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Brian Baker

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The Grace of Wreckage

 


Dyma'r trydydd dilyniant o dudalennau llyfrau wedi'u trin y mae Baker wedi bod yn gweithio arnynt yn ystod y tair mlynedd diwethaf. Cyhoeddir y gyntaf, sef ymdriniaeth lawn o The Time Machine gan HG Wells, fel llyfr yn 2023. Bydd yr ail, sef ymdriniaeth o stori fer Wells, 'The Chronic Argonauts', yn cael eu chyhoeddi yn Hydref 2022 gan Incisors Dur. Daw'r dilyniant hwn o dudalennau o fersiwn Penguin 60 o The Voyages of Sinbad the Sailor, sy'n cael ei longddryllio'n gyfresol ac sy'n goroesi'n wyrthiol bob tro. Yma. mae'r adroddwr yn cael ei olchi i fyny ar lan arall eto, ond yn canfod ei fod wedi teithio ymhellach nag  a feddyliwyd.




This is the third sequence of treated book pages that Baker has been working on in the last three years. The first, a full-length treatment of HG Wells' The Time Machine, will be published as a book in 2023. The second, a treatment of Wells' short story 'The Chronic Argonauts', will be published in the Autumn of 2022 by Steel Incisors. This sequence of pages is taken from a Penguin 60 version of the Voyages of Sinbad the Sailor, who is serially shipwrecked and miraculously survives each time. Here, the narrator is washed up on yet another shore, but finds he has travelled farther than thought.

An Invention

 


Mae’r prosiect hwn yn ail-weithiad lliw llawn o The Time Machine (1895) HG Wells, gan ddatgelu stori arall trwy olygu ac ail-weithio’r tudalennau gan ddefnyddio dulliau graffig. Mae fersiwn Baker o destun Wells, o’r enw An Invention, yn cynnig stori peilot o’r Rhyfel Byd Cyntaf sy’n cwrdd â Sigmund Freud naill ai yn Fienna cyn y rhyfel, neu yn Llundain ar ei ôl, ac yn y cyfweliad hwnnw mae’n adrodd ei stori ryfedd ei hun. Mae An Invention yn defnyddio arddulliau artistiaid rhyfel ac eraill yn y cyfnod, gan gyfeirio'n uniongyrchol yn aml at weithiau arbennig gan Nevinson, Bomberg, Wadsworth, Lewis, Singer Sargent ac eraill. Mae'r testun yn defnyddio amrywiaeth o dechnegau i gyflawni ei effeithiau: beiro, pensil, pasteli, gouache, toriad leino, collage, siarcol a golchiad inc.




This project is a full colour re-working of HG Wells’s The Time Machine (1895), revealing another story by redacting and re-working the pages using graphic means. Baker’s version of Wells’s text, which is called An Invention, offers a story of a WW1 pilot who meets Sigmund Freud either in Vienna before the war, or in London after it, and in that interview tells his own strange story. An Invention uses the styles of war artists and others in the period, often making direct reference to particular works by Nevinson, Bomberg, Wadsworth, Lewis, Singer Sargent and others. The text uses a range of techniques to achieve its effects: pen, pencil, pastels, gouache, lino cut, collage, charcoal and ink wash.

Argo-0

 


Cyflwynir Argo-0 fel testun ‘ddoctoredig’, a fel An Invention, mae’n chwarae gyda chonfensiynau’r naratif teithio amser. Fe’i tynnir o stori fer HG Wells ‘The Chronic Argonauts’, ei stori fer gyhoeddedig gyntaf, a ysgrifennodd Wells pan oedd yn ysgolfeistr aflwyddiannus yn Holt, gogledd-ddwyrain Cymru. Mae’n rhagflaenydd uniongyrchol The Time Machine ac mae peth o’r deunydd sy’n ymwneud ag amser gan fod y ‘pedwerydd dimensiwn’ yn cael ei ailadrodd gair-am-air yn y testun hirach. Daw Argo-0 Baker i’r amlwg fel myfyrdod ar ‘The Chronic Argonauts’, yn enwedig yn ymwneud â dimensiynau: pedwar dimensiwn, tri dimensiwn, dau. Plygu pedwar yn ddau. Fe'i cyhoeddwyd gan wasg Steel Incisors yn 2022.




Argo-0 is presented as a ‘doctored’ text, and like An Invention, plays with the conventions of the time travel narrative. It is drawn from HG Wells’ short story ‘The Chronic Argonauts’, his first published short story, which Wells wrote while an unsuccessful schoolmaster in Holt, north-east Wales. It is a direct precursor of The Time Machine and some of the material to do with time as the ‘fourth dimension’ is repeated word-for-word in the longer text. Baker’s Argo-0 emerges as a meditation on ‘The Chronic Argonauts’, especially to do with dimensions: four dimensions, three dimensions, two. Four folded into two. It was published by Steel Incisors press in 2022.

www.steelincisors.com/product/argo-0-by-brian-baker/15?cp=true&sa=true&sbp=false&q=false 

Patience Clean as Light

 


Dyma’r pedwerydd dilyniant y mae Baker wedi bod yn gweithio arno, ac mae’n defnyddio tudalennau o rifyn o Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde gan Robert Louis Stevenson. Mae Baker wedi defnyddio techneg wahanol ar gyfer y set hon o dudalennau, gan wneud marciau strwythurol cychwynnol ar y dudalen ac adnabod y testun yn gorfforol, yna trosglwyddo'r gwaith i ddigidol i adeiladu haenau o collage, peintio a lluniadu gan ddefnyddio tabled. Tynnwyd deunyddiau cyfeirio o bob rhan o Ogledd Cymru, gan gynnwys Llangollen, Blaenau Ffestiniog, Dolgellau a Chricieth. Mae'r stori sy'n dod i'r amlwg yn stori Gothig am dref fechan yng Ngogledd Cymru, cyfreithiwr a'i frawd, ewyllys ac amheuaeth o lofruddiaeth.




This is the fourth sequence Baker has been working on, and uses pages from an edition of Robert Louis Stevenson’s Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. Baker has used a different technique for this set of pages, making initial structural marks on the page and identifying the text physically, then transferring the work to digital to build up layers of collage, painting and drawing using a tablet. Reference materials have been drawn from across North Wales, including Llangollen, Blaenau Ffestiniog, Dolgellau and Criccieth. The story that emerges is a Gothic tale of a small North Wales town, a lawyer and his brother, a will and a suspected murder.

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