Mr Eatock’s Felt-Tip Prints

By Lauren Shipman / December 22nd, 2011 in Talks / Minneapolis / 177 views

In an attempt to answer that unconscious yet naggingly anoying question – How long will this pen last? – London-based designer Daniel Eatock set about upending a complete set of Pantone Tria II Marker pens and then, after he’d set them up perfectly, he carefully placed a piece of A1 sized 200gsm smooth uncoated white paper on top of the exposed pen nibs. The answer he got was a colourful set of Felt-tip Pen Prints.

Throughout his work, Daniel makes use of background knowledge he gained working as a graphic designer, whilst employing a rational, logical and pragmatic approach to making art. In the case of the felt-tip print series, the idea was to visualise pen and printer inks through use, so Daniel randomly set out the coloured pens and left each print to sit on top of the nibs for twice the duration of the previous print thus giving the gradually drying pens more time to mark the paper. By forcing the pen to work in this way, the ink has become visible on its own terms, rather than as an incidental effect of printing words or images.

According to Daniel, he has an ongoing interest to proposing and finding solutions to problems, often problems that cannot be formulated before they have been solved, the shaping of the question is part of the answer:

I look for things to fix or improve, working like a tinkerer/inventor, I propose alternatives to existing models, preferring to find ways around doing things properly, bypassing the struggle. I use self referentiality as an objective guide to reduce the extraneous and subjective, and strive for a conceptual logic. The idea is paramount and the material form secondary. I embrace contradictions, and dilemmas. I like gray areas, oxymorons and the feeling of falling backwards. My favorite colour is the purple found in a soap bubble. I prefer to swap and exchange things rather than use money. I seek alignments, paradoxes, chance circumstance, loops, impossibilities and wit encountered in everyday life. I often change my mind, go full circle, and arrive at the beginning.

In this particular video, the artist lets us into his simply brilliant graphic mind as he discusses the work in process, exhibited as part of Walker Art Center’s Graphic Design: Now In Production.