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Ruminations, Bindings, Entries

Gatefold binding, “True Places Unmapped”

Slowly producing more and more pieces, some I’m happy with, others less so, and making lots of notes about which things I’ll do differently on the next iteration.

Responded to a few Calls for Entry, got a few jury selections, and am grateful for modern technology making all this process of conveying images and applications to be much less of a time consuming barrier — in the 80s 90s, it was Kodachrome /Ektachrome slides, multiple copies, tiny labels with critical info (surname, title, media, date) and return postage for the return of your slides (and hope the postal system doesn’t lose them in transit either direction).

Coptic binding variant, “Fetch, Vol II: the power of wind and water”

I have been taking a number of workshops to add to my skills, and bookbinding has really resonated with me; the more I learn and get involved, the more I enjoy all its possibilities as a vehicle for my ruminations.

Flag / accordion variant; “Only the World Ending (Begin Again)”

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Return from Hiatus

Coptic bound book, blue cover with blue-and-black marbling trim near the spine.
Coptic bound book, completed for personal use

At last, posting once more. My drafts folder is full of posts in draft form, but the past several years have been…complicated. Covid, but also caretaking efforts and all that that includes. Very little spare bandwidth.

Slowly, I’ve been able to return and reclaim my time and space in the studio, and I’ve spent the past year acquiring new skills and pursuing interests that I wasn’t able to before. It’s been quite a process.

I’ll post later about some of my travels, but for the moment, let this be a start, with an image of one of my new pieces — this one just for my own use, a book I bound for capturing ephemera (ticket stubs, receipts, notes, contacts, quotations), completed while traveling to Detroit to learn some blacksmithing skills.

I’ve since been accepted into two juried shows coming up, and I’ll post about that in a bit. Still working on some additional pieces that I plan to submit to some other calls.

One thing at a time…

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Dinosaurs

Having a little fun with some dinosaurs that a friend frankensteined and that crack me up. They caught my whim and she lent me some to play with. I’m taking them in adventures and occasionally tweeting or Instagraming the resulting silly. She calls them semisaurs

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Unexpected Werewolves

I went into the local hardware corporate chain warehouse labyrinth to get some lag bolts and washers for my new workbench. Maybe some wood screws. You know how it is, you go in for one thing, suddenly you have 10 other random items at the checkout. Hopefully you succeeded in obtaining the original item you’d gone in for…

So the first thing I see on walking in is a display of animatronic lawn display critters for Halloween (my favorite holiday). I was amused and cheered. If I have to endure incursions in August every year from the Season of Obligatory Cheer™️, then at least I should get a little balm for my own soul in the form of kitschy skeletons dancing and clattering their teeth. Also, pumpkins and bats. I love bats. That’s another topic for another day though.

So I went in for lag bolts, and as I’m trying to find where they’ve stowed them, I have to wander the aisles. Along the way, about every minute or so, wolfmanjack there lets out a mournful howl.

It’s making everyone giggle though, and in each aisle, there’s at least one person chiming in with a quiet, friendly, off-key “aaawwwwooooooooo?” Followed inevitably by laughter.

I’m glad some of us can still laugh at ourselves.

…and no, I’m not entirely sure if that’s a crematorium on the left there, perhaps I should go back and enquire…

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Foraging

Yes, foraging for materials.

It’s a strange process, that starts with some material or other catching my eye, bothering my mind, but also bouncing around in my head demanding to be given a new purpose.

It could be merely because I noticed a preponderance of something, like wire coat hangers being thrown away in bags and tangled clumps. It could be the individual shape of an item (bottle caps cried out to be dapped into pretty little half-domes, bosses on something wearable – and readable, as it turned out), or it could be its material properties, like the plastic strapping that gets fastened once, then cut off a package, and discarded without so much as a second glance. An item at once necessary and protective, but then abruptly it becomes a hindrance and nuisance (plus, they don’t seem to be commonly recyclable).

I don’t always have to scrounge too hard to obtain what I need. Once I explain what I’m doing, everyone I ask seems enthusiastic to offload the scrap material that often accumulates, unwanted. Often, they also express enthusiasm for getting to, in some way, contributing to a piece of art, or at least giving scrap material new value and use.

Not that this doesn’t remind me, also, of the old George Carlin talk about how leftovers are wonderful because they give you such a good feeling, twice! First, when you put them neatly in the refrigerator you feel virtuous, “I’m saving food!” …and again three weeks later when you find them at the back of the fridge, becoming a biohazard, and you throw them away: “I’m saving someone’s life!”

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Current reading

Have been reading a few titles from the library about people’s thoughts on the nature of public art and interactions with the public, the role of engagement etc.