Sharon McCartney‘s books are inspired by nature. I love that she’s used a compact, with all its openings, for her artwork. She also makes artist’s books, see the 2 final photos. See all here work here.
Oak Knoll Fest, part 3, Warwick Press
Years ago, my friend Cathy gave me a lovely letterpress printed book by Carol Blinn of Warwick Press (I wrote a blog post about it here.) I was excited to see that Carol would be at the Oak Knoll Fest and we had a nice chat. She talked to me about her newest work, which is a mixture of paper and fabric pages with sewing and no text, a completely different turn for her. The fabric was gorgeous—vintage Japanese cloth—and the paper she dyed herself. The book cried out to be touched. The word for my prompt challenge group this month is “embroider.” I thought I knew what I was going to do for my book, but Carol’s work has sent me in a completely different direction.
Here’s the book I saw. She doesn’t have it on her website, but check out her book about her paper dyeing here.
Prompt Challenge: Derived
Here’s the third and last matchbox I did for the September meeting of my prompt challenge group. It’s part of my artist in a matchbox series, and the artist is Julian Schnabel. In the 80s and 90s he made huge mixed media paintings on canvases covered in broken plates. It’s probably apocryphal, but I’ve heard the glue didn’t adhere very well and the plate pieces regularly fell off. In the box are tiny painted, broken plates. See Schnabel’s plate paintings here.
Oak Knoll Fest, part 2
Here are two more objects I saw at the Oak Knoll Fest recently. Because I make my own miniature scroll book, I was drawn to these more elaborate and larger scrollers. The first is by Jessica White (Heroes and Criminals Press) and features her story “The Bad Sparrow.” It’s letterpress printed and hand colored, with a 25 foot scroll in a 14x20x5 box. She has a youtube video of the machine working here. See more here.
The second one is by Thomas Parker Williams (Luminice Press) in Philadelphia. Williams drew directly on the scroll (10ft long). The viewer “travels” though an imaginary landscape, over hill, dale and water. See a video here and many (better) pictures here.
Prompt Challenge: Derived
Here’s the second matchbox book I did for the September meeting of my prompt challenge group. It’s part of my artist in a matchbox series, and the artist is John James Audubon, the 19th century bird illustrator.
What inspired me was a poem I read 10 or so years ago by the poet David Wagner. He often writes about birds, and his poem The Author of American Ornithology Sketches a Bird, Now Extinct vividly describes the tension of how to accurately draw a bird—often 19th century bird illustrators caught and killed the birds they wanted to draw, so it seemed fitting that a box about Audubon should include bird specimens (that I drew and cut out). The top has a US postage stamp, commemorating Audubon with his illustration of the birds in the box.
2014 Oak Knoll Fest, part 1
Here are a few highlights from Oak Knoll Fest, the book fair I attended last weekend. There will be more later in the week.
Editions Denise Lapointe showed a prototype of a long skinny book where the pages had “cants” (log cuts) printed letterpress on Japanese paper. There’s a poem written specially for the book that will be added later.
This great photo is in the box housing “James Reid: Selected Wood Engravings,” published by Brier Hill Gallery in Boston. Below is one of Reid’s woodcuts. See many more here
At the table next to mine were students from the Virginia Commonwealth University’s Bowe House Press in Richmond. The book below is called Immortals. It’s 15 6 x 6 x 6″ triangular panels with letterpress printing on both sides, hinged together so the book can be manipulated and read in a variety of ways. I loved the way the book moved. More about it and other student books here.
