variations on a theme...

coptic binding...

 with leather covered boards

long stitch over exposed fabric 'tapes'...

with black bookcloth covers

and long stitch binding over exposed leather 'tapes'...

with decorative paper covers 

the contents are quite similar in each

with small variations...

all three models explore ways of presenting 

the 52 art gestures of 2012

...

slow growing...

my slow book is slowly growing...

in the evening,
the fire is glowing,
our kidlins have stared dreaming their dreams
(we are early-to-bed, early-to-rise farm folk, so kidlins are usually fast asleep by 8pm)

I get out my booky bundles and start stitching... 

the book creature spills from my lap and along the lounge chair

it's almost 2m 'long' already (how did that happen?)

often one of the beastie cats curls itself inside the book coils...
careful not to tread on the pages - good cats!

I pat the cat and the book 

and go back to stitching

With hands engaged, my mind can wander

I am thinking about my forthcoming BIG road trip to Byron Bay Writers Festival

for my stint as the Festival's first ever artist-in-residence

(gulp)

 I've decided to take this emerging book creature with me

(I'm sure it would appreciate a good road trip -
just as I would appreciate the comforting presence
of a book to stitch...)

...

still cutting, folding, bundling....

lots and lots of little bundles....

 

 roughly colour sorting as a cut and fold and bundle...

soon I will be able to start to pierce and bind.... 

the slow and quiet work continues

....

book models from handmade paper...

This week I completed two book models from the handmade paper created earlier from a pulped dictionary....

the first is long-stitch bound over paper-covered linen tapes with hardcovers
covered in paste paper (and hand marbled paper in the inside)

the second is a more humble version - again it's long-stitch bound over paper tapes
(not with a linen lining this time... there's no need, as this version doesn't have hard covers)


The second simple limp covered version is my preferred model..... it is nice to hold in the hand and feel the softness of the handmade paper....



...

intial (booky) works

I have been playing with form in my initial MFA works - these first pieces are each made from a World Book encyclopaedia 1984 Year Book (my last year of high school). In both new books the sections (collection of folded pages) are created from a single page of the original book - coptic bound to form a closed circle.

the first book form has been bound with a twist to create a mobius strip

the second is bound as a circle - an infinite loop
and when I've been playing with the malleable form
I liked it best when arranged in this manner....
echoing an infinity symbol

I'm pleased with the two forms... but wonder if the huge amount of labour is worthwhile (each one of these takes about a week of consistent work to complete) - I'm not sure how much an audience can understand the process involved in making - coptic binding is the earliest form of bookbinding and dates back to the beginning of the codex as we recognise it today (more than 2000 years) - a book structure consisting sewn sections to create individual pages....

the process of binding these structures has become a strangely meditative one for me - and I think of these almost as warm-up exercises - and the end result as small sketches

equally however, as I'm binding more and more structures of this nature, I can envisage them all together in some way - perhaps components of an installation?.... for now I'll just continue exploring ideas of form through the process of binding...