Wherever I travel I will always gravitate towards flea markets or charity shops. Part of my practice is the searching out of photographs, postcards, stamps, documents and books from the place I am visiting then I will expolore the history of what I find. Iceland was no exception.Reykjavik has a flea market in the old Harbour close to where I was staying. A couple of hours rumaging brough up some proper treasures. This particular book began with a black and white cigarette card of a place called Siglufjörður. It is the most northern town in Iceland and also the name of the northern coastline.
I drew a map of Iceland and used a zine fold to fold it down to the size of the picture card and stitched the card on the front and a description on the back. The envelope case came from a first day cover from the flea market too.
This month’s ‘are you book enough’ challenge was Hexagon and it turns out that March is also Hexagon appreciation month! I have never really played with the shape before. To begin with I wasn’t sure what to do but after some research about hexagons in nature I was quite blown away by just how many things have a hexagon as a building block for their structure. I had thought I’d choose one thing to focus on but ended up thinking about nature in general picking the colours of the rainbow to represent everything. This piece is really playful thinking of hexagons as building blocks so I wanted the pieces to come out and become a number of structures. I kept the back of each piece white as white is the sum of all colours. The box it sits in shows all the workings out for the patterns, the basic structures within structures that a hexagon has. When the pieces are used to build you can create a flower and a tree which represent the life that is touched in some way by the hexagon.
My second book took a fraction of the time my other one did and I think I like it better. It’s again about the hexagon being an ancient building block for lots of life. The three sections are covered with images of ancient monuments and simple brown card for the rest. Each book has six pages each side. There are six covers all together. The books fold out into building blocks to play with and create lots of different shapes including a hexagon. In this film the end assemblage signifies life/nature with two hexagon trees and the earth. Called chapter one as it’s about the beginning of everything.
I think it is pretty obvious how much fun it has been playing with the hexagon. I am pretty sure it will be appearing again in a book somewhere very soon!
February’s ‘are you book enough’ challenge was Heal. For me making little books has been such a godsend in times when life happenings have been painful, stressful or a bit all consuming. I take myself away from it all and hide in the studio to play and let magical things happen, so in one sense any of my books could come under the category of ‘heal’.
This little book has been a particularly cathartic exercise. Made entirely from ephemera left by my parents. Letters they wrote to each other in the year before they were married, wedding photos and bank statements from the first year of their lives together. It was designed using a turkish map fold which I altered to fit the oval theme I wanted which echos a locket or keep sake. The structure and movement of the book reference a paper streamer used to decorate for a celebration and is a very playful thing which also picks up on the mood of the letters and the expectation of a new chapter in life. The leather case was not left by them but I wanted something to keep it safe and as much as I would love to have made a large silver locket, that is rather expensive and outside of my skill set, vintage leather seemed the right thing. This little book holds much that is precious to me and will be kept safe for a long time to come.
The second book for february was another teabag book (yes I am slightly obsessed by teabags!) This book is a little sense of place from a weekend spent with an old friend. We drank tea and shared our lives over a weekend during February. There was laughter, joy, tears, sadness and hope all in one weekend, everything you would expect from time with a friend. The book is made from the teabags we both used plus a map from around the area we were in and pages from a Thomas Hardy book of poetry, Thomas Hardy also being from around a similar area. The poem in the book was created by peicing together some of his words to echo my thoughts about that time.
The #areyoubookenough challenge for January was ‘in between’. I thought about many different concepts for this one but ended up pouring all my time into one book.
This little book is made up of three parts. It began as a vintage book sourced from a charity shop in Frankfurt. I took out the body of the book and cut the cover into three equal parts. Using a vintage english book, two maps and the rest of the german book I created a triptych book exploring my current life ‘in between’ two places. I live in Sheffield and my partner lives in Frankfurt.
One book is constructed of pages of english text and sections from a map of the area around Sheffield, one has german text and maps from around Frankfurt, and the final one is a mix of the two collaged together. I cut holes into the text pages so that maps would be visible through the text. The cut out circles were used as the collage pieces for the third book.
The central page of each book is the key place so Sheffield, Frankfurt and the mixed one is Manchester as that is the conduit that we both pass through to see each other. These central pages have been left solid as these are the streadfast places in my life, while everything around them is fluid. I am really pleased with the way the pages interact with each other making shadows and revealing places on the maps. The triptych format allows even more play with structure enabling them to be laid out simultaneously or left to form a dos-à-dos form. I used the spine from a third vintage book of poetry by Robert Browning and the title comes from a poem from that book called ‘By The fire Side’.
October 5th was the first Sheffield Artists book fair which saw 55 stalls representing about 90 artists! It was a day of fantastic inspiration and lovely new friends and connections. I’m sorry to not have posted sooner but as the main organiser and curator of the event my time was swallowed up a bit! Especially managing the Artist’s Book Centre website mine took a back seat. Anyway here are a few images mostly curtisy of Anya Uhren as I was too busy running around to take any! If you are interested to see more about the artists involved check out artistsbookcentre.org.uk if you’re local to sheffield there are a number of things going on you can get involved with.
This little box of delights was a lot of fun to create. It came from quite a large selection of ephemera collected on an eight hour train journey from Mysore to Chennai. During the trip we were given various refreshments which came in interesting packages, so of course I saved it all. Each time something came I squirrelled the bits and pieces away into a bag by my side along with other peoples bits and pieces that got passed down the row! From this selection I created a box/draw for the matchbox cover and two books to fit inside.
The first book was simple and came from one of the tea bags I used on the journey. The cover of the book is made from the label of the Taj Mahal Tea. The inside is part of the teabag dried out and emptied after use and some of the paper cup I drank the tea from.
The second book began with a label from the delicious biryani we were served, I cut it out from the box lid and as a bonus the back of the lid is very shiny silver which adds a bit of sparkle and a different surface to the book. A nice touch is that the label has the date stamped on it which always makes me happy…simple things. The accordion fold bit of the book was made from the place mat we had on the tray of food (I saved mine before it got any spillages on it!) As an aside all the labels for each matchbook is typed on this paper. Then i used various other bits of packaging to create the other elements of the book everything from ice-cream lids to sugar bags. Finally I used the rest of the teabag as the books tie to hold it together.
As I said at the beginning I had much fun with this creation mixing, matching and folding packaging. I have plenty of bits and bobs left so I expect something else will happen to all of that one day and another creation will be born.
This book was inspired by a trip to the Gandhi Memorial Museum in Madurai. On a previous trip to India I had visited the Gandhi Museum in Mumbi called Mani Bhavan. As a child my dad used to talk about Gandhi often I think he was something of a hero for him and he made sure we kids knew all about his life and what he had achieved. My dad was a pacifist and I think saw many commonalities of ethos and conflict resolution. So now on two occassions I have been fortunate to visit places this man had been or lived and learnt about his life first hand. Both times I have found it moving and had a sense of my dad over my shoulder telling stories of this great man of peace.
The start to this book was a receipt I collected when I donated some money to be able to take photos inside the museum. I didn’t want to chop this up to much so used a modified zine fold to create a little book that still has the ability to open out to become one sheet again and at the same time creates the accordion fold to hold the rest of the sections together. From there I created two more zine fold books from a ten rupee note. I thought long and hard about using actual money as a book (I’ve been toying with the idea for a long time). I feel that Gandhi would have disapproved because although to me as a westerner this note is worth the equivalent of about twelve pence to many people in India it could be a meal. To a great extent it felt quite frivolous to cut it up, but I felt on this occasion it was warrented. It symbolises the struggle for fair wages and prices for cotton and the fact that it bares the face of Gandhi goes to show how important he is to this country.
The cyanotype prints used were made by a piece of fabric I found on my journey and the detail of the weave reminded me of the simple cloth that Gandhi chose to wear, some of which was on display in the museum. I had a little bit of the original receipt left over so made a second zine fold book covered with more cyanotype print. The matchbox used was found in Madurai and seemed appropriete with the symbol of a light bulb on the front. Gandhi was most definitely a light for India.
With this book, as often happens, it has become a tiny sculpture as much as a book. I love how many shapes it can make just by opening it in different ways. This one more than most!
A tiny book finally complete with a new box for a home. If you follow me on Instagram you may remember the saga of ‘The dog who ate my homework’ and the little book that came out of that incident. Well I have finally got back to the original Berlin book and finished it and a kind friend donated me this box for its new forever home. It just needed a bit of customising and here we are!
