on (enter word here)

i'm feeling good about this one. i finally settled on an idea for my book arts final. and it feels like a good next step. initially i thought i'd do some sort of "desk set" of books. my mid term was a 3 inch binder of found color paper squares, and i was on the verge of doing some out of control indexing. all the elements were ready. i saw a cheap faux-wood plywood desk at the thrift store for $9.90 that i thought i could display them on. i figured i'd finish my rolodex visual dictionary that i started last year. and i wanted to explore doing a perfect bound stack of paper to fit into one of those "page a day" desk calendar holders.

but something wasn't feeling right. the pieces didn't seem motivated. and i put off working on anything for a good two weeks.

after a rejuvinating thanksgiving break, and a huge shopping spree at arnies in houghton lake, i finally came to an idea that i could move forward with. it builds off of a lot of what i've been scratching at with my books so far. one of the books i made (for post binding) was a "slices of life" collection of sketchbook pages and notes and other random ephemera. the thought there was that all of these ah-ha moments sometimes get lost in journals and notebooks, never to be seen again. but if you were to start tearing pages out and compiling them all in one place, you would see common threads that keep coming up. so i went back to this book and pulled words out that kept reappearing. i ended up with at least 30 post-it notes cluttering my desk with them written on it. i then narrowed it down to nine. (for no particular reason.)

now for the key component: i'm going to organize other people's notes and thoughts about those words into individual books. (an "on" series. "on ideas, on lessons, on growth, etc.) the biggest part of that all? doing a final project that depends on people other than myself. and when all is said and done i get to bind them in colored foam covers. (so the color spectrum lover in me is happy.) my move now is to start collecting these notes from people, just handwritten on little sheets of paper to scan and print in black and white for the pages.

and some book arts

one class this semester where the homework is guaranteed not to be a drag is artists books. it's basically having scrapbooking scheduled into my weekly list of things to do. the class is part of my book arts "concentration," artists books to me is the connection between the "low art" of scrapbooking and the "high" fine arts of painting/drawing/etc. (and according to my teacher, scrapbooking is the enemy. obviously i had some disagreement with that statement. and the tacky paste paper we made today made me question that book arts pedistol even more.)

this class typically comes after paper making and book structures (where you learn ancient japaneese binding techniques) and focuses more on the conceptual construction of a book. the class pretty much goes like this. a demo or two in class, try out the new technique, and for homework make a cohesive book in that fashion to bring to the critique next week. it moves pretty fast, but it's nice to keep trying different things and see how far you can go in a week.




this week the assignment was to make a book of at least 8 pages held together at one point. (and one point only!) always a fan of the ready made, i found this towel (already single point bound courtesy of rite aid stocking) in our kitchen drawer and thought it would be an innovative example of "pages" and "binding" in the everyday. it was a lot of fun to make (i totally got carried away one night with the faux-needlepoint type.)