Week 34: White Gate

   The book-of-the-week for Week 34 is titled White Gate. It has two accordion-folded spine strips which slip into the signatures through slots in the centerfolds and are held in place with stiff paper pins. The entire text-block is cased in a hard cover case with a silk book-cloth spine. The typewritten text is a poem about the unexpected twists and turns of life.  

image from a dream

   In addition to following this year's gate theme, White Gate began as a selection of 7 design parameters from Julie Chen and Barbara Tetenbaum's set of Artist Books Ideation Cards. (http://23sandy.com/works/products-page/artist-books/ideation-cards)  When using this innovative creativity tool... which is really a fun game, the book artist is required to draw one card from each of seven design parameters: Color, Structure, Image, Technique, Text, Layout, and Paper. Examples of the choices for Color include "black and white; highly colorful, single color, monochromatic, least favorite, favorite, primary, and pastel." Each design parameter has this type of variety; so, many different sentiments and styles can be explored and presented in the artist book.

   For White Gate, the Color card picked was muted or pastel. The Structure card picked required a single leaf structure and the Image parameter chosen indicated the artist should use something redrawn, traced, or lifted from outside sources. In White Gate, the hinge pins were the single leaf elements and the imagery from an outside source were transfers from a 100-year old Japanese katagomi screen-printing stencil. This also added to the historical style specified by the Layout card.

title page and hinge

The stipulated Technique was low tech...a typewriter and stamps were used. Text was collaborative...thanks to www.rhyming.com; and the text Layout was one line per recto page... a traditionally historical placement.

white gate...

Finally, the Paper "ideation" card required use of pretreated, textured, or decorated paper. For the folios, the artist used Hahnemuele handmade textweight paper with a visible laid texture. The accordion strips were smokey-blue cover-weight paper from the French Paper Company, painted with white acrylic paint. The endpapers were vintage marbled papers. So, all seven design parameters were worked into this simple artist book about life.

katagome transfer on back page and marbled endpaper

This is the poem, White Gate...

White gate

no sign display

unknown future

uncharted way

White gate

silently luring

beckons,

whispers,

change enduring

Step-by-step

day-by-day

Fate and Choices

life’s game to play

White gate

invisible door

writes the story

of evermore

the white gate of Fate and Choices...