In the Studio: Cat’s Cradles

This week I’m making a set of Cat’s Cradle matchbox books. On the left are the pieces, cut out and folded and ready to assemble. I do some of the cutting on my Robocraft cutter, and some with the xacto knife. The long metal thing in the lower part of the picture is a clay needle tool. I use it to help me pick up little pieces of paper on my workbench, compensating for my lack of long fingernails.

Cat’s Cradle matchbox book pieces (Green Chair Press)

Seeds

The book arts listserve has had several posts recently about books with seeds embedded in the paper. Many of the examples are about growth, decay, regeneration. For instance, Basia Irland makes books of ice and seeds: “River water is frozen, carved into the form of a book, embedded with an ‘ecological language’ or ‘riparian text’ consisting of local native seeds, and placed back into the stream. The seeds are released as the ice melts in the current.” Many of her projects are collaborative and community-based. Here’s one she did in 2009, in Albuquerque. (See all the projects here.)

Ice book

You can buy paper with seeds already embedded. This one says it can be put through a printer and then planted.

printable seed paper

But my favorite seed-based find while writing this post is not book related. It’s these shoes, called Nanohana Heels by an artist called Sputniko. She made them in response to the Fukushima nuclear disaster—the flowers on the shoes (rapeseeds) have seeds that absorb radioactive substances from the soil. As the wearer walks, the seeds are discharged into the soil. You can see a very short video of how this works here.

Nanohana Heels (2012) by Sputniko.

Two Stages of the Memoir

Magdalena Haras’s Two stages of the memoir “A pair of shoes is hand made entirely of paper…The soles, torn apart, reveal a secret – pages covered with writing as if a diary of journey…The left shoe is in Polish, the right shoe is in English – the artist refers to the history of the book written by Sławomir Rawicz, that could not be published for many years in Polish and in Poland. There are more pictures and more about the work here.

Magdalena Haras’s “Two stages of the memoir”

Magdalena Haras’s “Two stages of the memoir”