birthing twins .....

way too many photos - I have already removed ten from this post

I took ten times as many as this  .......

'ode to fallen angels' 

became two books....

details and fragments

very difficult books to birth 

but I am happy with them.

more on 'ode to fallen angels' ....

I have had lots of time in the studio this week ..... unproductive time mostly.  I have been re thinking Fiona's and my next collaboration, trying to find a realistic outlook for my book making, waiting for energy and inspiration to grip me and send me hungrily to larger work.  Very little of this has actually happened, though today I think I have found a way forward on my 'ode to fallen angels' book.

This work started its life as three engravings - too personal for anyone but myself!  I decided last week to cut the prints down into book pages (thank you to all of you who left lovely comments on that posting) and they have been lying there waiting for me to fill in the story.  It needed to be dark and heart felt, secret and unrevealing ...... full of buried emotion.  I think I am resolving this piece now.  Will post again when the book is finished.

a bleak day on the beaches of normandy .....

This was the coldest, bleakest and saddest day of our trip ...... the beaches of Normandy.  This memorial sculpture on the sand at Omaha beach was the only glimmer of joy that day.  Bunkers, remnants of Arromanches, a pre fabricated harbour built by the British, war stories of the brave men on D-Day, museums showcasing the war and various strategies ...... and the cold.  

As is often the case - the photographs have their own beauty but do not speak of the horrors or the grief.  The sculpture is a magnificent memorial of all those who lost their lives on those beaches and  also to the beginning of the end of the Second World War.

play day bliss .....

Play days are better than medicine - especially when you get the chance to share such a day with a special friend and collaboration buddy.  Those two apply to Fiona!  Apart from a couple of hours a month ago, we have not had time to sit and work/share/plan since I left for overseas mid February and we only live 15 minutes apart.  For both of us life has been frantic for one reason or another.

Today was set aside however, and as usual was a real tonic.  The plan was to work out how we would house two of our collaborative pieces - our envelope bundles and these small playful books below.  In our posting on these books we mentioned that we had decided to leave them as unbound books as they really are 'books' (I use the term quite loosely) to be played with and rearranged.  As such it seemed that perspex would provide the perfect solution and we each made our little perspex slip cases.  Seeing it open ended here in these photographs, I think I may make another slip case to close it in the other way.  A double slip case can look quite effective.  We will see.

We decided on a pouch format for our envelope bundles and the last photograph shows the papers we selected to house these bundles.  We will complete these in our leisure time at home ...

One of the exciting aspects today was sharing with each other, the thoughts we had been having regarding our next collaborative book.  The collaborative aspect of this books is that we will be working to a common theme and will mentor each other.  What we do and how we do it, will be our own decisions. We are hoping to have these ready by the end of July.  Fun.  Again!

ode to fallen angels .....

ON looking at these images you may wonder about the title of this post!  No clues in the graphics here ....  Many years ago a soul mate of mine died fairly suddenly and in an outpouring of emotion I wrote (scribbled) many of Dylan Thomas's poems in an obscure manner on three sheets of perspex which I subsequently printed.  They were never wonderful engravings but having come across them today, I decided that rather than throwing them away, I would cut up the engravings and make them into a book called 'ode to fallen angels'.

I am out of practice with blogging and forgot to photograph them before I cut them into strips, however, here are a few images of the 'pre' book and I hope in the next few days to show what I have done with/to/in it.

One of the many things I love about this form of digital diary, is that I have a photographic record not only of the finished product, but also about the way in which a piece is made or in a case like this, what the work looked like before I began to alter it.  Ultimately, I am hoping that the concept will look better as an artist's book, than as a series of engravings.