Kate Bowles sews (she calls it ‘darning’) onto cloth before covering a book. They seem quite beautiful to me. See her blog posts here and here.
Category: Bookmaking
The Project This Week…
When I finished designing my Beuys artist-in-a-box book in January, I had enough material to make 15. I cut out (almost) all the pieces, made 5, and then got side tracked. This month I’m slowly working through my backlog of unfinished projects, and the Beuys book got to the top of the list this week. The matchbox itself is made from a piece of grey Cave paper I bought in 2009 (I even wrote a blog post about it). I’ve taken the sheet out of my drawer countless times, trying to envision the perfect use for it. Patience paid off—this is indeed the perfect book for both the paper weight and color. I’ve so enjoyed the feel of it in my hands as I’ve folded and glued the boxes together.
Here’s a photo of the book in-progress. On the left is very tiny book that is to be encased in felt. The grey rectangle next to it is another book sewn in grey felt—it just needs the red cross sewn on it. Finally on the right is a finished book “package” that goes in the box. Underneath is what the finished matchbox book. See more about the book and more pictures here and here.
Flipbook Assembly Day
Last Friday was a flipbook making day in my studio. First I print the books (8-up), cut them into stacks, staple each book with a piece of heavy black paper for the spine, and finally fold and secure the spine (with glue). The key is my stack cutter, which lets me cut the entire book in one hunk, so there’s no trimming required once the spine is attached. You can see all my flip books here.
Mind Map
I couldn’t find a bigger picture, but I was intrigued by this work by Bexx Caswell in the “Geographies: New England Book Work” show by the members of the Guild of Book Workers’ New England chapter. In the catalog she says
When I first moved to New York, I helped myself to learn the city by equating roads and neighborhoods to those I knew growing up in Philadelphia. I used a similar tactic when I moved to Boston a few years later. I soon found that as I became more familiar with the roadways of Boston, the once familiar landscapes of Philadelphia and New York became faded and distorted in my mind’s eye. Although each of the cities featured in this book have their own distinct geographies, they also share a certain sameness dictated by their location on the East Coast. Street names, landmarks, and visual landscapes all blend into one another.
To create this book, I dissected maps of Philadelphia, New York, and Boston, and then shuffled the pages so that they would be ordered randomly. I intentionally chose maps printed by the same mapmaker to encourage visual similarities. Each roadmap blends into the next, a chaotic jumble of roads, street names, and anonymous landmarks. This in not unlike the map which now exists in my mind’s eye.
See the entire catalog here.
Submerged
Maybe it’s because we have so little water (and humidity) here in New Mexico, but this book by Lisa Onstad, with it’s cool wet blues caught my eye recently. It’s called Submerged and also was a winner of an EcoEditions Award from 23 Sandy. The caption on the 23 Sandy site says, about the book:
In 1957 the Columbia river was dammed at Celilo Falls, inundating ten thousand years of native culture and a thriving river ecosystem. Submerged depicts this event with poignant text and hand-painted imagery by the artist. The physical structure of the book captures both the flow and stasis of Celilo Falls: the opening movement of the book mirrors cascading water and the static pages reference a dam wall.
Glass Book
My book One More Blanket is in a group show this month at the AMS Community Art Gallery in Rowe NM. This is one of the other books in the show, “Altered Book #24” by SC Thayer. She’s glued little green glass pieces over all the words. The cover is covered in the same manner. Below is a close-up and then a larger picture.
