The What and Why

     I received a request from Sarah Bodman, Senior Research Fellow for Artists Books at the University of the West of England, Bristol, UK about my book That Unbearable Lightness.

This book was made in 2012 as part of the Book Art Object Project.  A complete set of BAO books made by participants were sent to Sarah Bodman and are held in the Bower Ashton Library at UWE.     

 

Library and teaching staff at UWE have had the idea of making some short one minute videos about  some of the artists' books in their collections to use as a teaching tool so that students can get an idea of 'the what and why' of these books.  On the proposed videos, Sarah plans to handle the book whilst talking about it and the artist's practice.   The videos would then be published on the library website and be readily accessible by the students.

 I was delighted to be asked permission for my book to be filmed and to be included in such a great resource for book arts students.

I wrote some posts about the making of this book back in 2012.   

You can find them here (working on structure) here (the concept) and here (making the book).

Catching up with some news

Vitruvius pictured above is one of the Ten Books on Architecture currently on display in the exhibition The Collections on View at the Pratt Institute Library, Brooklyn Campus, New York during May to August. 

 

 

I am very pleased that a copy of The River City: Eyewitness Document, about the 2011 flood in  Brisbane and currently on display at the Libris Awards, has been purchased by the State Library of Queensland for their collection. 

 

 

One of my Book Art Object books That Unbearable Lightness has been selected for the Artists Book Award, Books...Beyond Words - Revolution to be held at the East Gippsland Art Gallery, Bairnsdale, Victoria from 10th August to 4th September.

 

 

Delires de Livres

 

The next exhibition I will be participating in is Delires de Livres 2013, a biennial exhibition organised by Am'arts in Chartres, France.  Delires de Livres  means delirious about books. I have participated once before in 2011, and I was fortunate to be on holidays in Paris at the time and was able to spend a delightful day in Chartres seeing the exhibition and meeting Chantal Leibenguth, the organiser and curator.  Chantal produces a great catalogue and artists' cards which can be purchased at the show.

 

The exhibition is held in the Collegiale Saint-Andre, a gorgeous old church which dates back to the 12th century.  It has been partly destroyed and rebuilt over the centuries and underwent a comprehensive restoration in 2003 as a cultural centre. 

 

 

The medieval garden has been cultivated with aromatic and medicinal herbs.

 

 

After leaving the magnificent Chartres cathedral

 

 

and walking through a gateway from the gardens

 

 

I entered a steep old street of stairs

 

 

which led down to Saint-Andre.

 

 

There is a video of the opening in 2007 which gives some idea of the wonderful interior and atmosphere of the exhibition.

 

 

One of my Book Art Object books, That Unbearable Lightness

 

 

and a 2012 version of Lost in a Million Dead End Streets

 

 

 

will be on display from 27th April to 19th May.

Unfortunately I am not able to attend this year, but I'm delighted to be participating. 

   

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.

A Bespoke Box

My book That Unbearable Lightness for BookArtObject evolved in the making and I wasn't sure how it would end up until I got there -which was as a sculptural structure which folds between book covers. It did, however, end up forming an unusual shape which was going to need an unusual box to house it. As five of the books were to be posted overseas, keeping the book and the box small and lightweight was a priority.
The box needed to be wider at the foredge and narrow at the spine end, and the spine edge needed to slant inwards. Obviously I was going to have to come up with an unusual solution for this particular book box.

I found a pattern for making a trapezoid, which wasn't what I needed and in all the wrong proportions - it had a small narrow top, wide base and slanted sides. I needed a lidded box to make it easy to get the book inside. However, as the trapezoid had sloping sides it gave me an idea of how to approach this box. I'm not a mathematical wiz, so with a lot of cutting and pasting and fitting pieces around the book, I eventually came up with this made-to-measure solution and made the pattern pieces below for the box and the lid. All this was the hard part, and once I had cut out the pattern pieces, it was as easy to score, fold, glue the tabs and finish the box as the other slipcases I make.......and it was perfect for this book.

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.

Working on Structure

I had never read Milan Kundera's book The Unbearable Lightness of Being and my first response to the title That Unbearable Lightness was to think of vertigo - the light-headedness, the spinning sensation, the wobbly feeling, losing balance and falling over. After getting hold of the book, I was quite excited to discover a piece about vertigo, not the physical kind, but a psychological vertigo suffered by those whose goal is to attain 'something higher' but who are inevitably tempted and lured to fall into the emptiness below. I liked the idea of combining these physical and psycholocigal aspects of vertigo.

I love it when the subject matter lends itself to using structure as an integral part of the artwork, in the same way illustration or text contribute to the meaning. I needed a structure that could suggest vertigo - the spinning sensations and falling over - a bit like a spinning top. I remembered a Chinese circular folded hanging structure I'd seen a few years ago which could possibly work. First attempts at making it were rather dismal and it was much more complicated than its simple exterior suggested, but perseverance paid off and after several attempts I eventually worked it out. Paper and its weight was an issue and thinner oriental papers were not successful. With all the folds, I couldn't use thick watercolour paper and printmaking papers have a softness that wasn't really suitable either. I had the best results with a crisp Fabriano paper of 160 gsm.

Now to turn it into a book! Parts of it had to be glued, so these became a kind of 'perfect binding' and then I added a soft flexible leather spine that could turn itself 'inside out/outside in'. The covers were added to the spine piece in the style of a simplified binding.....and after two attempts it worked! Now onto the illustrations......

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.