Looking back...

We end this year in the toughest of times; and look to the next one for some relief, and some good moments for so many who are suffering these fires that keep our country burning.

Each year I use the time between Christmas and New year to ponder, reflect, celebrate achievements and plan. Part of that is looking back over the year and the work I have made and pulling together the ones that I love the most; or the ones that made me smile or meant something to me.

It may simply be that by the end of the year it feels like it was a  pretty patchy year (I probably say that every year) and that I am not sure that I achieved much at all; but then I start to wander through the works and realise there were some good things in there, so here we go, in no particular order as ever - just alphabetical.

My year in review:

1. Botanical Dyeing

Teaching and attending workshops brings you into contact with people with marvellous ideas and resources to share, and the story of a book that a student brought to class which then inspired me to have a go at botanical dyeing both here and in Scotland was a revelation - and I do so love the threads and their pegs!

2. Coasters

Planning ahead for a lengthy stay in the Scottish Highlands meant I was able to prepare some fabric and take some thread and sit and stitch some coasters for the cottage. I love that these are now part of our life over there...

3. Grief Cards

I have been so happy that folk 'get' the idea of my grief cards and purchase them and share them with others.  It has been a real joy to make these simply illustrated cards, with tender words and thoughts for when words are hard to find.

4. I would have loved a sunburnt country

This was special.  It grew from feeling helpless about our government's refugee policy of detention; and sorrow that so many find their incarceration unbearable and take their own life. But also, that our health and security systems fail them and they die unnecessarily.  The State Library of Queensland purchased it and understood that artists need to bear witness to atrocities, and as a society, we need to keep and protect what they say as part of the public record.

5. Justice

I was delighted to be asked to repeat this commission in a variable way.  The organisation does such grand work, and these words capture the experience of women who are victims of domestic abuse and how the service helps them, empowers them and encourages them.

6. Light and Love

Once more, in response to tragedy, I made these wee books.  After the Mosque attack in New Zealand that killed so many, Jacinda Ardern showed great leadership, compassions and courage and I used words from Martin Luther King to remind us how light overcomes darkness and that Love overcomes hate. I sent one of the books to Jacinda to say thank you.

7. Ode to Stones

In last year's review I hoped that I might be able to include these in this year's; and I just made it! They were problematic in a few ways, but really helped me focus on solving problems and resolving issues satisfactorily. I am pleased they are here this year!

8. Overwintering 5

These wee books feel precious in the hand. They work with poetic words and images and I love how I managed to pull a bunch of things together and make them work.

9. Pockets are Political

My obsession with pockets and the lack thereof in women's clothing persists; and I like this poster and the words that accompany it.  I have had lots of good responses to it from people who have read the words or heard them spoken - I am pretty sure all women get the need for more and better pockets!!!

10. Sometimes the Soul...

Once again I was honoured to work on theSophia Nugent-Siegal Prize, this time with the words of
MTC Cronin. My main contribution here was the original calligraphic rendering of the title followed by the hand stitching and numbering of the booklets.  I was happy with how the calligraphy worked out and also to be able to provide a hand-stitched option for the final book.

Looking back it was a  lovely year with some nice pieces that gave me and others joy.

Thanks for wandering down ye olde memory lane with me for a bit; but more importantly for stopping by through the year; for leaving thoughts or words in response to what I do and for generally just being a nice part of the interweb to spend time in.

Wishing you all good things, happier days, and a bright and safe new year where I hope we all find time for making, creating and sharing beauty.

bookartobject5 - overwintering 5

I have been part of bookartobject5 based around the the poems, journals and videos of poet John Bennett.

We were given his words and images and left to our own devices to create an artists' books that would be shown in an exhibition at the Coffs Harbour Regional Gallery over summer. We were in two groups and were to make enough to share with our group members as well as one for the poet and one for the exhibition.

I read through all the work and worked thru the imagery and there was just this small fragment that kept pulling me back.

A portion of a poem called overwintering 5, these were the words:

Ruddy Turnstones close on wind's compass bearing
beside circular depressions fashioned by stingrays,
the wind whistles the distance they own,
the sea is having its say in the next field.

I chose these words because the imagery was strong for me – the compass, the stingray memories in the sand, the wind whispering…

I also looked up Ruddy Turnstones and really liked the look them and how they go about their feeding by...turning over stones of course!

I really wanted to work across a range of processes to produce this book, and in the end I did. I created a collagraph plate to emboss the wrap-around cover which reflects the pebbles and stones that get ‘turned over’, and I created a solar plate etching to hint at the stingray’s marks in the sand. The words are hand set and hand printed in a tiny 8pt typeface, and the fragment of the poem is set on round pages, suggesting the compass points, which are also de-bossed by hand.

Sometimes I like to take words and be inspired by them to create something abstracted from them; at other times I like to re-produce and honour the words in a more specific interpretative way, and I chose this latter approach here. In the end, it is a small fragment of a book, with a fragment of words, yet somehow it is whole.

It is only 10cm x 10cm.  The cover wrap around is made of 160gsm paper.  The book is light as a bird.

The cover

the title page

I staged the words down the round pages, and if you look closely you can see the de-bossed compass points...

the colophon to finish

 some breathing space (there is also some at the start of the book but I don't have a photo!)

and the back cover.

A sweet wee thing.

Overwintering process

Of all the things I have done of late, this wee book is one of the ones that at first, looks like nothing much; yet I know how many processes went into it and how much I thought about them all and how hard I tried to get them to work subtly and without distracting from each other.

I hope at second glance some of this is apparent.

From the start, I wanted this to be a book where I tried to bring together a range of processes. I did that and I think/hope it worked.

I began back in January with the covers.

The words are about ruddy turnstones, the birds, and I loved the description of them turning over stones to forage for food beneath.  The cover is a simple, embossing, white on white. I prepared a collagraph plate and just never inked it.

The back ground of the pages references the indentations made in sand by sting rays.  I had seen these myself at Heron Island, and I converted some images to solar plates and worked hard to print subtly, in the colour of sand.

And then, the words themselves.  I knew I wanted it to be small book, that could be held in the hand - delicate if you will.  And I took possession of some tiny 8pt Granby Light type earlier in the year and thought that would work perfectly - the lines just fit across the pages.

The ink I mixed to be a ruddy/rusty colour to reference the birds.

Rather than putting a verse on a page, I chose to put one line on each page, which sort of encourages you to read the the book slowly, but also involves turning the pages, like turning the stones...

At some point in the process I decide the shape of the inside pages holding the words could be different. It could be circular like a compass, and then within the book, the words of the poem would be set apart and made special.

Of course working out how to cut a circle and leave enough to stitch through the gutter/spine meant a few trials!

Lastly I wanted to reference the compass marks of the poem and played around with inking and printing them; or using lead type and stamping them on by hand.  As ever, I ended up going for the subtle approach.  Perhaps its too subtle, but I stamped N, S, E and W on the circular pages in the position they are on a compass. One on each page as you move through the book.

I made sure to leave some breathing space pages between the cover and the words, and letterpress printed the colophon on the back of one page and we were done.

So despite its apparent simplicity it is a complex wee thing. My favourite kind of simplicity!

I shall post a bit more about the finished book once I am confident it has landed at its destinations across the country and the world.

Books about to fly

I have been involved in a wee book exchange this year - working with the poet John Bennett's words as part of bookartobject 5.

The works will go on show at Coffs Harbour in New South Wales in early December, so I am about to send mine out to the other participants as well as to the Gallery and the poet himself.

Once they start moving around the word and arriving I will post more about mine; but until then I did spend some lovely time preparing and packing them on Friday.

here they are - all of them wrapped and packed and sitting on the type case that houses the type I used for the text (Granby Light 8pt - that is, very tiny!!!)

The coloured thread links to the words about the birds inside; and I embossed my mark on a wee card of introduction which is tucked inside the parcel.

I do love the way the random threads line up.

I managed to find a reasonable colour-matched pen for writing my note.

I addressed them with just a touch of calligraphy.

And tomorrow I shall post them!

Slow progress for a wee book

I have an edition due in November and I have been working towards it all year, knowing that my time  this year was going to be bit hither and thither as they say.

From the beginning, I wanted to use a variety of techniques and imagery to pull together a small but hopefully sweet book. That meant I needed lots of time to do all of the processes.

Back here in February, I was looking for imagery and preparing solar plates. A week later I had cut pages and was printing.

Then there was the setting of type and deciding of internal pages and the layout of words...

The typefaces is tiny - 8pt - which means the individual pieces are tiny and the eyes do boggle a wee bit.

Here is the colophon before proofing.  I found a mistake or two.

Loads of notes in my notebook thank goodness as there was often a rather lengthy time in between steps.

 Printing the four lines of verse.

The paper was fairly lightweight - around 130gsm, so the impression of the type pushed through a bit more than I would have liked, distracting one from the words on the page, Not to worry, I just sat quietly for a bit and gently rubbed it all back down with a teflon bone folder.

And then I de-bossed, by hammering, a few initials here and there.

I folded the covers, which had been de-bossed using a collagraph plate way back when in January!

And then prepared the book section and once again, trimmed the foredges, this time by hand as the books are small (10cm x 10cm) and there weren't too many pages.

Isn't that just the loveliest image to sit with before I stitch?

A printing weekend

Well I certainly got down and dirty with some ink this weekend!  Friday and Saturday, I spent printing the solar plates I made last weekend.  I printed front and back of pages for my book that I am makign in an a edition of 15.

So that was quite a lot of pages and printing.

I was really happy with the way they worked out. The solar plate images are just enough of a hint and the paper took the ink well and generally speaking, so far so good.

My photographs never really do the work justice, but I was trying to hint at the colour of sand here.  The sand I had in my mind versus the sand of the environment I am working with were two different things, so no really bright golden sands.  I tried to come up with a vague colour match and had to head to my trusty palette of etching inks.

I ended up matching it best by using a base of white, a hint of Payne's Grey and a bit more burnt umber. Yay.

And then on Sunday Barry and I printed the letterpress poster commission we have to do.  The pages are quite long and thin (76cm x 28cm) which means you really do need two people to get the paper into position, and to keep it there.

Also we were using Italian type which is that bit higher than US, Australian or UK type. A completely different type high!  which means that it took a lot more effort on the manual proofing press to get the roller over the type.  Always learning.

Large wood type really soaks up the ink, so there was lots of renewals of ink. Simply black this time.

We made a good team and even though it took several hours, we delayed lunch that bit longer so that we could do a few fun things with the type before we cleaned up and dissed it.

Here are some of the lovely images from the leftover ink as we printed it off the type, rather than waste it by taking it off with oil.

The studio now has paper and pages drying everywhere - on every flat surface, as well as hanging by magnet to steel posts!

A huge weekend of printing, but a lot of progress made.