Making a new kind of book...for me

As someone with the time to investigate variations on a theme (thanks to a broken foot), I've found myself staying up late watching craft tutorials by women who make what are called mini-albums.
They're called mini because they're so much smaller in dimension than regular sized scrapbooks, which all seem to be 12by12 inches. The minis are almost any size and seem to come in all dimensions.

I have a lot of paper, both commercial and painted...and handmade and I'm looking for ways to tell stories visually with really economical real estate. High-rise sort of things. In fact, I've been working badly on a scrapbook version of my MFA thesis with little success or interest primarily because I'm not using the material in any innovative way, not really. Also, my scrapbooking skills are crap. Who knew one could have scrapbooking skills?

Of course, a good page is all about design: main focal point, harmonic colors, interesting composition, etc., but I'd been slopping paint on the large (12by12) pages with so much speed I had to wonder if I wasn't afraid of taking my time.

So when I stumbled across the mini-albums and realized just how much material: photos and writing and patterning, etc., one could get into a relatively small place, I was hooked.

I guess it's been almost two months (synchs well with broken foot) since I started the process of learning such things as the "hidden hinge" vs. the "stacked deck" binding approaches --- both are pretty cool--- and how to put together a three and four-page album (stick with coordinated paper) plus discovering which youtube tutorials are worth watching and re-watching, I'm turning into a reasonable student of the art.

Putting together "pages" (which I'd think of as signatures) requires a lot of thinking ahead, as does how the one page might work with the two or three others.
It's very easy to screw up as well, and there goes a whole set of nice paper. My first one wound up with so many mistakes, I had to take most of it apart for recycling. The second one was structuring correct, though very messy. I'd used the ugliest scrapbooking paper from my stash of not much paper and turned out quite an ugly little book. But by then I was busy figuring out the binding mechanism, so beauty didn't matter.

This week I finished an album with photos of dog, Lille and sister and brother-in-law, who helped me through the foot surgery. If I can wheel the package downstairs, I can get it in the mail!

I have one photo and here it is.

 and my foot!

Take back the blog

Have you ever been stalked by an ex-beau? Someone from so long ago and from a relationship that should have been pleasantly transient but which ended, at least for me, with a sour taste and a sense of embarrassment? The kind of affair you really don't want to revisit much less rekindle?

Well, I have and it ended, I hope, when the jerk started lurking on this blog, leaving the kinds of comments that made me think I had a really insightful reader. So insightful that at one point, I wrote back to ask "Do I know you?" Well, yes, I had and the worst of my suspicions were confirmed. What a double disappointment. There was no one new reading me and this self-centered and dishonest salesman had reappeared...again. in new media. So I quit blogging.

Well, I posted new work and brief announcements, but the comfort and confidence I'd enjoyed blogging here was literally shut down in such a way that I could easily avoid confronting the matter. It was a lot like facing the mistakes and petty abuses of the long ago past: dating someone with a girlfriend; not reporting or slapping an English professor with a roving hand; rolling over and playing dead.

I don't know how this blog will change, but I'm taking it back, at least for the duration. I broke my foot on Christmas Day and will be home-bound for the Winter quarter with myself and my dog and my inability to write.

This time, I will not let the lurker win.
AG

Bon Voyage Little Books!

Copies of "Rowing Boat" set sail from my local Post Office Saturday morning. Got to fill out several customs forms! I'll be curious to learn how quickly these arrive at their Italian, Canadian, Australian, Californian, Ohio and New York destinations!
This was fun, though I focussed so entirely on structure and the desire to play/work with the sculptural or object side of the matter, the book itself doesn't seem to count.
Goodbye little books!
Alicia

Artist book for client

I'm so lucky to occasionally get a request to make someone a one-of-a-kind book. This one, almost completed, is for a couple celebrating their 50th wedding anniversary. The husband, a true romantic, has crafted a poem from a batch of love letters the couple exchanged back in the early 1960s when they were courting. I've taken the poem and some pictures from that time (of the couple) and put them together in a flag book. As usual, I struggle with execution and waste. I have to make the book over and over (because I can't seem to measure and visualize). This is the final. It's close but I think if I could do it again (and why not?) I'd make it a lot messier. Not knowing the couple (everything's been done via email), I'm not convinced they'd like that.  I would like the structure to be as romantic as the impulse, as the lovers themselves.

Rowing Boat Update

Group 7! I was excited to open my first book from Gene Epstein a few days ago. A lovely take on "Delicate." Thanks, Gene. Will you post a photo of your book here?


I've been pondering and avoiding the "Rowing Boat" Book Art Object project for months now caught up on the boat structure. I know I'm missing something obvious, but after trolling for boat making directions--- finding cute ones for real row boats and origami instructions for boat-like structures--- and making clumsy clay and foam core structures, I've determined to follow my attraction to the abstract notion of a vessel. This decision is based on the stash of floral wire and wrap I found in a drawer and the lessening of frustration experienced while making these. On the spiritual front, it is pleasurably meaningful to shape them between the palms of my hands.

My next step is to tear into the old journals. In doing this, I find passages that are worth "sending out to dry" but which don't work with the original structure, which is a coptic bound book. Doing this means cutting up pages and getting any narrative out of order. Instead, I'm counting on my old favorite, the meander, so that lucky readers will get one page, front and back. I find I do want to send even a fragment of a story rather than the rain of words I thought would "do."

The covers are chipboard covered with paste paper scraps from the yards of same I've been making this summer.

More and more soon. They are coming.

2012 New project "Rowing Boat" artist book

Rowing Boat

So far, I’ve “researched” rowing boats, discovering that the simple row boat is not the only option: I’ve got kayakes, canoes, dinghies, skulls and probably even more. Or not. I see that most of those just mentioned depend on paddling, not rowing.

At the beginning of every project, I am at my most literal. Abstractions grow later. In my sketch book, I’m teaching myself to draw rowboats, borrowing heavily from photographs and instructional drawing books. With the Art Institute’s library within easy reach, that’s a lot of instruction.

The writing component is trickier for me just now because I don’t have a text of any relevance handy, which means writing one. I trust this will emerge from the freewriting and “coincidences” bound to reach me as I ponder the project. In fact, I recently took a workshop in developing intuition through imagination (see www.lynnwilloughby.com) and one of the exercises involved describing, in great detail, a boat. This exercise alone could be a small artist book. It well may be.

When I’m not pondering the images or the text, I’m playing with the structure. If the boat is in movement, I want a book that moves. One of my favorite structures is a “meander” book, a folded sheet that yields 32 pages. There are pivotal pages that literally turn the book around. I’ve always wanted to focus movement on those pages.

Finally, there’s an idea/practice I’m committed to which involves using, as material, pages from the many many journals I’ve kept since 1967.  I want to re-use, recycle and re-invent these pages before I die or have to throw them away because they won’t fit into my cell at the old folk’s home.  They are, mercifully, no longer precious. They have become the sea upon which my little boat floats.

Here are some pages from my sketchbook.

Alicia

Group 7 “Rowing Boat”

I must be doing something right

Up until this ferocious Winter Quarter, I would have said a successful class was one without friction. After this week's temper tantrum and foot stamping (all the way to Dean's office), essentially the fifth (counting my own) in less than a month, I am left grinning. With so much passion about, I must be doing something right. After all, the goal this time is for me to teach my students how to think. Given the wails of protest and confusion, I might as well be midwifing 25 individual births.

But yesterday, as I headed in with a "stomach," I was shocked to be greeted by several smiling faces and possibly sincere greetings. Had they all gotten laid the night before?

Thursday is Right Brain Day, which is always fun. We did an intuitive exercise and then, again to my surprise, they all wanted to discuss it as a group and share their writing and insights. Many had taken the descriptive part of the exercise to a different level by creating poems. The temper girl, her defenses rivaling the US Dept. of Defense, provided great insight into nearly everyone's readings. The students at this school have a remarkable ability to support each other. It's a bit of grace that seems to glow from within. No one seems to mention it or brag about it; I hope the larger administration never notices it, because it's truly lovely just the way it is.

Maybe temper flameouts, confrontations and anger is not a recipe for failure. Maybe, like pepper, it's a simple ingredient.

Let the Quarter Begin

I'm teaching full-time this first quarter of 2012 (and then some.) A fullish load at the Art Institute, a monthly course at the online school and a weekly look-in at GPC. In between classes today, I interviewed an engineer for my foreign biz client. I have neglected my local biz client. Artomats are taking a hit as well. I know some people seem to thrive on schedules like this. In fact, if I'd worked this hard in my 20s or even 30s, it probably wouldn't seem like such a challenge now. Still, despite how slowly I seem to get on, the working day is a darn sight better nowadays without the anxiety of youth.

Am currently investigating the phrase "Rowing Boats."  It's the title I selected for my contribution to Book Arts Object. First step is often to free-associate for what comes from within. I didn't do this to any degree yet; instead, I checked for the symbolism of the rowboat. Hard work on your own terms and in your own time. Such a coincedence!

Book plan: small meander (2x3'' or 4x5" closed)
character: the boat itself if I can draw one with a personality and its oars.
Setting(s): in the hands of its creator, afloat, struggling in waves, beached, rocks, turned over

This sounds like a children's picture book. Also sounds like the Sisyphus book and text. We'll see.
This morning a student used the phrase "Whatever floats your boat."  Maybe something there.
I'll ponder this as I work out my skills in drawing a traveling boat.
More as it happens!

New Years Resolution: Book Art Object

The key to a happy New Year's Eve Resolution is to get it over with the first week of the year.
One of my "resolutions" (aka suggestions) is to contribute to at least four book arts shows or events. Happily, the Book Arts Listserve keeps me supplied with Calls for Submissions. 2012's first is a kind of round robin of limited editions between members of the Book Art Object community. (BAO is a blog community in Australia. Click link for more info)

It seems a bit complicated but isn't. I don't think. The drill for this year's editioning was to pick a title from one of 100 short story titles in a book project by Sarah Bodman entitled An Exercise for Kurt Johannessen.
  
As instructed, I selected three titles and was assigned my second choice, "Rowing Boats."  
Not sure why I chose this title, but I delight in word combinations and especially enjoy playing with verbs as nouns, etc. I haven't been near a rowboat in decades so I doubt my interpretation will be literal but who knows? It's good to have something to play with.

What Inhabits the Sky- the first edition

What Inhabits the Sky

Birds, of course

            And kites

The ambitious leaves of tall trees.

Ideas masquerading as loose feathers

The inevitable wishes of young girls

The prayers of a multitude

Stray bullets

Arrows on a mission

Chimney smoke

Jet stream flashing

Neon darkness

My eyes, my eyes

Your finger point north

Go home. Go home.

Lillie 's first Christmas

Her first Christmas with me. A year ago she may well have been lost. From the records I was given by the Pet Shelter, she was picked up in January in Valdosta.
She's very happy now!

How's Your Semester Going?

Oh, To Be a Teacher

You look at me and see an official nag

Someone whose job it is

To catch and lock away your every opinion

Evaluation

Your decisions

Your changes of heart and mind

You look at me and see an ear the size

Of a woman

But not a woman.

You see an outstretched hand

A demand

You see the mask of the crown.

You do not see me.

Heat Waves and Reasons to Love the South Anyway

As hot as it gets, and of course, no one can complain this summer with any originality, there is something  always cooling about the magnolia in bloom. Even on a sunny street, the scent of this large and stately blossom drops the temperatures for the length of a inhalation.

oh, well

i refuse to apologize for not blogging. I'm sorry, I just can't.

What's interesting. The new (and curiously chubby) homeless guy who arrives at the Harris-Piedmont pocket park at dusk each evening when the light is just enough for him to unroll his bedding, sit cross legged and snug between his over-stuffed gym bags, pull out his journal and write.

I've been watching him at this for three weeks now. He's punctual and regular and doesn't show up just often enough to make me worry and often enough to make me want to wave hello.

He leaves each morning around 7:30.

Something about this one makes me feel as if i'm participating in a fictional event. I think it's his big butt.

Sisyphean Labor

Sisyphean Labor

Those tasks we pick because they seem small

enough to hold in the palms of our hands

or even pocket are those that grow to full size

and must be hoisted shoulder high and carried.

Pick carefully and for love and old age.

Rather than a single rock, I discover

some days I maneuver several odd-shaped

stones bound together slip shod

and my day is a juggler’s holiday.

Ruining Work

Lately, I take whole pieces of paste paper apart and put them back together, so they are both different and the same. They are done to, violated, experienced. Then I rather sadistically try to restore the piece’s beauty with red thread sutures, reminiscent of bloody little bows. The piece has been restored and lives with the beauty of the surgical survivor, the heart torn, the face undone. But alive.

I tore apart a nice paste painting done on a cheap drawing paper…a kind of happy accident, a kind of weed.

But once reconstructed (with difficulty, cheap paper is non-responsive) the individual pieces needed texture, perhaps a media gloss, wax, a spray of some sort. Pretty little sutures were not enough. In fact, they caused more pain.

I love leaving clues behind, evidence of a former wholeness. I think the cheap paper piece still longs to be its original whole and not the two columns originally, carelessly envisioned by me. I moved into my idea too fast and with the kind of assumption that always yields a typo, a misspelling. Here, a misstep and a waste of a potentially nice book cover.     

Every piece of art must be breathed into being carefully and with complete presence. In this piece, because I never looked at its parts or what “deconstructing” it would mean, I destroyed. It’s sad…like bad plastic surgery.

Run it through the sewing machine?

Sisyphus Hill

Pushing the rock up the hill is

not temporary,

It’s everyday. Some artists

think of the rock as the

sun rising, arcing and setting.

We push it with our labor —

those parts of life we push,

pull, carry, shoulder

day after day — those bits

are contained in the rock.

Night time or bust.

Lillie Day 10 - Crating Miss Lillie

Gosh, I'm busy! With very little time to call my own (by my standards, anyway; readers with children and husbands need not respond) the fact that I've got a stack of papers to grade is the only thing motivating me to post today. Or is it?

Why no. No pun intended, but today marks the first day Lillie spent in her crate without either peeing, pooping or both.

She did both the first day, so I placed the spare "wall" thus shrinking the crate to her size.
She just peed on the second day, so I washed out the towel and replaced it with another and left her less water.
She just peed on the third day, but took down the wall, so I replaced the wall, washed out the towel and replaced it with another.
Then I did a laundry.
She just peed on the fourth, fifth, six and seventh days.
On the eighth day I took the trainer's advice and removed the towel.
On the ninth day she peed and pooped. I flushed the poop and washed the plastic tray with the new spray bottle of urine stain and odor remover.
On the 10th day I took the advice of my chiropractor, who welcomes dogs to her office and her life, and added a T-shirt of my own. Not a clean one.
On the afternoon of the 10th day I arrived home to a dry crate and a dry dog.

Tomorrow we try this again for a longer stint. Good luck, Lillie.

Lillie Day 3

Ha!
There's been some discussion in my family (remaining sister and her in-laws, thank you Facebook) about a middle name for Lillie. I'm not a sentimental dog owner and think the middle name idea is pretty silly. To humanize a dog, or any pet, or even a child, is to ask for trouble and disappointment. From what I can see and have heard from real dog owners (and read from new copy of The Dog Whisperer by Paul Owens) dogs are dogs and people are people.

Lillie Marlene. Lillie Pulitzer. Lillie Beth. Lillie Vidalia. Lillie Croquet. Lillie Pad. Lillie Belle. No no no. Lillie No?  Better not.

But then I wrote today's post title. Lillie Day. This has a reasoned beauty to it for a couple of reasons: I'm looking for a project blog, and as my days as a dog owner have just begun and I'll be learning something new on every one of those days, why not title the Lillie posts with their day?

Today, we walked for an hour, came home, she ate her new dog food with relish (I replaced the Red Bandana kibble with Wellness, which smells much better. Hope this will clear the air in here, so to speak.)

In The Dog Whisperer, Paul Owens says to work with the dog on each trick and behavior for a short time, about a minute or two. I've always wondered about this. It's very helpful. We're making good strides with "Sit" primarily because she already can sit, though she seems to do it on her own terms (classic terrier, I think). I'd like her to respond to "Down." when she jumps up on my leg and I'd like her to fetch the duck (her big toy) when I say "Fetch."  Lots of other things but those first.

I realize I have a lot to learn about play, so this morning I played "soccer" with her favorite chew, a disgusting but obvious pleasure dome of a cow hoof. She got into the chase but didn't catch on to the hide and seek part. Too complicated?
Listen, random and faithful reader, any advice, input, etc., about living with a scrappy little terrier is welcome.

I Take a Leap

Unlike my last huge commitment, today's leap of faith was not an impulse. I've been playing with the idea, checking the sites and running the numbers for several months now. I've also collected input from friends, all pet owners, some of whom played serious games of Devil's Advocate. Last Saturday, I cajoled DP, a woman with more strings than a harp, to help me not adopt a dog at the Atlanta Pet Rescue. She, currently down to one dog, four (or is it five?) cats, two horses, patient husband, live-in elderly parents, three grown kids,  and 1.5 grandchildren, was to be curbed as well.

It was my intention to look the prospects over: small dogs who wouldn't get bored in a high-rise condo, could power walk up to five miles, spend at least six hours waiting for me to get home, and, oh, yes, provide blog fodder.

Fergie, Dixie and Laurel made the first cut. I liked Fergie's scrappy looks. She reminded me of a drummer I'd had a painful crush on about ten years ago. Dixie was sleek, mellow and seemed above the kennel fray, but she was, and is, a Jack Russell with possibly Cairn mix and would need a lot of exercise. Still, she could do five miles easily and was clearly a smart little thing. Laurel was a Yorkie mixed with something bigger and did not show to advantage. He needed a bit of filling up and some high-end grooming. Still, he seemed mellow as well, would love a small condo and behaved very well. But he felt bony, and I was pretty sure he'd never make two miles, much less five, or even the three I actually walk.

After chatting with the counselors, I eliminated Fergie. He's got serious attachment issues. After ten minutes with Dixie, I didn't like the fragility of Laurel. But I wasn't sure I wanted to commit to a terrier.
Oye. Go to lunch. The one thing I didn't want to do was act impulsively, so I was pretty glad I left the shelter empty-handed.

Only I went to bed thinking of Dixie. And woke up to a call from DP. "I miss her!"  So did I.
If she's meant to be my dog, she'll be at the rescue on Tuesday.

I could barely start the quiz I still have to write for tomorrow's "Big, Fat Quiz" at AID. I could barely read the websites for the prospective client who called yesterday. Yes! I'll take that job. I have another mouth to feed!

Here I sit with what must be the perfect dog for me. Dixie, or Lily, or Portia (not sure) has been home for an hour, has had some water, turned her nose up at the dry food (tuff titties, kid), chewed her cow rind, made friends with her new stuffed duck and is now lying comfortably at my feet.

Someone must miss her very much. This is a nice, well-trained, solid little dog. As DP said, she is my gift.