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.

  

Ten Books on Architecture Part 3

Two books based on the Turkish Map Fold, Brunelleschi and Queenslander

Queenslander is a pretty standard multi-paged Turkish Map Fold book.  I chose the structure because in this book I wanted to include floor plans, pictures of a timber old Queensland house being built, a drawing, and to tell how many of these houses were War Service Homes, built for men who had served in WWI. This book tells of one particular house that used to be called Clutha.

I like the way this book looks like a little house when it is closed and I used some wood veneer paper (papier bois) for the covers.

Brunelleschi refers to the dome of Florence Cathedral, which was an outstanding engineering achievement which combined Roman Construction techniques with Gothic rib vaulting principles.

Instead of folding the paper with the cross point in the centre, I folded it off centre

 

and ended up with a shape like this

which was then cut to the shape I wanted

White PVC ribs/covers were cut to size and the edges were sanded to make them smooth and rounded

and the folded pages were sandwiched and attached one by one between the ribs.

The cathedral and its interior are decorated with green and white marble and I wanted to reflect this in the piece.  I cut circles of green paper which were to be overlaid with circles of white paper containing the texts and cutouts of details from the cathedral and interior of the dome.  These pages were folded into a standard Turkish map fold and the green pages were fitted into place and attached to the book and then the white pages were fitted and attached.

The patterns used for the white cutout sections were things like the opening of the lantern looking upwards, the decorative pattern of arches, and the rectangular green and white marble pattern - shown in perspective, and fitting for  Brunelleschi as he was responsible for formulating the laws of linear perspective.

In the next post I will talk about two perspex books, Mies van der Rohe and Pei.