back to the books....

As you'd expect, with my solo show rapidly approaching (eeeeeek - it's less than three weeks now! its time to hit the panic/manic button!) I've been trying to finalise a few things - but not everything occupying my fingers and mind is high-falluting arty-farty stuff.....

 Before Christmas I completed a small collection of coptic bound blank journals...

(this is part of the collection - they are a few more tucked away! )

These new books came about after the discovery of a really unusual set of old books (yet another rotary book sale treasure).  I didn't think much of the weird collection (they sport titles like 'physics', 'human relations', 'medicine' and 'mechanisation'). They had dusty, daggy, ripped old dust jackets and most of the pages were WAY past their best - but when I removed one old yucky jacket I couldn't believe what was underneath .... simply the most glorious cloth cover (in exquisite condition) - so I unwrapped another and another and another  - WOW what divine cloth covers in a rainbow of different colours!

look at the funny gold impressed diagrams gracing each cover.....

 (I think this one was from a book on 'space'?)

('our natural world'?)

To create new from old - on each book cover I added paper strips from an old atlas - you can see I had a lot of fun picking just the right atlas page for each unusually coloured book - and then even more fun choosing the right thread for the binding.....

(this is my favourite combination of book cloth, impressed design, atlas and thread selection....)

Inside, the pages are a mix of different drawing/ printmaking papers (like Hahnelmule)... all are a soft cream colour.

I suspect some might think it is unusual that I will have a collection of handcrafted books in an arty-farty exhibition.... but from the planning stage, I had every intention of including a variety of simple, people-friendly hand bound books as an integral part of my low-key (definitely not high-falluting) show.  I thought that some simple hand crafted books may play off some of my more esoteric and ephemeral 'book' works in the show, and pragmatically, I hope that the hand bound books might give the show something vaguely saleable... (I really don't have the funds for a solo show right now!)

As well as the books shown above, I've also made a small collection of blank concertina booklets and a few long stitch booklets (I'll show pics of all these soon) all of which I'll be taking to Spiral Gallery and offering as a 'cash and carry' collection. Anything that fails to find a new home during the show (and no - I'm not expecting a mobbing) I will stockpile for the opening of sams creek bookworks in May... a win-win situation I think (I just wish there were a few more hours in the day, and days in the week....)

now - back to binding!

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