Thursday, June 30, 2016

June: Legacy of a Botanist

The Artist's Book Ideation Cards for June are:

Color: Favorite

Image: Self generated
Layout: Centered on the page
Paper: Single color
Structure: Accordion
Technique: Collage
Text: Found text
Adjective: Graphic


the front cover: gate-fold layout with collagraph print and letterpress title on handmade paper
   The book for June is titled Legacy of a Botanist. It follows all of the criteria of the Artist's Book Ideation Cards. Since, for this artist a favorite color is hard to pinpoint.. nearly all of the colors are included. The accordion structure was used for the tunnel book side walls, as well as the folded text paper tipped onto the interior of the left front cover.  The paper used for the body of the tunnel book was light green Duotone from the French® Paper Company.

open to a tunnel book with text from an 1839 Baltimore newspaper
   The images in the tunnel are a combination of acrylic-painted drawings on cut-out panels, and collage photographs of flowers. The tunnel setting is designed to resemble a childlike rendition of a Victorian garden. The marbled end papers reflect endpapers seen in books of the 1800's.
the text... a lengthy obituary... unfolding to an accordion fold
   The text was found in a the obituary section of an 1839 Baltimore Gazette. It's yellowed handmade paper has a particularly rich and creamy feel. The verbose depiction of the life of a Mr. Beyrich, the botanist, is set in tiny 6-pt type that puts this letterpress printer in awed admiration for the typesetter's nimble fingers and eagle eye.

close up of the obituary of the botanist
This is the text:

By a letter recently received from Fort Gibson, we regret to learn the death of Mr. Beyrich, the Botanist. This gentleman, so well known to many of our citizens as one who possessed great scientific attainments, arrived in this city from Bremen in April, 1833. He was sent to this country as an exploring Botanist, by a society of gentlemen in Berlin, Prussia, to make a collection of our native plants, and of the seeds and fruits of our forest trees, particularly the oaks. For this purpose he had already travelled over a large part of Europe, and many of the South American provinces. On his arrival in this city, he embarked immediately for Charleston, South Carolina, and after traveling over that and some of the contiguous states, making very large collections of specimens and acquiring much information with regard to his subject, he returned to the north. 
   He arrived here in the summer of 1833, having consumed the summer in his southern exploration. Until last spring he was engaged in visiting the different localities in this state, Pennsylvania, and Virginia, and in remitting to his employers a part of his extensive collections. Early last spring he departed for the "far west," with the intention of crossing the Rocky Mountains, and of continuing his researches over these regions which have never yet been carefully examined. He appears to have turned back from this dangerous expedition, inasmuch as he died at the above named military post after having gone beyond it a considerable distance. He was a native of the Hartz Mountains in Germany, and was educated at the University of Gottingen. Although a perpetual traveler, his constitution was infirm, and a chronic form of asthma with which he was afflicted, perhaps induced him to abandon the idea of facing the inclement weather of the Rocky Mountains.
   Like all persons whose lives have been exclusively devoted to the study of the Natural Sciences, he possessed a character of childlike simplicity. His powers of endurance were very great, enhanced, perhaps, by that kind of philosophy which one acquires by extensive travel. He spoke the German, French, Spanish, and English languages well and was profoundly versed in Geology. We will always bear in remembrance his affable and pleasing manners, as also his readiness to to communicate any of the vast amount of knowledge of which he was master. When at sea, the thermometer and microscope were always in his hand, making comparative observations upon the temperature of the ocean water and the Gulph Stream, and examining the small animals and plants that a wave often dashed upon the deck. These instruments, with his notebook, his flint and steel, and his pouch of cigars, of which he used a great many, were his perpetual traveling companions. With him, another learned stranger has died, and lies buried among us, and one, too, whom all respected. Balt. Gazette, 1839.

the end

 This is the selection of Artist's Ideation Cards for July...
Color: Muted or pastel
Image: None
Layout: Across the folds or gutters
Paper: Single color
Structure: Codex (pamphlet, multiple section binding, perfect binding, board book, stacked folios, etc.)
Technique: low-tech (typewriter, rubber stamps, stencils, hand lettering, solvent transfers, etc.)
Text: Abstract, non-verbal, gibberish
Adjective: Pessimistic


Tuesday, June 21, 2016

Upcoming Book Arts Classes at Blam! Studio

Look for the window with the yellow flowers...
Upcoming Books Arts classes with Kathy Steinsberger  

 at Blam! Studio, 101-1 Kinsey St. Raleigh, NC 27603
  Limited enrollment, all levels

The Decorated Coptic
Night class: Mon. & Tues., July 11&12  6-9pm; Cost :$85, one book 
Coptic Headband: Tues. July 12; 10-2:30. $65. Bring a coptic-bound book  and lunch.

coptic book with headbands (red thread)
The Tackett and Cross Hatch Longstitch Books
Explore the exposed longstitch binding using the tackett & cross hatch methods. Include beautiful decorative papers and linen rag text paper, then bind them with a simple longstitch binding. All skill levels! 
Mon.Tues, July 18, 19, 2016; 6-9:30pm
OR Mon-Tues July 18-19, 2016; 10-2pm 
Bring a bag lunch  Cost: $95 

The tacket book
the painted cover cross-hatch book

The Playful Book
Create books using artist Julie Chen’s Artists' Book Ideation Cards: eight design categories…Color, Image, Layout, Paper, Structure, Technique, Text, & an Adjective. With games and a variety of materials, we’ll play a game of designing and creating unique books. Students should bring any paper ephemera, photos,  drawing materials (watercolor, colored pencils, etc. they want to share or include in their books.)
Friday & Saturday: July 22-23, 2016; 10am-3:30pm
Bring a bag lunch and all your SCRAPS & STUFF.
COST: $130

Jails, based on Julie Chen's Artists' Ideation Cards..
The Book Box
In this class we’ll make a drop-side box that looks like a half-bound cased book. It will have a neodyne magnet closure and will be covered in beautiful decorative papers with a bookcloth “spine”. Interior partitions will also be added. 
This is a great box for a beginner box-maker!
Monday & Tues. July 25 & 26, 2016; 10am-3:30pm
Bring a bag lunch. 
COST: $130
the drop-side box that looks like a book..
Coptic With Content
Create a beautiful book using the coptic stitch as the binding...A hard cover and lots of beautiful papers including your own images, letter scraps, and paper mementos go into this book.. Or maybe add a poem or story..a bit of collage or sketches. In this class we'll make more than blank, pretty journals… We'll make books that are practically alive with their own personality.
Day class: Mon & Tues. Aug. 8-9, 10-4pm; Cost $130

Happily Ever After, before coptic binding... stories of the past as letters, prints, papers, and photo transfers...
In the shadow of the Raleigh skyline...and beside the wheels of progress...
the Raleigh skyline from the bridge next door

Tuesday, May 31, 2016

May: Jails


Color: Highly colorful
Image: Abstract
Layout: Based on an historic example
Paper: Neutral
Structure: Innovative structure (tunnel book, carousel book, flag book, etc.)
Technique: low tech (stamps, stenciling, hand lettering, transfers, etc.)
Text: found text
Adjective: lyrical or musical

   The book for May is titled Jails. It meets all of the criteria for the Artist Ideation Cards... and was even created from a prompt by book artist Julie Chen during the recent Paper Book Intensive (PBI: http://www.paperbookintensive.org) workshop in Saugatuck, Michigan attended by this artist. The prompt was to fabricate a 3-section paper box from a single strip of paper, then create a book based on the structure. This sort of organic open-ended bookmaking...made with a few specific criteria, a short time period, and few materials can be a bit daunting. Adding the additional criteria of the seven Ideation Cards of the PaperButtons blog challenge multiplied the complexity of figuring out how to present Jails so the content was a cohesive book. In the end it all came together, and the simple eloquence of the issues alluded to in Jails somehow transcends its offhand beginning.

the front cover, pen & ink and stenciling  

   The front cover of the book shows an image as if looking out of a jail cell window to a colorful, beautiful world. Colorful inks and a window stencil were used to create the abstract images of the world outside the jail cell windows. Pen and ink provided the fine details of the windows. The title, Jails, is stamped over the window bars. A black stenciled grid and brushed on pastel inks create the effect of an old wall with shadows of fencing across. Protruding off one side of the book are a number of black loopy threads... alluding to the mysterious paths that lead to the creation of our own real or imagined jails, bonds, and all sorts of nets, webs, and strings of a sort.

the back cover.. with graffiti-style John Donne quote

   The Ideation cards also stipulated that found text should be incorporated into the book. The John Donne quote, "Be thine own palace or the world's thy jail" was chosen as the ending to the book of Jails. The quote is roughly penned onto the stenciled wall on the back cover board.. as if it were graffiti.

Just mastering the folded origami-style structure was challenging for this artist and took more than a couple hours... The structure is a variation of book artist Hedi Kyle's blizzard book. Book artist Bill Hansom is credited with coming up with this variation. Here is a link to a current exhibition of Hedi Kyle's 30-year career, which is being held at the San Francisco Center for the Book: https://sfcb.org/the-world-of-hedi-kyle. ...And this link shows Bill Hansom's books: https://www.flickr.com/photos/paperfolding/.

The image below shows the original folded three-section box with its rough design of how to make it into a book.. The original title was Prisons. The red threads as jail cell bars also refer to human beings. This was changed to black, focusing on the dark side of these jails rather than on humanity. The original book is messy... the paper is torn and wrinkled.. but the interior of the boxes, where the words are stamped, is white. This whiteness is retained in the final version. 

the raw materials: stamps, stencils, pen & ink, thread, & the first attempt (made in an hour at the PBI workshop)
The stamped, stenciled, and drawn images on the back of the paper are meant to embody the reality of these metaphysical jails... indicating that they are as strong and solid as if they were a real brick and stone jailhouse with barbwire fencing and iron bars.

The inked, stenciled & stamped paper strip, before folding into the 3 boxes
After folding the strip of paper into the box form, waxed linen threads were strung across the open face of the 3 boxes, the cover boards were glued with the cover papers, and then glued to the ends. When the cover boards are pressed together, the three boxes collapse and fold into a book.

folding or unfolding...
Pulling the cover boards out, opens the book so the three boxes form...

the back view

Our jails.

the front view

May humanity someday learn to break out.
-KS

The Artist Book Ideation Cards for June are:
Color: Favorite
Image: Self generated
Layout: Centered on the page
Paper: Single color
Structure: Accordion
Technique: Collage
Text: Found text
Adjective: Graphic
Wild Card: any one card may be ignored

Andrea Z. sent in her book for May using the Ideation Cards. Here are some photos and a brief description: "It's called "Chinese Poetry", a humorous approach to the fact that nowadays when talking about Chinese wisdom people mostly "rely" on the fortune cookies they receive after a good or not so good meal at their local  "Red dragon" or "Peking duck" restaurant. My May book is a flag book which resembles an old Chinese book, with horizontal writing on the cover. With its red paper inside, it is highly colorful  The text is indeed found - fortune cookie wisdom. The technique is low tech - the pages are glued.

Andrea's book, Chinese Poetry

inside, the flag book, Chinese Poetry

Monday, May 2, 2016

April: At the Circus

COLOR: primary
IMAGE: extracted from a single image
LAYOUT: random or unplanned
PAPER: single color
STRUCTURE: unbound (set of cards, series of prints, etc..)
TECHNIQUE: high-tech (letterpress, printmaking, etc..)
TEXT: stream of consciousness, free-write, or rant
ADJECTIVE: fragmented or mosaic

At the Circus... in its book-like box holder
   The book for the month of April is actually a game titled At the Circus. All of the Artists Ideation Cards criteria were met. The  three primary colors red, yellow, and blue are the focus of the game.. which is a set of cards that are played by matching the two identical cards. Each card set is a pair of lithograph images that focus on one of the three primary colors.... red, yellow, or blue... which are highlighted as something seen At the Circus. There are three different images of each color, making nine different images with two cards of each image. In total there are 18 cards in the game. The front of each card is a five-color lithograph of a red and yellow circus tent against a blue and white sky and landscape. Everything is outlined in black and printed on Italian Magnani® cream colored paper. The images were printed by polyester plate lithography and the text was printed on the letterpress with 18-point Crayonette font type. All of the cards are housed in a book-like box which is covered with a variety of papers... a mono print cover paper in primary colors, a red and gold Japanese chiyagami paper, and a yellow and red paste paper. A denim bookcloth covers the spine and the box is held shut with a magnetic clasp. The title plate is the same 5-color lithograph circus tent and letterpress title seen on the front side of each card.

The book-like box and 5-color title plate

Inside the box, the rules of the game are letterpress printed on a plane sheet of Magnani paper.. The rules are simply: (Start with images face down) Flip up cards... taking turns and remembering their placement... until you can match two cards that are alike. Keep matching until you miss one. The person with the most match pairs wins! The game was created as a learning tool for a certain little guy who is currently learning his colors and who loves games...

inside the box...game cards, a magnetic closure, and the Rules of the game...
 Before printing the images, the front side of the cards were printed with the red, yellow, and blue three-color circus tent... Two sets were made.. one for this artist.. and one for her grandson, Sam. This took all day and over 160 print runs! The circus tent was split into images of a single color... the red tent imagery was printed first on all 45 cards and hung in the sun to dry...

first lithography printing (red) of the circus tent side of the cards
Then the yellow tent imagery plate was made and yellow ink rolled out for the second printing... printing all 45 cards with the yellow imagery...

..plate and ink (yellow) for the second lithography printing
...and hanging those in the sun to dry quickly...

second lithography printing (yellow...)
before taking them back down for the third printing of all 45 cards with the blue imagery...


third lithography printing (blue...)

After the blue imagery had dried a bit, a final printing of the black outline of the circus tent was made on all 45 cards, and finally the title At the CIRCUS was letterpress printed over that.



 The plates for the circus tent and the images were drawn on polyester plates with Sharpie® Marker then lithograph printed on each card with black ink. Colored markers in red, yellow, or blue filled in the  highlighted parts of each image.

image side of all nine pairs of cards

Some close-ups of the card pairs...

the little dog and the blue hoop set...

the red clown car set...

the yellow lion set...

the seal and the blue ball set...

the elephants' red toenails...
The circus is a magical place for all ages. It never fails to surprise and thrill and is it's own book of stories! In our local area this past weekend there was a small circus that came to town...The Zerbini Family Circus http://zerbinifamilycircus.com/. I can't wait to take a certain little someone to see the circus with his grandma.. because the circus turns us all into wide-eyed two year olds!

The Zerbini Family Circus...

In April we received several other images of books created with the April Ideation Card criteria... Here are a few photos and the concept behind Andrea Z.'s book...

Andrea's book Distortions in it's clamshell box


the Distortions cards... What the wolf says...

"It is all about your inner critical voice - in my case I called it "the wolf" - how it constantly talks to you and wants you to believe that you're a failure and other things. So my idea was to give the wolf a voice, let him write down all the distorted thoughts - therefore the title "Distortions" - on individual sheets of paper with room for more cards in the clam shell box - 

The paper and the cards are hand printed using the technique of dentritic mono printing, which actually is squeezing acrylic paint between two glass plates, carefully lifting them up and very lightly putting a torn piece of water color paper on top.

The book cloth is handmade from a piece of cotton fabric I found in my stash. The words are stamped in a way that supports the idea of "distortion"... not even, but wonky and with different intensity."  -AZ

The May Artist Ideation Cards criteria are: 
Color: Highly colorful
Image: Abstract
Layout: Based on an historic example
Paper: Neutral
Structure: Innovative structure (tunnel book, magic wallet, carousel book, flag book, etc.)
Technique: low tech (stamps, stenciling, hand lettering, transfers, etc.)
Text: found text
Adjective: lyrical or musical

Wild card: any one card may be omitted.

Thursday, March 31, 2016

March: Sadie's Ruler

COLOR: single color
IMAGE: abstract
LAYOUT: in the form of a diagram, chart, or map
PAPER: minimal paper usage
STRUCTURE: single sheet binding 
TEXT: self generated
TECHNIQUE: use a technique that is unfamiliar to you
ADJECTIVE: sentimental or nostalgic

front cover...lines in inches and centimeters
   
   Sadie's Ruler is the title of the March book-of-the-month. It follows all of the Artist's Ideation Cards design criteria other than the single color specification. The book is a 1960's wooden ruler that belonged to my grandmother. The gridded inches and centimeters on the cover mimic the straight-laced and orderly woman that was my grandmother. One small red smudge signifies her core of determination... what some might call rebellion... that also characterized her life. The nostalgic story was written with an engraving tool on the backside of the ruler.

the story...

close up of the text.. 
This is the story...

   At 65 my grandmother took a job as a substitute school teacher. She only had a high school diploma, but she taught Algebra, History, even French (which she didn't speak a word) for 15 years. The rural high schoolers feared her nearby ruler, knowing she expected their best behavior.  But most of all they knew Mrs. Carver loved books and believed in their power to give a better,  fuller life. 
Sadie Trevalyn Wilkerson Carver, 1896-1978.


Sadie, 1963

   Like the epitaph on a tombstone, Sadie's Ruler is strikingly, terse...  The back side of a 12-inch ruler is a difficult place to relate even a small portion of someone's life... but when reading between the lines, the full measure of her is clear. She was an amazing woman.

*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*
The Artist's Ideation Cards drawn for April, 2016 are as follows:

COLOR: primary
IMAGE: extracted from a single image
LAYOUT: random or unplanned
PAPER: single color
STRUCTURE: unbound (set of cards, series of prints, etc..)
TECHNIQUE: high-tech (letterpress, printmaking, etc..)
TEXT: stream of consciousness, free-write, or rant
ADJECTIVE: fragmented or mosaic

WILD CARD: any one card may be rejected


Andrea Z. sent in a photos of the books she made with the February and March criteria...

Andrea's Feb. book, cover of pastepaper and stamp

inside Andrea's Feb. book... french doors..

Andrea's March book: Double Happiness in Hong Kong.

Monday, February 29, 2016

February 2016: A Poem

 COLOR: favorite
IMAGE: traced, re-drawn, lifted from outside sources
LAYOUT: minimal or restrained
PAPER: multiple colors
STRUCTURE: multiple openings (french doors, dos-a-dos, split page, etc.)
TECHNIQUE: high-tech (letterpress, offset printing, printmaking, etc.)
TEXT: collaborate with a writer or poet
ADJECTIVE: humorous
The wild card option may be used to disregard any ONE criteria

  The book for the month of February is titled, A Poem. As specified by the Artist's Ideation Cards, it is a collaborative piece, written by the author that goes by the name Anonymous. The poem is not particularly humorous... which was specified by the AIC cards.. other than the title, which is ridiculously obvious. So, using the Wild Card option... the humorous criterion has been omitted (unless your humor gauge is rather low). The book is a casebound book with a colorful Rossi® Italian decorative print cover paper and a rose-orange metallic spine paper. The title plate is letterpress printed on sage green Hahnemuhle Ingres paper. Inside, two types of paper... sage green Hahnemuhle Ingres paper and white Stonehenge print paper comprise the stiff-leaf bound text block pages.  

Front Cover

Like the title plate, the lines of A Poem have been letterpress printed with Futura Condensed type and black ink onto Hahnemuhle Ingres paper. The illustrations for each page have been created by solvent transfer of images and additional embellishment with pen & ink and acrylic paint. Each illustration page is also a fold-out french door structure.

open book, open doors

Title page doors

title page

This is the poem, A Poem...

A Poem

          - by Anonymous

Isn’t it strange that Princes and Kings

And clowns that caper in sawdust rings

And ordinary folk like you and me

are builders of Eternity?

To each is given a bag of tools,

An hour glass and a set of rules.

And each must build e’er his life is flown

A stumbling block or a stepping stone.

Princes and Kings

clowns

folks like us

50's tv show, Father Knows Best, the inspiration of folks like us


builders of Eternity

bag of tools

hour glass and rules


one's own life

stepping stones


the Colophon

Some more stepping stones...
the steps at Wulai, Taiwan

back steps to the cathedral in Saint-Florent-le-Vieil,  France


ceramic sculpture at Heller Gardens, Garda, Italy

3rd century Roman villa,  Desenzano del Garda, Italy

on a rock at Tot's Tumbling class

The Artist's Ideation Cards for March 2016 are:

COLOR: single color
IMAGE: abstract
LAYOUT: in the form of a diagram, chart, or map
PAPER: minimal paper usage (emphasis on alternative material, i.e.. cloth, plastic, wood, metal, etc.)
STRUCTURE: single sheet binding (map fold, brochure, blizzard book, boustrophedon, etc.)
TEXT: self generated
TECHNIQUE: use a technique that is unfamiliar to you
ADJECTIVE: sentimental or nostalgic
The wild card option may be used to disregard any ONE criteria