Impressions seven

 

Impress Printmakers will be holding their annual member's exhibition Impressions seven at the Metcalfe Gallery, Brisbane Institute of Art, 41 Grafton Street, Windsor, in Brisbane from the 31 May to 12 June.

 

The exhibition will include fine art prints, drawings and artists books.  I am a member of Impress and have used their studio facilities on the odd occasion, but haven't participated in their exhibitions before, as I don't usually make fine art prints.  However Glenda Orr rang me and invited me to submit some of my artists books this year. It is nice to be exhibiting something in Brisbane, as my work seems to travel all over the world more often.  

 

The three small Book Art Object books that I made last year will be on display with my book Time Travel.  A photographer from the local newspaper arrived yesterday to photograph them and I believe they will be publishing an article about the exhibition next week.

 

I'm actually very fond of  prints and will be on the lookout for something wonderful that I just can't bear to live without.



Manly Artists Book Award 2013

Un Chartered Democracy, one of my books for BookArtObject in 2012, has been selected for the Manly Artists Book Award and will be on display at the Manly Library from 18-28 March 2013.
The judges of the award this year are Noreen Grahame and Monica Oppen.

True Grit

I've finally wound up the last of my projects for 2012 and have completed my final book for BookArtObject titled True Grit just before Christmas.  I posted the books out to members of Group 11 on the 2nd January.

The book is made up of digital prints of five linocuts with collage mounted in 3D into Canson card and shows a small fishing boat battling huge seas, a text page and a colophon.

I decided to ignore the most obvious connections to the title True Grit.  I thought the most fitting example of unfaltering courage and true grit are the asylum seekers who flee their homeland for Australia by undertaking risky journeys with people smugglers in a desperate attempt to find peace and freedom from persecution.

Unchartered Democracy

 

Un Chartered Democracy is my second Book Art Object book using title #56 of 100 stories in Sarah Bodman's book An Exercise for Kurt Johanessen (with her permission).

 

This book takes the idea of a charter as an official written document of Government as well as a contract executed between two parties - the US Government and soldiers serving on its behalf.  A small number of US soldiers in Afghanistan have committed atrocities whilst serving their country and its promotion of democracy.  Their actions were disrespectful, unethical, unacceptable, unauthorized, unchartered.

 

 

I intended to make a thought-provoking book about the insanity of war and needless killing, the effects on young soldiers working in intolerable and stressful circumstances, and how these situations create an environment where codes of conduct are broken, and to also reflect on the innocent citizens caught up in the mess.

 

 

I used the Turkish Map Fold structure to suggest a map location in the Middle East along with Islamic patterns in soft pink on the back of the pages.

 

The music pattern of a pianola roll containing words from Stars and Stripes Forever was printed onto the pages.

 



 

The drawings depict some of the atrocities committed by a few US soldiers in Afghanistan and parts of the drawings have been hand coloured with watercolour pencil.

 

 

I have been reminded with this book that although the artist creates a book constructing meaning by reflecting their own thoughts, opinions and feelings, once it arrives in the hand of the viewer, the whole thing is recontextualised by the opinions, beliefs and knowledge each viewer brings to their reading of the book.  I would like to thank the BAO members who have received the book and written eloquent and thoughtful responses.

  

Unchartered Democracy

My second edition for Book Art Object is finished and books have been posted out today to members of Group 10 (and a few friends I am exchanging books with).

I decided to work with the idea of a charter as an official written document of government as well as a contract executed between two parties - the US Government and soldiers serving on its behalf.

After the members of Group 10 have received their books in the mail, I will post some images and write about the making of the book.

Ready to go

My second book for Book Art Object is #56 Unchartered Democracy (Group 10).

 I've had the pages prepared and some heavy card I'm using cut for about the last month, but I've had other things to work on and haven't made a start putting the edition together.  However, today's the day, and I'm just about to start now.

Making 'That Unbearable Lightness'

These books were posted out three weeks ago, so it seems timely to post now about the making of my first book for BookArtObject.

The book structure and the cover are intended to represent the physical symptoms of vertigo and the illustrations address the ambiguous psychological vertigo described by Milan Kundera in The Unbearable Lightness of Being.

Once I'd decided upon the circular structure, representing something like a spinning top, I hoped for the best that I'd somehow be able to put it into book covers.  I envisaged that the two sides of the structure would show the ambiguity and oppositions of light/dark and lightness/heaviness of existence in Kundera's book.  It was obvious to make the upper side 'light' and the lower side 'dark'.  The upper pen and ink drawing represents the vertigo of looking skywards surrounded by tall buildings, and the lower 'dark' ink sgrafitto drawing, the vertigo of looking down from tall buildings to the street below.  The two were put together on an A4 page and copies were printed onto Fabriano 160 gsm paper on my inkjet printer.

The pages were folded into a concertina structure and the ends were guillotined and glued up in the manner of a perfect binding.

The next step was to glue a soft flexible leather spine (lined with paper) to the glued ends.

The covers were made with very thin board as they needed to close together when the book was displayed. The printing on the cover was designed to be 'falling over' (helped also by the closed book's structure).

The soft leather of the spine allowed it to become completely concave and turn tightly so the book could form a circular structure.

This allows the book sculpture to be displayed fallen to one side, as if it has spun and fallen like a spinning top.

A bespoke box was made to fit the unusual shape of the book with its slanted spine and wedge shape.

I enjoyed the experience so much that I'm looking forward to tackling a second book for BAO, #56 Unchartered Democracy, in Group 10.

Ready to go

After much procrastination I went out to find a suitable post box for the BAO books. Well of course there was nothing readymade suitable for my unusually shaped books - anything small was too shallow.
I ended up buying some readymade postboxes and cutting them in half, then inserting the book and bubble wrap into some folded cardboard like a kind of drawer on the open side, and wrapping all in brown paper and twine, always trying to find the happy medium between being strong enough but not too heavy.

I'm hoping they all arrive in perfect condition and they weighed in at less than 250 gms. the lowest post rate, which was great.

So the books will be posted on Monday and members of group 5 can expect to receive them, depending on where you live, within the next week or so.

That Unbearable Lightness

I chose this title for my book for Book Art Object as I enjoy trying to interpret feelings and intangible things. The sculptural structure I revealed in an earlier post refers to the physical symptoms of vertigo, suggesting the spinning sensations, loss of equilibrium and falling over. I then started working with the physcological aspects of vertigo expressed in Milan Kundera's book The Unbearable Lightness of Being. I wanted to exploit one of the dualities in the book, lightness/weight, which could be seen as light/darkness or positive/negative, and used this as a design guide for the illustrations.

The upper side of the structure (the light side = someone seeking something higher) forms a circular perspective of someone looking up and suffering feelings of vertigo. The lower side (the dark side and emptiness below) shows the perspective of someone looking down from the height of tall buildings to the street and central dark void, a traditional vertiginous experience.

All the characters in Kundera's book have feelings of vertigo at some point, which is seen as a moment of weakness, but the dualities of lightness/weight, bearable/unbearable, being/non-being, weakness/strength, freedom and lack of commitment/weight of responsibility, are ambiguous.

By juxtaposing the vertigo of lightness/weight from both sides, my intention is to pose the same philosophical question as Kundera's book - Is vertigo the lightness or heaviness of existence?

There is a glimpse of the book above and the edition of 15 is finished and ready to go. I have really enjoyed working on this edition and with a streamlined production process in place, making 15 wasn't tedious at all!

Book Boxes

I always like my books to be presented in a book box, and usually this is a black card slipcase. I worked out a pattern for making them many years ago, after reading a book on Japanese gift boxes and adapting one of them, and I've been adapting and adjusting the formula ever since.
I use Canson card, which is fairly heavy (300 gsm I think) and I've always believed it was acid free, but I've since read an article saying that black card and paper can never be really acid free, so I'm no longer sure.

For the last few days I've been working on book boxes and it has been a bit of a challenge to get the pattern for these particular boxes just right, as I do everything by making and adjusting. This box is for my first BAO edition of books, and as it is an unusual shape, it's taken me a while to design the box and pattern to fit. Once done though, it was a breeze to make them up.
They're all done - 15 of them and the books are inside too! I've been working consistently on this project even though I usually don't do too much at this time of the year when it's so hot, and I wanted to finish it early before moving on to something else. I have been surprised how much I enjoyed making the edition and enjoyed working with the streamlined methods of production.

I will add a post about the making of the books at a later date, after they've been distributed and received by the members of my BAO group five.

Book Art Object

is for books. Welcome to this first post on this new book blog.

I decided to join BookArtObject for 2012, a collective of artists working on an edition of artists books, you can read about it here. Members are based worldwide but mainly in Australia. I am joining the fourth edition based on Sarah Bodman's artists book An Exercise for Kurt Johannessen.
Sarah's book was a response to Kurt's artists book Exercises (2001) a book of performative texts, one of which was his suggestion to write 100 stories and bury them in a forest, which she did. Her book now lies decomposing in a forest in Denmark. You can read about it here. Each of the sixty plus artists who have signed up will work with one or two of the 100 titles in Sarah's book (with her permission). I really liked Sarah's book and this project with its referential nature. Sarah Bodman will receive a copy of the full edition.

I usually work with unique books or small editions of 3 to 5, so making an edition of 15 will be a learning experience for me and will require a much more organised approach. I'm working on two titles this year, #73 That Unbearable Lightness and #56 Unchartered Democracy. I've been taking advantage of all the wet indoor weather we've been having to start work on Number 73. I will post reports about the making of this book in the coming weeks.