In The Studio: Antonia Aitken

Australian printmaker Antonia Aitken returned to Women’s Studio Workshop this fall to create an artist’s book born from her walking/drawing meditation practice. Her “walking book” will be made up from a series of plates etched during a weeks worth of walks around our Binnewater environs. Antonia first came to WSW in the spring of 2011 as part of an Art-In-Education printmaking residency. Large scale woodblock prints from her first residency are on view in the WSW Gallery through November 23rd. 2012.

Drawing the Step: right hand for the left foot, left foot for the right hand. One mark for every step.

7 daily walks from Women’s Studio Workshop, October 2012

‘Walking is one of the most ancient modes of being in the world, it is also the oldest mode of transporting oneself through the world – of both measuring the world and appropriating it, of staking out one’s territory within it.’ Rebecca Solnit, Wanderlust: a history of walking, 2010.

I am making a book that records my daily walks from the studio to various sites within the area, marking my step onto etching plate and recording the sound of each walk.

This book is part of an ongoing investigation into ways of representing my body on site using time-based and performative drawing processes. The walking drawings are a form of daily meditation and as way of locating myself in a new or alien place.

I wanted to translate these walking works to the book form, as I believe that the book can talk about time, place and body in a very intimate way. The book will be an acordion structure, being able to be read both page by page, walk by walk, or as a whole seven day passage.

Drawing the step
by Antonia Aitken

Drawing the Step is now available in WSW’s Artists’ Bookstore. Take a look at it and over 100 other books for sale in the Bookstore, or research our entire catalogue in depth in our online Artists’ Book Collection, which contains detailed information on each and every book published at WSW.