The first Piece, an Artist’s Book

Our assignment was to make three separated artist’s books: a simple pamphlet book, an accordion fold book and an artist’s book.  While Jean was introducing and demonstrating the processes, I was thinking about a concept that is related to the theme of time which I have been exploring in my work.  I thought of an accordion fold book in cyanotype:  I would make a strip of paper long enough to print my whole body but narrow.  I would call the piece “Strip.”  I was thinking of the body as a landscape, and also the body as a measure of time.  The book would start at the feet and move up to the hand outstretched above the head.  I had done cyanotype and printed part of myself in High School when I was 18, so I think the idea partly came from there.  I started with 1 1/2 pieces of Strathmore Watercolor paper that I had gotten at Michaels.  This paper took the cyanotype wonderfully last week, and it’s extremely hardy for getting wet and rinsing.  It’s also pretty stiff, so the book would stand up well.

Cutting and folding, I discovered how wonderful the Bone Folding tool is.  I have always folded and scored heavy papers with my fingernail to be able to rip them.  The Bone folder is like a big more effective fingernail.  I love using it to score the paper for folding too.  I will never again be without a bone folder.

Next, I mixed up some more cyanotype solution and sensitized the paper, giving it a double coat.  It was very humid again in the bathroom with the door closed once the chemistry was in there drying, so I speeded the process with a blow dryer.  I felt I needed to get it done:  the sun was shining brightly and I didn’t know what the next day would be like.  Also, my brother in law was coming up from New Jersey for a visit and to help take care of the kids because Julie and I are so busy this week.  I felt it would be awkward trying to make artwork by lying naked in the dun on a strip of paper with company.

The paper dried and Julie was available to help me make the exposure.  I laid out an old piece of polystryrene insulation from the garage and put blankets to protect the light sensitive paper from the sun.  It was hard laying it out under the blankets, and I made a mistake which is visible in the final print: I didn’t fully unfold the book before arranging my body on it.  I caught the mistake soon after exposing myself and the paper to the sun, and fixed it, but you can see a double exposure in the legs.

We exposed the paper for 10 minutes in the bright sunlight, and then I re-covered it, folded it and put it into a trash bag and a box.  I took it in and rinsed it for about 5 minutes in the bathtub.  Here is the book drying:

It worked!  I was pretty happy with it.

Soon after that, Julie’s brother Michael arrived.  He had stopped at my mom’s house to pick up some things to bring up because my mom is selling her house and needs to get rid of things.  Among the stuff Michael brought up were some old portfolios, mostly from when I was in school.  I looked in one and right away I came across my cyanotypes from High School.  Here was the one I ended up using parts of for the cover:

So the piece became even more about time, with my 18 year old hands holding my 48 year old body.

The Second Piece, an accordion fold book

I don’t have much in the way of pictures to document my accordion fold book.  I have discovered that I still don’t enjoy working with glue, and I had a lot on my finders during this project.  I made a book I’m calling the mirror, using the portraits of Julie and the kids from last week, when I photographed them for my image transfer pieces.  I was going to do an image transfer for this one too, paint on the pages with gouache and layer the transparencies.  but I decided that I was more interested in it as a photo book.  I had reversed the images for the rocket piece, so that I would have options because I knew I needed faces looking left and right.  Looking at the images in Lightroom, I thought they made interesting patterns of light and dark, and maybe looked like people who were in isolation in the pandemic, which is the experience I think about when I look at these pictures.  I glued the images onto more Strathmore Watercolor paper, and cut chipboard for the covers.  I thought and looked long and hard for the right material to cover them, and in the end I chose vellum over the cyanotype marks that were already there from when I coated my first cyanotypes on the chipboard.  I thought this was an ok solution, because it seemed similar to the way the faces are veiled in the images.

The Third Piece: a pamphlet style book

For this book, I decided to use some other images that had just come up from my mom’s house.  These are from museums I went to with a drawing class as a student, and seeing them again brought back memories of those days.

Our professor had told us to only draw what interested us as we looked, and that was great advice for students I think.  It means that you address your drawing with a sense of purpose I think and find ways to say more with less marks.  This book also required a search for materials that I felt would be appropriate to the subject matter.  I thought of using old dinosaur pictures I have an a map-like paper book from when I was a kid, and of a page of hominid and human skulls from an old National Geographic, in order to make a connection to the current existential danger of climate change and mass extinction.  But I decided that this book is really more about a personal exploration of where I have been and where I am going.

So I chose some grey drawing paper that has been around for a while and a fabric scrap that looks cheerful which goes with the grey.  I prepared the fabric for binding by backing it with some light semi-transparent drawing paper.

This process worked very well.  Because the leaves in this case were individual sheets of paper and not folded, I followed Jean’s and Derin’s advice and made little leaves like tabs onto which to glue the pages.

I glued the pages in the order I wanted them and sewed them into the book.

Here is the cover finished.   A little glue squeezed out from under the binding–I am too impatient with it.  I think if I do book binding again though I’ll be more careful now that I know the process.

Please see the next post about the finished pieces for more information.