Artist book!

Making a full length artist book was much more of an undertaking than I had ever imagined.  I thought I was home free once I had my concept but, oh, was I wrong!!  

This book has to do with the past 8 long years and I found I couldn't put in everything I wanted to, which is just as well.  I had to learn to distill things and figure out when one image would speak for many.  I struggled with the chronological sequence and in the end had to be arbitrary about which pages came in which order.  The Book Arts Roundtable, of which I'm a member, is having a show starting next week at the Pierro Gallery, at the Baird in South Orange, NJ, and this book was made as my contribution.  Since I'm a new member,  this is my first time having a book in the gallery show.   I'm anxious about whether it's  good enough or too controversial.  Tomorrow I hand it in and then I can just let it be.  

As you can see, I used my own paste paper for the cover and I used a Coptic binding.  The "button" is rolled up and glued paper like the cover paper.  The cover pleases me.

Here's my favorite page spread.  I used collage, painting and drawing.  It was a powerful experience working with these images.

I was able to work in some of my prints, relief and otherwise, into the pages.  In this page 

spread the "shock and awe" is a print I did on that subject.

Bookmaking!

I took a workshop last weekend, at the Baird in South Orange, with Miriam Scheuer in basic bookmaking techniques.   It was soooo hot in that 3rd floor room without air conditioning but it was worth the suffering.  The first day we learned lots of book forms, most of which didn't require gluing or sewing.  The second day we made two codexes.  One had exposed spine and the other was cased.  I hope I'm using my new vocabulary correctly.  I used some of my paste paper for the covers--the paper looks so much better in use than it did as a big sheet.  Anyway, it was very exciting and I feel ready to move into making artist books.  

Paste Paper Experiments

I've just gone through a period of trying out different recipes for paste paper and it was really fun.  I still haven't worked out what is the best paper to use and which paste is best.  There's something called Mohawk superfine that  I haven't found yet to try out.    I used some Fabriano Tiziano in colors and Strathmore series 400 acid free drawing paper in a big pad.  These all worked to varying degrees.  When you dampen the paper there is buckling which is hard to manage.  The Tiziano may have behaved the best but the Strathmore worked well, too.  I tried Japanese calligraphy paper in a pad which was no good at all--the colors weren't crisp and there wasn't enough contrast.   Maybe sizing is the issue...  There were so many variables and I should have kept notes but I was having too much fun and was too caught up in the design part of the process to do that.  Pastes that I tried:  white cake flour, wallpaper paste which said it was wheat paste, and rice flour cooked.  The rice flour required lengthy cooking.  I really think the biggest variable was whether I added some additives I read about--tincture of green soap and glycerine.  I would definitely add those in the future.   I even tried one batch using acrylic glazing medium with color but, surprisingly, it was dreadful.  The ink blurred after I made the design.   Since I'm not sure the wallpaper paste was actually methyl cellulose I plan to try the expensive version sold for bookbinding that is labelled as methyl cellulose next and see how that goes.  It's really easy to mix up which is good.  I've used it for Japanese woodblock and I like it.  One other possibility from woodblock printing is Nori paste which showed up for sale in a big jar container at my local art store.  I guess I would just water it down sufficiently. I wish the paper had a bit of shine and I read that methyl cellulose gives that effect.  There was an estate sale recently for some people who had a private press--The Golden Hind Press.  Arthur Rushmore was the pressman and his daughter Delight Rushmore designed paste paper for the books they printed.   The sale was almost over when I got there so not much was left, but I found an empty book cover made with the paste paper and bought it.  Thank you Delight!  My paper doesn't look nearly as good as hers but I like it nonetheless.  It's good to have as a sort of benchmark for success.  Hers is fairly shiny as if it were waxed.  I apologise for the quality of the photographs.