Tis the Season to be Merry

Wishing you all a very Merry Christmas

and the Happiest of New Years.

May there be lots of books to show and talk about!

The Same but Different

Minus Plus Equal (- + =) is a collaborative project I've just finished working on with Jack Oudyn, who has also posted about this collaboration on his blog. 

Like our previous collaborative book Chance, this collaboration was inspired by a talk given at the State Library of Queensland earlier in the year, by two visiting German book artists, Ulrike Stoltz and Uta Schneider, who work collaboratively as USUS.

We began by individually making ten abstract linocut blocks, each measuring 7 x 7 cm. and mounted them on single wooden blocks that Jack had very kindly prepared in advance.

We each printed off our ten small prints.  We met and alternately chose one of the prints until we had put them together into a compilation of 12 squares.

Many experiments ensued as we tried to find the best way to print the compilation.  Inking them and lining them up to print individually was tedious and difficult, so Jack mounted the twelve blocks together on a board.  Neither of us has a press and we are both interested in simple hand-made methods of production.  The compilation block was printed by hand using wooden spoons.  The first five prints were in black ink on white paper.

The second five were printed in white ink on black paper.

We marvelled at the differences and optical illusions of the black and white combinations and the positive and negative space.

The title "- + =" came from the progress of the work, subtracting from the block to add to the alternative colour, and how although both prints and paper sizes are equal, when they're side by side they do not appear to be so.

They were then folded and mounted into both black and white folders I had made and linocut prints of the title Jack had prepared were glued on to each folder.

The final task was to construct Perspex boxes to house each pair of black and white prints in our edition of five.

A Book Trailer

A few weeks ago my younger son, Tristan Davies, made a video for Ross's book Middle-Aged Men in Lycra.  Tristan does this for a living.

All involved enjoyed participating and making the video and I got to drive the car from which Tristan filmed the men in action.

A great Christmas present if you've got a cyclist in the family, and Ross has had much positive feedback from women readers who have loved the unfolding story of the men's past and present lives, and the quality of his writing.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9jVVpc_NWWw

Australian Bookbinders Exhibition

As you will all have noticed by the few blog posts, this year has been a bit of a write-off for me as far as my artists books are concerned.  I have been almost totally occupied with other unrelated things that needed priority.

I did however make a book about WWI called Si Vis Pacem which went to the exhibition "Pieces for Peace 14-18" which is due to open in a few weeks time in Ypres in Belgium and will be on exhibition from 21 November until 14 December at the Cultuurcentum Het Perron te Ieper.

I decided to make a small edition of 4, but one didn't quite meet the standard and got tossed, so it is now an edition of 3.  

Another one of these will be exhibited in the 2014 Australian Bookbinders Exhibition which will be held in the Art Gallery of NSW Research Library from the 19 November to 13 December, coincidentally almost the same dates as the exhibition in Ypres!

A First Novel

Middle-Aged Men in Lycra is the first novel written by my husband, Ross Davies.  It has just been published by Boolarong Press here in Queensland.

The blurb on the back of the book says :

“In 1969 the streets of Brisbane are rocked by a violent street demonstration against the Vietnam War. Two teenagers, Griff and Mia, take centre stage in the incident. In the following months, they find themselves positioned on opposite sides of a love triangle that is about to be torn apart following the tragic death of a young soldier in Vietnam.

Fast forward thirty five years and Griff’s life is in crisis after the death of his wife and the subsequent loss of his job. Alienated from everything that once defined his world, he meets up with a disparate group of cycling mates every morning at a cafe in the Southbank Parklands. The antics of the other riders provide a perfect diversion as they try to convince him to join them on a night out to find a new partner. However, he soon discovers that one of his friends, John Kelly, also holds the key to what happened in Vietnam and this ultimately sets Griff off on a quest to find Mia again.

The book reveals an up-close and intimate view of Brisbane’s cafe culture and a cycling fraternity dominated by middle-aged men in lycra. Shifting time frames allow the reader to peer through a window into a turbulent period of our recent past.”

Ross did his first book signing at Dymocks at Carindale in Brisbane last Saturday.

For anyone wanting a signed copy or to have a chat with the author he will also be signing books at the following bookstores.:
Angus and Robertson, Post Office Square, Brisbane City, Friday 5 September, 2014
New Farm Editions, Merthyr Village, New Farm, Saturday 20 September, 2014
Angus and Robertson, Brookside Shopping Centre, Mitchelton, Saturday 18 October, 2014

Copies of Middle-Aged Men in Lycra are also available online from Boolarong Press or on Amazon.

A Collaborative Book about Chance

Earlier in the year an artist's book talk took place at the State Library of Queensland, by two visiting German book artists, Ulrike Stolz and Uta Schneider, who work collaboratively as USUS.  I attended the lecture with my friend Jack Oudyn and we were both so impressed and excited that we went home inspired and wanting to work on something a little different to our normal work.  We emailed each other and agreed to work on our own collaborative piece.  

We had looked at a 'Fluxus' exhibition in GOMA before the lecture and had noted some chance happenings and coincidences on the day.  In fact there were so many 'chance' happenings around this event  that we felt compelled to make our book according to the laws of chance in the style of early 20th Century German Art. It immediately seemed appropriate that our pages should be of brown Kraft paper rather than expensive art papers. USUS had worked on a book arising from exchanges of text by fax, and  Jack and I liked this idea, thus our starting point was an exchange of alternate lines of text by email, each line relating to the previous one and each linked to ideas of chance and 'chance' in art.  Our starting line of text was Chances at an exhibition.

We both completed a drawing when we received our new line of text and we didn't see each other's work until a set of ten drawings each was completed a few weeks later.

We were pleased to find that the book was going to come together really well and that we had used the same materials - gouache, pencil, ink and collage.  I had also used rubber-stamped German words, which I subsequently added to Jack's pages.  We had intentionally left space for additions to the drawings so we swapped booklets and worked on completing each other's drawings.

 This was really nerve-wracking and I was very nervous about working on another artist's work.  We were also a bit nervous about how the other person would change our drawings but we needn't have worried - we were both so pleased with the results and agreed our original drawings were improved.  I think that trust is a big part of a collaboration like this, and now we both have no doubts with our current collaborative and as yet uncompleted project.

  

Initially we thought that we might mix the pages of our work by interleaving them throughout the book, but in the end we decided to keep each set intact in a dos-a-dos book which worked with both ends as a starting point. We used Kraft card for the cover and Jack made the gorgeous linocut which was printed on both ends and hand-coloured.

We experimented with copying the drawn pages and made up a few more books so we could at least keep one each.  I think in future on a similar project we would make a few originals at the same time to cover a copy each and perhaps one or two for exhibition and sale.  

Writing books

Writing books is a very different activity from making artists books, one of the biggest differences being the amount of time it takes to produce the work!  I know this first hand as my husband, Ross Davies, has just finished the first draft of his historical non-fiiction book The Governess, The Writer and The Wren - an untold story about Miles Franklin and two Australian lifelong friends who met in Chicago in 1914 and subsequently joined the Scottish Women's Hospitals in London and served in the Balkans during World War I.  The story follows their lives over the following four decades as they struggled to create their own brilliant careers.

Ross has just started a new blog where he will talk about writing, researching and other relevant topics as well as his other interest, cycling. You can find his first post about an interesting research experience in Paris at http://rossdavieswriteandride.wordpress.com