my bird book .....

It is such a joy to share some photographs of my completed book ... well not quite as I have yet to name it and make its slip case.

Struggle though it has been, this book and I are now firm friends.  I wasn't sure that was going to be the case but once I let go of the fact that although I had done a number of etchings towards this book, I need not use them in an illustrative manner but find another way of relating this story.  After all, that is what these books are all about - narrative.  It doesn't mean one has to tell all, but certainly the imagery should prompt the viewer to discover their own story.  

There are thirteen pages to my book and the etchings have been done either on Japanese Tengujo paper or the lovely warm Fabriano Tiepolo.  After cutting down images, they were then mounted in an embossed frame onto a gorgeous Magnani paper almost 600 gsm thick. I decided on using a natural linen thread and left some of the stitching with length to emulate the twigs of a birds nest.  A number though not all of the eggs have been placed underneath the soft Japanese paper as I wanted the them suggested rather than dominant. Overall dimension of the page is 45cms x 7cms.  I will make an edition of 7 only as there is so much effort in making each book even with the etching plates completed.  The book is made up from seven separate etchings which need to be printed before I can even begin the process of designing and making the book. The etchings will be an open edition.

The completed book may be folded and read in any number of ways.

I like the way the thread hangs out from the book twig like.

The embossing I made for Fiona's book can be seen here in mine too.

I think the colour here in the nest and in other parts of the book suggests early morning sunshine.

Some of the details before the book was sewn.

Fiona's beautiful wording can be seen here very subtly.

Thoughts

rest your wings.

Here is a hollow

of silence,

a nest of stillness,

in which to hatch

your dreams.

These words by Joan Walsh Anglund were found by Fiona and very kindly shared with me in this book giving our works another point of collaboration.

world book day 2014 and the books meet .....

World Book Day and exactly two years since Fiona and I started our collaboration.  We were celebrating that milestone today as well as celebrating the completion of our latest artists' books - birds, eggs, nests, feathers.

Not sure quite what we were thinking when we chose that title (and decided that our books would be collaborative in title only) but I do remember we thought it would challenge us.  And it did.  I have posted already on the struggles I encountered with finding a way to make a book out of the images I had etched.  Finally I found that my comfort zone was where my book took shape, revealing glimpses of the story rather than having everything divulged at once.  Bringing more of the mark making elements of suggestion, rather than using all the work I had done with the etchings.  I am pleased to have the etching plates, and to have done the work, but I am so very happy to have found a way to produce a book that felt like me, telling a story in the manner I would chose rather than having the work I did towards it dominate and dictate.  In the end our books are more collaborative than we had thought as we both worked into the others' book, I with a couple of images and Fiona with her beautiful calligraphy. Fiona - the words you found to help you express your book have given my book validation.  Thank you.

The results of our books will be shown more intimately in the next post.  As is our custom, we brought the books together today for their first meeting.  Fiona had seen my completed book as she wrote in it for me and though I had seen parts of her book and had done the work for her 'wings' and 'nests' pages, I had not seen the complete book.  What joy it was to sit down with it nestled in my hand and turn each page, marvelling at its quietness and gentleness.  You will see those details tomorrow but let me tell you, viewing these books on the internet is really nothing at all like holding them closely and sticking your nose into each little detail ....

Artists' book are incredibly difficult to photograph effectively, especially trying to photograph two together.  It is always a challenge in itself. The first few images are of our two books and the following images are of our collection of collaborative books.  We have had an amazing journey in this venture and have grown in strength as book artists.  I have thoroughly enjoyed and appreciated Fiona's support, encouragement and her contributions into 'my' books and I am pretty certain she too will say that the understanding of each others' work and our respect for it, has been what has made this such an amazing collaboration. 

frivol finished .....

As I said in my previous post, this little collaborative piece was really about having fun, playing .... having a frivol.  I was unable to show you our shared pieces and how they sit together so well as I had not completed the black and white design on the back of my last eight pieces before swapping them with Fiona.

Here they are - sixteen squares in all - decorated front and back.   Eight done by Fiona and eight by me.  As yet we haven't really resolved the way we present this little book - our current thinking is to leave them as unbound books in a box.  That way, we get to arrange and rearrange the story - the visual poetry - in numerous ways.  It is actually fun sitting there and swapping all the pieces around .... quite contemplative.

I am returning to health .... more slowly than I would wish but am definitely improving.  Thank you all for your well wishes. 

our first anniversary .....

Today is World Book Day and it was this time last year that Fiona and I worked together on our first collaboration.  At that point we had no idea that we were embarking on something so special .... we had just decided to spend WBD together.  The fun and success we had on that day led into a dance that has brought us both heaps of joy during the last year.  We managed to make four collaborative works .... all very different yet each one sharing the collaboration in a different way.  Our sixth book, which we will have until the end of July to work on, is a collaboration in theme only.

However, this last collaborative piece, number five in our collection, was just a frivolous little plan to do something whilst I was away for nearly two months.  We each worked on the front and back side of sixteen squares - I think the weight of the paper we used is about 600gsm.  Thick, luscious, wonderful. The work we have done on them can not be called art, but playtime which is often just as valuable.  The guidelines we set were that one side would be to do with travel and journeys and the other side would be black and white designs.  Neither of us were very enthusiastic about our results until we got together this afternoon and swapped half of our bundles.  They worked beautifully together - surprisingly, or maybe we should no longer be surprised about how our works sits so comfortably side by side.

Today I am just showing a few photos of my fronts and backs ..... I confess to only having eight backs done so that I could give them to Fiona.  Tomorrow I will work on completing my eight pieces and then I will have the full deck to show in the next posting ....... with Fiona's and my pieces.

two books meet ...

This afternoon my daughter Pip, who is visiting from Sydney for a couple of days, and I visited Fiona to bring our books together for their photo shoot.  Fiona and I have created two magical books this week to celebrate World Book Day.  Not perfect books, but magical.  I chose this word quite carefully as there has been a sense of wonder and unexpected surprise, a gorgeous alchemy of our thoughts, words, marks and effort as our books began, merged and finally unveiled.

The light in the studio was luminous and even so, it was quite difficult to capture the books together .  Fiona's long and lean, crisp and rigid, mine rectangular and softly bound, mellow, not wanting to stand.

Of the many taken, a few images stood out for me - these really just show the structure of our books and not the content.  They actually blend together tenderly with their threads and markings, tracemarks and  images echoing each other's and yet they remain simultaneously individual.

shadow play

My completed book although this photo was taken before I titled it 'In Between the Mountains'.  There is a story about this which I will share at the end of this blog.

Fiona's words concealed through scratched transparencies 

etchings  and pierced translucent paper

hidden etchings - the transparent layer lifts to reveal these in detail

Fiona's white pages and thread from our day working together 

My last page bringing all the ideas I had together 

Fiona's delicious threads

This shared collaborative experience has been both intriguing and absorbing.  Throughout, our sensibilities have been in tune with each other and I think this remained so right until the finishing touches were being made on the books.

I must share this story with you ...........

I brought along my book, with eight pages, to be worked into by Fiona.  All I had done was make two of those pages from some of my etchings and suggested was that I was doing a soft cover book which I wanted to be read in landscape format which meant that the binding was on the top of the pages, not left or right.  Fiona introduced her beautiful words to my book, though did so on tracing paper in order that I could conceal them in my mountains, or let them peek in between.  She also worked two of my pages with smaller white pages secured under thread lines.  Beautiful.  Once I began to work back into the book I decided I really wanted to have Fiona's words visible between the mountains and I pondered hard over whether I should just copy them or trace them onto the page.  Somehow it didn't seem right so I asked Fiona if I could bring my pages back for her to rewrite the words onto the page ..... and of course she was more than happy to oblige.

It was not until I was home again, fiddling with the last touches, that I realised that Fiona had actually written a second verse instead of using her initial verse twice.  She had absorbed what I had worked into my pages, into the story I was telling, and I think tied it all together in the second verse. By so doing she had supplied my book with the cohesion it needed.

Here are the two verses that Fiona has written in my book (the first verse written by Aaron Siskind and lent to me!) because you can't read them without holding the book, taking back the transparent layer and looking closely 'In Between the Mountains' ...

'if you look very intensely
     and slowly
         things will happen
                 that you never dreamed of before'


'in the hollows
      and the voids
             between the mountains
                    quiet dreams of beauty are born.'


That says it all.

the beginning of something wonderful ...

I couldn't wait until tomorrow.

Have been smiling all week

and totally absorbed.

Sometimes it only takes a nudge in a different direction

to help you realise something you have

been trying to say.

Thank you Fiona.

Just  a small glimpse again at some of the images formed in my 'our' book.  Tomorrow will be such a celebration of what we have done this week when the two books meet again for their photo shoot!

paper love ... paper camera

How delicious are these images.  I could post them on a 'Wordless Wednesday' and not have to say anything about them but I want to speak a little about computer imaging and its relationship to my art.

I remember back in 2001 doing an Adobe Photoshop course through the Brisbane Institute of Art - Adobe for the artist, not the techno person. Perfect.  I had enormous fun ..... as we all do and every time I played with an image using one of their 'effects' which rendered my initial image in some magnificent way I remember thinking that I was cheating.  That these images were not mine but some form of magic that took my marks, or my drawings and made something hugely exciting from them.  Felt like cheating to me and I confess, when I see images like those I have just posted I experience that sense again.  I can look at these images and say 'aren't they delicious' because it is not like I did them at all.

Of course there is the profound reality that it is from the marks we make, and the design we put into play that these images are formed.  Those below were taken whilst waiting in the car, I had these writing drawings of mine beside me, incomplete as they were, and I remembered Fiona had mentioned the application for iPhones 'Paper Camera' in one of her blogs (or was it an email?).  I played for a few minutes with some of the different settings and this is the result.

These images could certainly be worked over again by hand to make them seem more like mine ..... but in the meantime, I enjoy having a toy with which I can have the occasional frivol.

On a much more serious note, Fiona and I have both been very busy on 'our' books and the experience has been extraordinary.  Both of us having a wonderful time working our artwork into the images that were handed to us after our day working together on Monday.  A few people have left comments for us saying how difficult working in this way can be but I must say that after that initial fear the night before, the process has been challenging, absorbing, thrilling and deeply satisfying.  We met together briefly this morning as we needed to emboss our marks on the back pages of the books before we sew them.  It is quite easy to forget this along the way....

Both of us are very close to resolving and binding our books and I could not resist the chance to photograph the gathering of  'stuff'  as I was packing up my pages to bring home.  Now I will sit down and finish the book because from now until Monday when we have committed to having our books completed, I have friends and family coming, surrounding and distracting.  Wouldn't change that though.  So, till Monday ... this is a quick peek.