wedding guest book ....

Sometimes the smallest thing can seem to take ages.  After the many days it took me to design, gather materials and then make this embossed guest book for the wedding, I wonder how many months must be spent on some of those exquisite inlaid timber pieces.

Anna, whose wedding is on the weekend, and for whom I am doing artwork as a wedding gift, had asked me to make a wedding guest book for her.  No guidance given, so I decided on something bridal though contemporary which I hope will be very much in keeping with the wedding.  It is on the way to her now with my daughter who is up from Sydney preparing for the wedding as one of the bridemaids.

I always worry unnecessarily when I am asked to do a commission .... much prefer people to see something in the studio and ask to buy it!  Anyway, I am pleased with the results.  As is often the case, it is not easy to photograph books.  The book is bound in perspex, and under the beautiful soft white circled paper lies the black cover which is embossed and also I designed a logo and incorporated that into the front cover.  Each indivicual page is also embossed with the same image down the right hand side.  The book sits in a perspex box with a partition for pens, and then the whole slips into a perspex case.

Hope she likes it .... the photos make it look black and cream but it is black and white.

drought dry artists' journal .....

I often count my blessings but most especially when I am out with my camera, or just with my eyes, transfixed by small details that others just pass by.  I live with a beautiful man who hasn't a creative bone in his body and he has learnt to wander off when we are travelling, as I become transfixed by the minutia or lost in awe as I photograph old peeling paint and decay.  Very often, most often, he will be ahead of me as I linger playfully with my camera, and he calls me over to an area where he says there are plenty of the patterns or marks that I love.  I actually think being with an odd ball like me has opened his eyes to the visual world around him - though he would deny that!  Anyway, I am very grateful to have been given these 'extra eyes' as they enrich my life.  I am sure that this holds true for all creative people.

This artist's book I made after visiting an area down on the border between New South Wales and Victoria.  I called the area home for about six years and had spent many many hours wandering out by the weir, a large dammed area of the Murray River.  On this particular visit the area and surrounds had been affected by fire and severe drought and what was normally a vast weir, was a mere trickle of creek following the old river course.   The remnants of old trees and their roots normally covered by water, were revealed - black, tortured, magnificent.

The book is a series of pen and ink, actually bamboo and stick drawings.  Some of the pages are lined with transparent paper on which I have made fine markings.  They overlay the drawings beneath and add another dimension.

I made a double cover for the book - one covered greyboard with one of the drawings attached front and back, and then a double hinged perspex cover actually attached to the original cover on the back only. The book itself is sewn with coptic binding.

I think the photographs speak for themselves.  The drawings are very spare but to me, remind me of the time I spent wandering amidst the scorched roots.  It reminds me of the desolation that was there at the time, when in happier days the hills around are lush green and the weir is huge and overflowing.

So, while the camera can do a fine job at recording what was seen,  I am going to try and be more diligent about making books which reveal what was felt.

road trip book - journal

I was able to revisit a little journal I made a couple of years ago when I visited Wim and Del in their studio last week.  Sitting up high and dusty on a shelf, I was able to bring it down and take a few photos.  I should absolutely be more diligent about taking photos of my work.  I think blogging will help as I take photos now of both the making of a book or artwork, and then photograph the final piece.  This has not always been my practice though....

I made this book as a journal - titled 'road trip' hoping that some one would take it on one of their trips and write in it, thus adding to its character. White ink on the black and visa versa.  As it is, it works quite well in its perspex box as a little sculpture.  Maybe one day it will have a story to tell inside.

The partial partitions in the perspex box I made, allow the hinged ends to fan out.

Lots of threads left dangling .

Not how it is meant to sit but this is the way Wim has it standing up on a shelf in the studio.

a peek at my DaD book for 2006 .....

You can always tell when I am not completing anything in my studio - I revert to showing you peeks of things already done.  That is not to say that I don't have plenty going on in my studio - too much started really and not enough being completed!  Many ideas and some of these, finally, are working their way through to fruition.  Etchings mostly - and I find the who process time consuming and involved.  There is absolutely nothing like the marks we make with etching though - and the gorgeous plate tone, scratch marks on the plate which I love to leave as they tell their own story and the way you can blend your inks, different ways to wipe the plates etc.  Obviously a print lover!

And a book lover ..... In 2006 I decided to bind my year of drawings into monthly volumes.  I only made ten, though I will finish two more for the set.  I have bound them with a series of different bindings and will make a perspex box for them ... a showcase really of stitching techniques which will be helpful when I teach.

As you can see, I actually rusted or manipulated many of my pages before working into them as I found this way less intimidating that facing a blank page every day.  Very often what was on the paper suggested my drawing for the day.  In my former home we lined the road leading to the house with liquidambers.  I was told not to expect too much autumn colour here in tropical Queensland but you should see the magnificent colours each year.  (I now live a couple of hundred metres from this home so each time I drive by, I still get to enjoy the autumn colour.)

One of the techniques I love working with is using white ink on translucent paper over my drawings.  Now I pierce and scratch the transparencies but it is lovely to be able to look back through my DaD books and see when those ideas took root.

I have always really loved this drawing - the manipulation of the paper did much of the work and I only had to draw into it a little to suggest the dandelion.

I am a Andy Goldsworthy fan.  This was inspired by his 'Time' book.  Towards the end of 2010 my partner Steve and I went on a six day Art Refuge walk in Haute Provence, in France  - doing the walk with a guide, looking at various works Andy had installed in the region, actually sleeping (not that we actually did get any sleep on the hard floor) in one of the art refuges and being able to see his installation in both the evening and morning light.  Bliss.  The experience was one of my most favourite travelling experiences.

2006 led up to my divorce and there were plenty of these black hole days!  The nice thing about drawing a day, which is usually a very personal visual diary (until you post it on your blog!) is that you can indulge in these 'poor me' drawings and keep up the pretence on the outside!

This would be another of my favourite drawings because it encapsulates what the DaD project is all about - not meant to be little masterpieces but sketches that reflect your day.  I was obviously cleaning and being spring, bees had flown into the house and died on the window sills.

I use a number of  'symbols' repeatedly in my serious work.  (One day I will have a web site organised and share images from some of this work.)  Vessels and the elongated seed pod shape are two that I use for woman (the vessel) and man (the seed pod).  I have an on going body of work 'The Art of Language' where I have used these shapes in my etchings many times.  They appear in my large drawings too.  I also have a thing for crosses and squares!

I never would have thought I would put anything personal out there on the web - and look at me.  Think I am now just in such a happy part of my life that it no longer matters.

The Studio - brisbane ....

Yesterday I had the chance to slip down to Brisbane and catch up with dear friends Adele and Wim.  It should have been last Friday - we usually go out and celebrate their birthdays in May as they are two weeks apart, but mum ended up in emergency ..... and thus plans change!  We all know about that.

This is Wim de Vos, the man who taught me to be a printmaker way back in 1998 in The Studio , and I still spend time there occasionally for masterclasses.  Adele Outteridge shares this studio space and teaches book arts.  It was Del who started my passion for bookmaking and artist's books.  Quite a change from the drawing and painting that had previously been my focus.

Wim has just come back from months travelling overseas and with a mind and heart full of incredible experiences and visual memories and he is now bringing some of those into a creative reality in the form of books. The one seen here is a tunnel book of the Ghetto in Venice.  I took a number of photos but decided that when Wim is ready, he will be showing off his marvellous book and I did not want to preempt that unveiling.  Suffice to say, it is quite brilliant, as his work is - please take time out to see some of their work in The Studio link provided above.

This colourful array is the beginning of another book of Wim's to do with the Red Light District in Amsterdam.  Can't wait to see it finished.  Once he is exhibiting these works I am sure he will be happy for me to photograph and post the images.

In previous posts I have talked about the DaD project initiated by Adele in 1998 - and I am pretty sure that as a comparison to my poor attempts to draw each day of the year since then, I mentioned Wim and 

Del and their dedication to the project.  Here is a photo of the bookcase holding the many, many volumes of Wim's drawing a day journals. Oh, I am so envious of his discipline.  His journals are not only a reflection of what is happening in his life each day, but a reflection on what is happening currently in the world of politics and shenanigans in public life.  He often draws from things that are happening globally or locally for his daily drawings.  Many of the bits and pieces in front of his drawings were brought back from his last trip.

Now I could have taken hundreds of photos of Adele and here beautiful books, but would not do so without her being present, or without her permission.  She was off during the day doing a book binding week at the State Library with Keith Smith and Scott McCarney who are out here from America.  I did ask her for permission to use a few photos I took of 'stuff' in the studio.  These books are just some of the 'stuff' piled into cubicles - certainly not Del's masterpieces which are beautifully displayed and housed around The Studio.  Not mine to show you though .... maybe one day.  You will have a glimpse of her talent looking at their website.

And this is for Jennifer who reads my blog whenever I post and is usually the very first to comment - this is their  'stuff' wall.  Wim and Del are masters of 'stuff' and ever since I have known them, have been collecting and filling perspex boxes (which Wim makes) and creating this wall between their personal space and the teaching area.  Each box would make a photo in its own right - full of the comical and the whimsical, the interesting and the memory collections.  Talk about lust and envy.

Just everywhere in The Studio is something to look at ......... and enjoy.

And here, up on the shelf, is one of my books that Wim bought from one of my Open Studio Days.  The black and white book on the left, in its perspex box.  The book is titled 'Road Trip' and as I had shamefully not done so before its sale, I took the opportunity to photograph it yesterday while in The Studio.  I will write about it at a later date.

 Well, some days lately have been sad or stressed, but yesterday was a day full of colour, fun and friendship.  We dined last night on a Japanese Banquet which was delicious and then though I drove back up to Montville (an hour and a half north of Brisbane) - it felt as if I rolled!

dAd - drawing a day visual diaries

It is a beautiful thing - a visual diary.  Someone's record of their day, infused with meaning that often only they understand.  I began my first in 1998 through a project coordinated by Adele Outerridge from The Studio in Brisbane which she shares with Wim de Vos.  There were eight of us, Australia wide, this first year.  Artists who committed to doing a drawing a day - not a work of art, but a visual record of what we did that day, what we felt or saw.  Maybe a suggestion of what we had been working on in our studios that day - a smear of paint, a torn up etching, an embossing ... one of my drawings was done with chocolate and wine after a lovely dinner party which left me with no desire to draw!

1998 dAd book - susan bowers

1998 dAd book and 2006 dAd bound in 12 monthly books

complex coptic binding using tabs

first foray into mark making 

I love using transparent overlays

rusting pages helped with drawing into them

my first embossing

transparent paper and ink

dabbling with monoprints

sketchings

The dAd Project is now world wide and hundreds are involved.  Adele still coordinates and she and Wim have continued to draw each day.  My discipline has been sadly lacking - it sounds so easy but it is quite a difficult thing to maintain.  In the first year we all found it very difficult initially, then addictive and absorbing.  I have begun and stopped almost every year since 1998, some years only one or two pages have been done.  I do not mind - those pages that were done are a lovely reminder of what I did, or what I thought about that day.  This year I began again, stopped some time in February and decided that this blog would take place of the drawing a day.

The blogging experience is turning out to be  like my daily drawing - difficult, now a little addictive and hopefully soon, absorbing.  Not so much so that I do not move forward with my art practice, but as an addition to it in maintaining a certain discipline, and using it as a record of my creative processes.