I'm Impressed

Quite a few months ago I received an email from a stranger in Berlin who said he admired my work. He (or maybe she) wanted to see some jpgs for inclusion in a book. Frankly, I thought it was spam and ignored it. But Hennig persisted and, after checking out the Gestalen website, I complied with some wonderful images shot by John Thigpen, a friend and meticulous set designer. The images were accepted and I forgot about the book. What a thrill to receive another email from Henni requesting my street address so he could mail me the finished book.

I'll be getting mine in the mail soon. You can get yours on Amazon.com!
The images selected were all from  How to Distinguish Scents, a labor of love that has proved to me that what you put your whole heart and focus (might that be soul?) into, will be worthy. Of course, Johnny's images are, I believe, equally responsible for this particular book's success. I've used the jpgs for Scents and several other books we photographed for inclusion into at least three other shows. Lesson two, therefore, do the best afterwork for your art lest it languish. This includes the best photography you can afford and then sending the piece out into the world to the galleries and shows that will appreciate it.

How to Distinguish Scents Artist Book

Part 2

Once I exposed all the plates and laid them out on the grid I'd created, I inked them up and made some prints. At my best time, I can wipe a plate (this is intaglio, the ink goes into the lines etched by the sun, I wipe the rest) in 15 minutes. What I never managed to do was wipe it completely clean, or so I thought. This forced me to re-consider using white paper. I printed nicely on a rough gray paper, which camaflouged the grey residue left on the plate, but it was a non-archival wrapping paper and I wasn't about to put the whole project, which by now was costing me some real money (for me) and serious time. So I selected a variety of Canson papers at Binders, including a pleasant gray.

I also decided to forgo the folded format. I was pretty sure I'd make too many mistakes, probably very close to the end of each pull. So I made a complete set on smaller pieces of paper (the plates are 5x7 inches.)

After printing a complete set, I cut them to equal size and played around with waxed linen thread, creating loops to connect the pages that would have normally been folded and leaving them off the pages that would have been cut apart. The photos below show a small (2x3inch) mockup of the stitching and the completed first version. I call this a mockup too, but it's really my working edition, complete with missteps and extra stitching holes. I'm currently editioning the book, hoping to manage five complete books by the end of April. I'm also working on a container, but that's another story!

How to Distinguish Scents - Artist Book

Part 1

For this project I selected a prose poem written a while ago in one of my creative writing classes using an exercise I'm very fond of and which generally results in a good long piece of prose for everyone participating. It's taken from a handy how-to called Fast Fiction: Creating Fiction in Five Minutes by Roberta Allen.

like folding paper and am intrigued by the possibilities of various map-fold structures, so deciding on a solarplate exposure process, a map-fold and a text about 8 pages long (including cover) set about to find illustrations and make a book.

Here's the mock-up.

Solarplates are not cheap. I've purchased from Dick Blicks and McClains, which are the lowest-priced. While both vendors are great, I'm curious about the plates Daniel Smith carries as they are twice the price. I exposed some of the plates back on a sunny day in December with an exposure time of 5 minutes each. (About three in a light box with the right kind of light.)

In January/February when the promise of a show prompted me to finish what had been a dawdling sort of project, I had to figure out a quicker and more consistent way to expose the 16 plates I'd need. Even at $5 a plate, there was little room/budget for error or experimentation. At the Atlanta Printmakers Studio, where I do most of my work, we worked out a way to expose on the screenprinting light table. I exposed the remaining plates (the lion's share) at 13 minutes a pop; a long time, but the table allowed me to expose several at a time. I managed to expose,wash and harden three at a time without getting into a panic.

Here they are: