A Unique Piece of Leather

It has been very quiet here as I have been occupied by other things, however I hope to be working and posting regularly about my books again.

I made a small book a few months ago called Makes No Sense about World War 1.  It proved to be popular and the edition of 20 have all gone.  As the topic of war seems to be one of my favourite subjects, I decided to make a unique copy for myself.

I sewed the book together in sections and put a black leather spine on it.  I wondered what to do with the cover and remembered I had a great piece of leather stashed away that I had bought as a dud  faulty piece because the black dye had not penetrated fully and had left a kind of tie-dye mark in one or two areas of the skin.  I thought it looked great and decided to use it for the covers of this book.

The front cover (above) also had two holes in the leather which I filled with
red acrylic paint.

Below is a view of the pattern on the back cover.

The final view shows the completed book covers.

A Great Book Weekend at SLQ

A highly anticipated artists book event on the calendar is the yearly event at SLQ sponsored by the Siganto Foundation, and this year's event was better than ever.   This year introduced us to Amir Brito Cador and his presentation on other Brazilian book artists which was a real treat and quite inspiring.  It also introduced us to performances of artists books, and we heard about the projects of newly completed and current SLQ Fellows. It was a really great day and I was obviously so absorbed I didn't think to take even one photo!

The Artists Book Fair held on the Sunday was also hugely enjoyable and successful.  I loved seeing other people's books and sharing a table with my friend and collaborator Jack Oudyn.  We had a range of our own books, some collaborative books and Jack had lots of zines.  Once again I had such a great time mixing with people and talking about books that I didn't think to even take 

a photo of our table.

Thank goodness for Doug Spowart who did take lots of photos and he and Vicki Cooper have written up a well illustrated account of the two day event on their blog here.

There is also an aptly titled blog post (Artists Books Extravaganza) on the 

SLQ Australian Library of Art blog here.   

How fortunate we are to have the State Library of Queensland and it's support from the Siganto Foundation, and we hope these Siganto events and the associated Artists Book Fair will continue.

I had made a little booklet/zine for the day titled Makes no Sense.  I had received a pile of cards from the exhibition of my book Back to the Front in France.  The card had the photo positioned very low down with a huge white area above.  My friend Jack immediately folded it and the image appropriately went to the back, so I used the cards as covers to make 20.  I had enough cards to paint ink onto the glossy surface of others and scratch into it with an etching needle 

to make some of the pages. 

Of course it's about WWI hence the title, and some of the pages are placed upside down or sideways.

Photos of the first few pages below.