Showing posts with label journal. Show all posts
Showing posts with label journal. Show all posts

Wednesday, 11 April 2012

Artist's Book or Journal?

Don't you just love having friends who are 'on the same page' as you.  Friends with whom you can discuss your work, dilemmas with your work or ideas that are slowly unravelling.  I have such friends in Fiona Dempster and Barry Smith who very often say EXACTLY the right thing to me when I most need it.

I had been planning to make this book into an artist's book but realised that I didn't really want to invest an inordinate amount of time into bringing it to completion.  Barry (or was it Fiona) suggested that some books really beg for partnership in their creation.  I have made the book and put in a certain amount of content - certainly enough for someone to be inspired enough to take it to the next level with writing or imagery.  Someone else will the book from being a unique journal, to a completed art piece.

The concept of partnership in creation is a delightful one - and one I hadn't really considered.  I have made many unique journals, most of them quite large, all incorporating beautiful French or Italian papers and usually embossed, often boxed, sometimes leather bound and strapped.  I have been thinking about what Barry and Fiona said about a work you have made taking on another life and am intrigued to know, or see, what those journals that I have sold, now look like - what have their owners added to them.


















Saturday, 24 March 2012

woodbooks .........

I have been having fun down in the studio.

Years of experience in making both artists books and journals and this is the first time I have made a woodbook.   While frivoling in a local wood shop I came across two delicious pieces of Conkerberry wood   - gorgeous for book covers. Moreover, the pieces were shape perfect, narrow and elongated - 7cm x 58cm.  The narrow rectangle and the square are my favourites.















I am not at all sure about the archival integrity of the wood but I have combined it with creamy Hannamuhle torn paper and grey linen thread which suit the wood colours.  Some of the pages have been embossed with a knotty design and now that it is complete, I think it looks interesting.

I love the rich orange in the Conkerberry (Carissa lancelot) wood - apparently quite unusual in Australian timbers.  It grows in small patches in North West Queensland and in the Northern Territory where it is protected. The holes in the wood make it quite difficult to work but I think they add something  beautiful to the timber pieces.