A name I had heard but a face I had never met, LMS turned out to be a great speaker and a little something different to the work we usually see in this lecture series.
Initially introduced as a designer Lucy swiftly sought to address that by announcing herself as a designer of books but mainly a curator and bookbinder by trade. I have seen some of Lucy’s pieces before at various book fairs and university events I have been to but it was nice to hear her talk about her work with the passion she obviously has for each piece. I am not a huge fan of this type of intricate, delicate style of work so for me this lecture was mainly about Lucy’s experiences and the process in which she undertakes her work. She talked a lot about narrative and in her quest to discover various objects she always looks for a story behind each one. This is a theme which also carries over into her work with each piece she creates having a certain symbolism and specific meaning, something which gives the work an indefinite charm and maybe why they are so popular. The methods and processes Lucy uses are all hands on and In her own words, she would not like to put her name to anything that was not hand finished herself. With the use of letterpress, mono-printing, screen-printing, and hand stitching and binding her work somewhat harks back to what some may see as a bygone time when we think now of the ideals of mass production and the ease of which our designs can now go from screen to print within a matter of seconds. However, that ease of production does, obviously, have its flaws. Handling some of Lucy’s work after the lecture there was a definite sense of delicacy and a feeling of speciality about the work, more than I would get from simply looking at a nice piece of printed design work. Maybe these methods, methods that seem to so far have escaped my design practice, are worth an investigation?
Food for thought then from the latest of our lecture series. Maybe, somewhere, the urge to dowse myself in solitude and rediscover my inner fine artist is bubbling up.
But then again… probably not.
//www.lucymayschofield.co.uk
