Category: Bookmaking

Prompt Challenge: Birds and em-dashes (part 3)

Summer Day | Winter NightIn my small book collection, I have a double-sided accordion book, “Summer Day | Winter Night” where Claire Van Vliet printed Ruth Fine’s linocuts. It’s exquisitely constructed and has some very nice touches. The linocut was printed on several sheets, then connected together, then folded in half horizontally, and finally folded into an accordion. This hides the seams and allows you to make an infinite length double-sided accordion. There’s a small tab at the end of the accordion to facilitate pulling out & unfolding the book. A similar tab folds over the front cover, giving you a hint of what’s inside.
For my first model (after spending about a week drawing birds), I tried using a similar structure. The idea was to cut out the shape for the windows using my cutting plotter, fold the paper in half, and affix the tissue with the illustration inside the fold. Turns out that the paper, when folded, can’t be too bulky. I want to use paper I have in my studio, and I discovered that Mohawk Superfine & Arches were too bulky, and my cutting plotter balked at cutting Rives (too fibrous I suspect, although it seems to pass the bulk test). Here’s the model, using Arches paper. There’s a seam between the 2nd & 3rd panels and the 4th & 5th—these contribute to making the structure too bulky to fold properly. Next step is to see if I can make this without the seams.

Model for my Prompt Challenge

Prompt Challenge: Birds and em-dashes (part 2)

cardinalI’m working on a book with an Emily Dickinson poem in it (see my first post here), and thinking about using stained glass windows like the one to the left as illustrations. A double-sided accordion, where you can see the windows from the front and the back, seems like it’s worth pursuing. But what text to put on the back of the accordion? Dickinson to the rescue… The following poem has bird imagery and the same number of stanzas and many em-dashes, so it seems like a good candidate:

“Hope” is the thing with feathers—
That perches in the soul—
And sings the tune without the words—
And never stops—at all—

And sweetest—in the Gale—is heard—
And sore must be the storm—
That could abash the little Bird
That kept so many warm—

I’ve heard it in the chillest land—
And on the strangest Sea—
Yet—never—in Extremity,
It asked a crumb—of me.

My current idea is to print the window illustrations on tissue or rice paper, cut holes in the accordion and affix the tissue over the cutout. Light could then come through the “window,” and the illustration would be the same on both the front and back.

Prompt Challenge: Birds and em-dashes

bobolinkEarlier this year, I started a prompt challenge where I used a word a week to inspire some bookmaking. It was a lot of work, and I gave up in exhaustion after a couple of months. But it certainly generated a lot of ideas and led to several new books. Now I’m going to try a different sort of prompt — specific poems.
Bear with me while I get to the poem I’m going to try…. I use em-dash (the long one —) when I write out my haiku, but my set of metal Bembo only has the short en-dash, so when I handset Summer in Vermont, I used periods instead of dashes. This fall I finally got around to buying some em-dashes. In the meantime I started drawing the birds that congregate at the bird feeder in my front yard.
Then my Mom sent me some Emily Dickinson poems, notorious for the use of the em-dash. One poem in particular struck me as perfect for a prompt challenge, as it uses bird imagery and plenty of dashes.

Some keep the Sabbath going to Church —
I keep it, staying at Home —
With a Bobolink for a Chorister —
And an Orchard, for a Dome —

Some keep the Sabbath in Surplice —
I, just wear my Wings —
And instead of tolling the Bell, for Church,
Our little Sexton — sings.

God preaches, a noted Clergyman —
And the sermon is never long,
So instead of getting to Heaven, at last —
I’m going, all along.

When I think of churches, the first thing that comes to mind is stained glass windows, so my initial idea is to combine windows and bird images — that’s one I did of a bobolink above. I’m not giving myself a deadline on this one, but I’ll keep reporting back as I get more ideas and build models…