesetting and printing during last autumn as one could see on her website. It was really impressive: entering the room and wherever you looked words, words, punctuation marks and words.

Woolf’s first publication in Hogarth Press, the complete short story “The Mark on the Wall” handprinted on I don’t know how many papers, white and off-white, neatly arranged so as to fill all the walls. If you would walk the room in eleven rounds you would be able to read the whole story. Reading it this way is an absolutely different experience than reading the story in a book.

It was worth the journey.

Nell’s photos

Below are the photos Nell sent Blogging Woolf to help readers get a better idea of the installation’s impact.

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The Mark on the Wall opens Jan. 22 in Oslo

Posted in art, art exhibits, events, tagged , , on Friday 18 January 2019| 1 Comment »

In 2017, Ane Thon Knutsen combined her love of Virginia Woolf and her love of typesetting with her project A Printing Press of One’s Own. The two came together in her hand-set volume by the same name, which she debuted at the 27th Annual International Conference on Virginia Woolf at the University of Reading that June.

Now she’s at it again, this time with a massive installation titled “The Mark on the Wall,” which runs Jan. 22 – Jan. 27 at Kunstnernes Hus, Oslo.

The free exhibition is a part of Artistic Research Week 2019.

Ane’s project

In this practice based PhD. Ane Thon Knutsen reflects on how the material process of typesetting colours the way one thinks about words and the physical materials of literature, from within the practice of typesetting itself.

The results of this research will be presented as a massive installation, an adaptation of Virginia Woolf’s “The Mark on The Wall” (1917). “The Mark on the Wall” is the first story Woolf wrote whilst teaching her self to typeset. The prints will all appear in one installation, filling a huge room.

Knutsen’s adaptions of this short story represents a new way of reading Woolf as a typesetting author. Knutsen reflects on and lives out how thoughts materialize in the world, in a pendular process between the mind and the body. In this installation Knutsen is translating the story from the pages of the book to a room of one´s own.

Knutsen will also be showing previous adaptions of “The Mark on The Wall” simultaneously at Oslo National Academy of The Arts.

See a time-lapse video of the printing process

As Ane says, “This (time-lapse video) documents every minute of the three months it took me to reprint and translate “The Mark on the Wall” to 1828 A3 posters, setting it word by word with moveable type. The whole short story can be read on the door in the centre during two hours and 18 minutes.”

About Ane

Ane Thon Knutsen (b.1984) is a designer & artist living and working in Oslo, Norway. She specialized in letterpress printing and her artistic practice can be placed in-between graphic design, conceptual letterpress printing and performative presentations.

Ane is currently a PhD- candidate in Graphic Design at Oslo National Academy of The Arts. In the project A Printing Press of One´s Own, she is researching Virginia Woolf’s practice as a self taught typesetter and publisher through experimental graphic interpretations of the short story “The Mark on the Wall” (1917).

“The Mark on the Wall” installation in photos

Below are photos of her work on the exhibit that Ane shared with Blogging Woolf.

“900 massive meters of prints are up!” is the comment Ane included with this photo on her Facebook page on Jan. 18.

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