Thursday Thoughts...

“Books won't stay banned. They won't burn. Ideas won't go to jail. In the long run of history, the censor and the inquisitor have always lost. The only sure weapon against bad ideas is better ideas. The source of better ideas is wisdom. The surest path to wisdom is a liberal education.” 

Alfred Whitney Griswold, Essays on Education

Mr Griswold was an historian and educator, and a President of Yale University. He was also, I think, reading other quotes of his, quite a wise man, tho I know not all that much about him.

For me, there is wisdom in these words. The sense that the short term gain of banning or burning books feels like victory for those who achieve it in that moment; is not I think a long term win at all. I oftentimes visualise books being covered over with whatever, and then seeing them pop up like new shoots elsewhere. A bit like weeds perhaps, but the idea that you could stop them being shared or read or spoken about is pretty nonsensical.

Of course, if you make enough fuss about them, then that will only drive folk to go and discover what the fuss is about as well.

I really like the logical progression he makes from bad ideas being overcome by better ideas which emanate from wisdom which is gleaned from a liberal education. No surprises I am a fan of a liberal education!

Any education that encourages you to read broadly, seek out opposing views, try to understand them, challenge them, and debate them; or one that provides you with such strong evidence and research to support sound and sensible ideas is surely a fine thing.

Araki Takako, Bible with Black Page (1982). Porcelain with decal glaze

Continuing with the nesting book

 The pages are coming along well for the new nesting book. I continue to struggle with how much to add in, or leave out. How soft and gentle to be; how not to overcrowd things; how to make it friendly enough to read without distracting. Heaven only knows why I still have all this fluff going on in my head when I make a book, but here I am.

I have done the writing, and am happy with it. It is soft, it is subtle and it is legible.

Nidus is the title of the book - Latin for nest.

Some of the words on the pages...

A bunch of the pages tumbled together.

Here is the embossing plate I used for the nest. Back in the days of Pas de Deux when Susan and I were collaborating mightily, she used this embossing to help illustrate a book of mine; and one of hers. I borrowed it from her recently to see if it could have another book opportunity. 

Because we sold our etching press, I only have access to a proofing press these days so it was quite the challenge to create the pressure to get a full emboss. I also think the paper was quite heavy, but it was the colour I was after so needs must.

In amongst things I have completed a small calligraphic commission, and am preparing for my artist talk in Brisbane next Saturday. 

Oh! And we are still hoping to get to Scotland in a few weeks, but there are of course complexities. We are going slowly and steadily with our plans and changes, but are hopeful...

A screen shot of the thumbnails of the slides in my artist talk!

Another nesting book...

 I have been enjoying my book about nests a lot, and on the way through started to create some more pages that could possibly be used for another book.

The pages are all grey, which I like, and I imagined a really soft book, so I was hoping to be able to get white wording onto the pages (not the black of the typewriter).

As much as I love white, softness and there, not there looks, even I knew this wouldn't look good or be legible for most folk.  Sometimes subtle is tooooo subtle. Although I tried all sort of pens and inks and pencils!

So I checked again with the black - and really it was too stark and demanding. It didn't feel as if it reflected the quietude of nest building.

So all the pens and pencils I could imagine came out and off we went again. Luckily for me B now has a lot of grey pens and I could test quite a few.

As much as I loved the very fine 0.1 pale greys, when you stepped away from them you could barely read them. In the end the warm grey 0.3 was the best choice. Not as harsh or stark as the dark greys and blacks; but legible unlike the light greys. It felt like Goldilocks I tell you!

And here are the grey pages with this beautiful soft emboss of a nest. The bottom card is true to the light and colour; the tilted one is far darker than the real thing, but offers a look at the embossing.

And so i set up a template to start writing...

And began...

There have been some dreary days here and there, but I brought these bright flower inside recently and they were rather cheering!

Thursday Thoughts...

"If you are depressed you are living in the past. If you are anxious you are living in the future. If you are at peace you are living in the present". 

Lao Tzu

I oftentimes read a quote like this and something clicks. Perhaps it is that I respond to simple theories and categorisations; or perhaps it because somebody has captured the essence of something, from which we can build.

When I first read this, I wondered how accurate it could be, and I tried to analyse it. I think like many truisms or simple statements it can hold up; yet can also be challenged.

The last part about being at peace if you are living in the present, seems to be strongly linked to mindfulness approaches and that being present is all that we really can be. That this moment is really all that we have.  I pondered how this is oftentimes true; if we are here in the now, then the past and the future are not affecting us, along with the burdens and or gifts that they carry.

However; of course, for many folk right here and right now is the fearful place. It is the place of bombing, of sirens, of burning; the place of great sadness or of anger. The present is not always peaceful; nor are we sure to be at peace if we are present. But broadly speaking it holds in the general spirit of things I think.

Living in the future and being anxious was a good way for me to think about it as well; because for me anxiety is nearly always about something that is out there, to be done, to be faced, to await. Anxiety for me seems to be linked to waiting for something to happen and wondering how awful it will be; or assuming that a moment in the future will be stressful. Or simply that the future itself is stressful. Which at the moment it kind of is.

And the first/final notion of being depressed being linked to living in the past was also a simple descriptor which got me thinking. I am fortunate to not have lived experience of any serious or lengthy depressions. I have had sadness and grief and dark times and I wonder how much of that is about regret, or loss of things from the past. Death and grief lead you to be sad for the loss of relationships that you had; but I am not sure I am qualified to interrogate this notion too closely.  There is however, something in this notion that has a ring of small truth to it, for me.

A friend recently sent this photo of the lands near our cottage in Scotland. I look a this and I can breathe. The air, the empty spaces, the long long vistas... a place to feel present.

Boxes and displaying things

I have almost finished my book for Narratives. The pages are done and the cover is done and the colophon is done. The backing sheets have been glued into place. I have gathered some extra bibs and bobs.

And my mind has turned to storage and display. I had planned to make a display tray with a divider to hold the book and some bits alongside it.  At different points over the past few weeks I have watched some videos; drawn some ideas; plotted out a path or paths to making a box with grey board and book cloth. I chose the book cloth and got the grey board!

Sunday was the day I had on my To Do List - make box. 

So I set aside time and sat down to think my way through once again. Playing around here with some cardboard and getting a feel for how big I wanted it to be; how high I wanted the walls to be.

I decided I would do a trial run using Bristol Board/very lightweight card.

It was great to get out of my head and into my hands. As I went about doing the things I thought I should do (in my head) my hands remembered that I needed to do other things, and do some things differently. Thank you hands.

So I made a display tray with tape holding it together and thought yep I have the dimensions right and some of the logic about which side are slightly higher; which ones might be slightly longer than the internal dimensions and so on.

I was happy with the dimensions - it felt as if the book would sit nicely in its place and the other compartment could hold the extra bibs and bobs - the proportions worked. 

You can just see it here below, but I also wanted to include a notch in the divider so that you could lift the book out quite easily.

I showed it to Barry at this point and we agreed I had a good plan and the thing looked good. I then went - now I just have to work out how to cover it. And I pondered that in my brain and came up with some thoughts. My brain was really hurting here! I thought I might cover the divider before gluing it in and then when I looked at it I thought oh my goodness; it is going to be really hard to cover that notch neatly.

And I stopped dead right there.

This was the point at which I thought I have run into a real road block. I realised I had bitten off far more than I could chew and that I needed to re-assess everything about this book and its presentation and display. It felt as if there was no way I could bring a beautiful and professional looking finish to this work with my current plans and thoughts.

I had also planned to do another tray that would fit over the top and which you would lift off to reveal the book and its bits. Whilst this seemed simpler than the divider tray - it also would have to look perfect and so there was yet another job to do.

So it was back to the drawing board and looking at a multiplicity of alternatives that might somehow do what I wanted.

Dear Reader, I am still contemplating! Fingers crossed something reveals itself to me in a way that looks good and is manageable within the timeframe (just under three weeks). Stay tuned.

In addition to the twigs, I have been gathering other bits I thought could go with the book....

Much pondering still needed!

So many steps to a book

Well, in between rain showers and storms I have been slowly pottering along progressing a couple of things. A calligraphic commission has been posted, the book for Narratives is edging closer, and the second book of Silences is oh so close to being finalised!

Here I am creating a prototype to double check that the pages I have printed are in fact the pages I meant to print; and that they are in the order in which I planned it. For some reason I reached the end of printing and worried that I might have forgotten something, hence the double check prototype and the good news was that all was on track. Tick.

Laying out all the printed pages ready to fold.

Folded.

Collated 

The delight of a deckled edge on the cover.

The task ahead after stitching - trimming the pages down. At this point I felt a bit sad we no longer had a guillotine; but I knew if I took things slowly and had some rests in between times that I would be able to hand trim the 21 books.

Evidence of ongoing trimming. I actually took this shot at what I thought was the end of the task; only to discover a bit later that there were 5 books hidden under a sheet of paper that still needed to be stitched AND trimmed! Laugh.

Now just some lovely closeups of the spines and the edges.  I never tire of looking at these.

And then I began to tag them and make piles for sorting - which ones get handed out; which ones get posted within Australia; which ones head to the UK; and which ones go to Canada and the US. I think I have it all straight in my brain.

Now to wrap, pack and post and take a walk through all the second silences...

Thursday Thoughts...

"......collecting scraps of talk, setting them down like birdsong in my notebook, where someday I would go prospecting for my life." 

 Linda Pastan, Waiting for my Life

It interesting that I came across this one this morning.  Interesting only because just yesterday, I was putting together my presentation for the Artist's Talk I am doing in Brisbane on 28 March, and part of the chat goes something along these lines - "words are the way I make my way through the world. Some artists carry a journal around with them and make quick studies; sketch an outline or a scene. Me, I gather words. Snippets of conversations, beautiful descriptions. Clear and concise understandings". 

And lo, so too does this quote - altho far more poetically.

Perhaps Ms Pastan is speaking more of gathering and collecting scraps  of talk such that they can be used in the future to remind her of something in her life. To hold a light on a time which was important; people who mattered; or things that she learned.

For me; the words I capture spark something into the future. They act as some form of inspiration that might lead to work; they somehow describe something so perfectly that I want to respond to it artistically.

I really do like the notion of collecting scraps of talk and setting them down like birdsong...

from somewhere on instagram...

The love of nests

 I got a wonderfull surprise last week when B came home from his art class, bearing a box with three nests and some eggs in it! His marvellous teacher had told him to "take them home so Fiona can photograph them"!

And that is exactly what I did.

The eggs are a mix of chicken eggs and quail eggs and don't belong to the actual nests themselves, but they do look lovely within them.

Here follows a bunch of photos in all sorts way in celebration of nests (and birds, and feathers, and eggs).

I love the fragment of fabric here...

The final ones are taken using the app that the square point of sale device which we use recommends for taking shots of items for retail online shops...interesting and slightly ethereal.

Deep sigh. They are such glorious things. So clever, so remarkable, so robust.

International Women's Day

 8 March is International Women's Day - first celebrated in 1911, the Day seeks to celebrate the social, economic, cultural and political achievements of women. It also marks a call to action to accelerate gender equality.

As we sit and watch a world, led mostly by middle-aged or old white men, take us to war in so many places, wreak havoc, and cause death, despair and destruction I wonder to myself - wouldn't women do it better? And I am mostly certainly sure that they would.

But here we are. 

In small ways we do what we can to promote women; to uphold and support women, and to cheer women on. To have their backs, to bolster and boost them and to promote their excellence. Go girls!!!

I make work about women, and I make work about women friends. I hope to do a much larger body of work about women friends mid year; but for today, I am sharing my feminist poster works and postcards.

I have loaded them into the online shop and for the next week, all women's work is 10% off.

A sample of them along with two of my Fragile Gains series.

One of my favourite A4 posters...

This one speaks to me so much of all that is held within the Epstein files - such depravity and abuse of power.

We are so tired of it all - we have had enough.

Women still struggle to be heard when they are talked over or mansplained to.

This should be the starting point in any claim of sexual assault. So awful that so many women have testified to assaults in the Epstein files, and still...no justice for them yet.

We are all so much more than this; and women are worthy of respect, empathy, and understanding even if they aren't your daughter.

A catch cry for women everywhere to keep on protesting, to keep on resisting, to keep on writing and calling their political representatives...

There is only one set of these seven postcards left...

And these fragile eggshells, speak so eloquently of the gains we have made, which we must protect.