London

Annie Bocel

Printmaker | Beaussais-sur-Mer, France

Revealing the unknown

Annie graduated from the Estienne art school in Paris
She was apprentice to engraver Jean-Luc Seigneur
She started making art books with her sister, a bookbinder

In her printmaking, Annie Bocel seeks to capture atmospheres of the natural world, shedding light on what is lost or forgotten, and revealing the unknown. “My works are like maps that guide you towards this otherworld,” she says. When Annie opened a printmaking workshop in northern Finistère, she simultaneously became an engraver of typographic punches at the French national printing office. She contributes to highlighting the importance of typographic punches and their conservation, a profession recently listed on the French intangible cultural heritage list. This experience has exposed her to many different scripts, such as Cuneiform, Tifinagh, Arabic, Japanese and Hebrew, which she appreciates for their beauty.

Interview

What was the first work you made as a printmaker?: One of the first pieces I made was a book about ocean abysses called Zone Blanche, a kind of immersion into one of the parts of the Earth that we know the least about. Lost places, no man's lands or areas inaccessible to man can really fire up the imagination.
How is your craft influenced by your surroundings?: The place where I live inspires me; the region is surrounded by the sea, which is the starting point for the unknown, dreams and stories. My prints can be of local plants from the fresh waters of Brittany, or the canals that once irrigated the forgotten gardens of Nineveh in ancient Mesopotamia.
How would you define what you do?: A print is in itself a form of memory, a trace. My work is like an excavation of the unknown in search of fragments of memories. There is always a common theme in every series of prints. There can’t be a dialogue with an engraving if there is no history there or a special reason to bring it to life.
What do you love most about printmaking?: The exposure I had to different scripts when cutting type punches has just started to appear in my prints. I get a huge amount of pleasure from studying signs I don't understand. Deprived of meaning, we are free to simply admire the beauty of the shape, the calligraphic drawing.

Annie Bocel is a master artisan: she began her career in 2009 and she started teaching in 2018