Death plays the bone flute

Here is the an image from the dream sequence in the 1927 dystopian film Metropolis. For some reason I could not fathom, the hero sees the figure of Death approaching him playing on a flute made of a human femur.

The top two pictures here are the final version printed on white and on brown recycled packaging paper. I am trying to build textures: glue and salt have been applied to the lino after the final cut, allowed to harden and then shaved flat leaving an irregular, partly resistant, surface to take up the ink.

The gallery shows the series, starting with the charcoal, graphite and white ink sketch, the first cut, including an image printed on tracing paper, second cut and the final version after manipulation with glue and salt.

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pockets and a hat

The twitter hashtag #WOMENSART brought to my attention the poem Dangerous Coats by Sharon Owens linked to a surveillance photograph of suffragette Olive Beamish from 1914. In this linocut I don’t capture her facial likeness but I have explored textures of the coat with large pockets.

Here are a range of sketches I undertook.

From Wikipedia I learned of the Cat and Mouse Act passed by the Liberal government, legislation designed to thwart the suffragettes on hunger strike in prison.

In her poem Sharon Owens equates “sedition”, at that time, with commonsense, fairness, kindness, equality. Faced with a law-breaking, lying, callous, killing government, we may all need pockets to promote these values.