Jacaranda Time

 

October in Queensland is the time when the Jacaranda trees are in flower and is usually greeted with some trepidation by University students as it heralds the time when they should be studying for their final examinations.

 

I have the immense pleasure of living across the road from a park called Jacaranda Park.

 

 

Lots of people walk past and photograph the trees and we've seen the occasional busload of Japanese tourists stop by to photograph the beauty of it all.



 

It's such a joy to sit on our back deck and enjoy this view of the park

 



 

It hasn't always been so.  The parkland was originally a waterhole by a dirt road as this photo taken by my grandparents in the 1920's shows.

 

 

I think it was in the 1940's - 1950's that the Council started to fill the waterhole and finally created the parkland for the local neighbours to enjoy - especially at this time of year.

 

 



A Bit of Bookbinding

 



It's the time of year when I usually do some bookbinding for the Australian Bookbinders exhibition. This book is called Pressed and contains rubbed pencil etchings of pressed flowers.  I have used a French simplified binding with leather spine and rolled leather headbands.  The cover is of Cork veneer and leather with an onlaid cut-out of vellum and rubbed pencil etchings with attached linen thread and vellum.

 

 

I have also made a bookbinding version of my Al-Mutanabbi Street Project book Absence.

It is a French simplified binding with a soft leather spine and rolled leather headbands.  Lamali paper/fabric has been used on the cover with the paper side up and the collaged strips are of Lamali with the fabric side up and with some overlaid leather strips.

 

I have just packaged both books up to send down to Sydney for the Australian Bookbinders Exhibition to be held in the Research Library at the Art Gallery of New South Wales from 6th November to 13th December.

 

A Collaborative Book

It's a very exciting prospect to have the opportunity to work on a project with another artist whose work you really admire, so it's been a wonderful experience to work on a collaborative book with Jack Oudyn.  We had met each other last year after joining Book Art Object.

 

 

The project came about after Jack's visit to Central Australia and he felt he'd like to investigate a more sculptural approach in an artwork about Uluru.  We shared similar feelings about respecting the laws and culture of  the Aboriginal people and not climbing Uluru, but as I have not visited Uluru, Jack took responsibility for the content of the book and I played with the structure and binding.

 

We started out with some general ideas, neither of us pushing our own kind of work too much and seemed to be working with something that was somewhere in the middle and not really representative of our individual work.  We seemed to not be getting very far with it, so we ditched those ideas and started again.  We each produced something individually with a view to seeing if we could combine our strengths and make the piece work.

 

I produced a couple of different structures with folded pages and Jack produced a couple of different beautiful waxed surfaces made up of drawing, collage and painting.  Please see Jack's blog as more details will be coming about the artwork on the pages and his gorgeous painted paper covers.  The different elements from both of us seemed to fit together easily and the problems we encountered were solved, so we set to work putting the books together and made a small edition. 

 

 

 The result is Paper, Scissors, Uluru.   

'Respect our laws and culture.'

 

 

The book can be held in the hand and the pages opened out completely

 

or it can be displayed sculpturally, visually suggesting the glowing and changing colours of Uluru.

 

 

I designed a little slipcase for the book to slide into

 

 

A very enjoyable experience I hope we may repeat sometime in the future.

 

 

Bloom

 

 

Bloom is a new book I've recently completed, made of ten linocuts (and one halved on each cover).  It is a sculptural interpretation of a flower in full bloom.

 

It will be exhibited at the Annual Artists Books exhibition at Artisan Books in Fitzroy, Melbourne

from 14th September to 12th October 2013.

 

 



The Last Chapter

 

 

The Last Chapter is a bookstore/gallery in Sheffield, UK which is featuring four artists books from the collection at Bank Street Arts in their shop window this autumn in conjunction with The Sheffield International Artists Book Prize.  The 2013 Artists Book Prize will feature over 450 artists books from all over the world. As well as this exhibition, Bank Street Arts are showcasing artists books in a number of public spaces like libraries and hotel foyers to expose artists books to a wider community.

 

I entered Lost in a Million Dead End Streets in the 2nd Sheffield Artists Book Prize in 2009.  It was not compulsory, but Bank Street Arts ask artists if they would be prepared to donate their book to build the collection.  I did so and now my book has been chosen to be the first one displayed at The Last Chapter.  One of the nice things about having books in collections is that other people start exhibiting your books for you and they reach a much wider audience.

 

I have entered one of my Book Art Object books called Unchartered Democracy

 

 

into the 2013 Sheffield Artists Book Prize which will be on display at Bank Street Arts in Sheffield from the 5th October to 30th November.

 



A new home

 

The Libris Awards at Artspace Mackay have recently finished and I was delighted to learn that the Mackay Regional Council had decided to acquire my entry, The River City: Eyewitness Document for the collection at Artspace Mackay. 

 

I love it when my books don't return because they have found a new home!

Al-Mutanabbi Street in New York

 

Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here is an exhibition of artists' reponses to the car bombing on 5 March 2007 of Al-Mutanabbi Street, the cultural and intellectual centre of Baghdad. Approximately 260 artists have contributed artists books to this project, and this major travelling exhibition will be on display in many countries and venues over the next few years.  The Center for Book Arts in New York have organised an exhibition of all the books to be held simultaneously over five venues for the next few months.

 

Centre for Book Arts, New York

Columbia University Libraries

Alwan for the Arts

International Print Centre New York

Poet's House

 

My book for this project Absence is included (although I do not know at which particular venue it is on display) along with the books of a number of other Australian artists - Janis Nedela, Peter Lyssiotis, Monica Oppen, Tim Mosely, Penny Peckham, Sara Bowen, Deanna Hitti, Heather Matthew, Amanda Williams, Peter Annand, Marie-Therese Wisniowski, JP Willis, and Antonietta Covino-Beehre.

 

You can browse the galleries of artists books in this exhibition here.

 

PS Thanks to Anna Mavromatis for letting me know that her book, Sara Bowen's and mine are all on exhibition at the Center for Book Arts.