Saturday, February 18, 2012

A Book of Numbers

Last week, Fiona and I attended a Glen Skein workshop at the Cooroy Butter Factory Arts precinct. We had a great day and played with collage and printing onto book pages. Glen is very non precious about his printmaking, so we used rollers, heavy plastic plates, textures and fabrics - both positive and negative images. Check out his website - his work is amazing - so beautiful and full of mysterious text and imagery.
Glen showed us a quick and easy binding technique creating crosses on the spine,
I haven't glued down the end papers yet - not sure whether I should do this or leave the book 'undoable'. What do the book binders say about this?? 
I wasn't greatly happy with my printmaking results [a hot day and water based inks didn't help], but I played with text for the first time, and stuck with circles and stumpy straight lines. Loved the text - snippets of words and the numbers appeared serendipidously [is this a word?].
Once home I did my usual thing - doubled the number of pages, made the book into a 1 to 10 text [8 pages for each number], and made a cover.
It is 13cm x 9.5cm x 2.5 cm
I have been playing with rusting, dying and staining sheets of paper [tea, inks, 'bruised' textured paper] and have ended up with some fascinating and beautiful results - many have been used in this book.
Here is a selection of pages....
Great fun - thanks Glen.

24 comments:

  1. What is it about binding one's art work into a book that gives the art an added authority? I love these pages and the whole. Wonderful work!

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  2. après les lettres..les nombres..un travail formidable!

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  3. Each photo brought a whispered "Oh!" from me. May I admit to book and workshop envy...not to mention workshop buddy envy.

    Your book is stunning! I can only imagine the surprises in texture, graphics, color, etc. that it holds if viewed in person. Thank you for sharing it. I'll definitely be back to visit in awe.

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  4. Your work is amazing, I love every page. Enough design to make it compelling but room for some journaling too.
    xoxo Kim

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  5. Yum, yum, yum! What a great collection of pages. Love it!

    Wish me luck with word verification. I can only get past the dreaded WV i in 6 or 10 tries.

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  6. I love every page! They remind me of dream sequences.

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  7. fab - yes please do finish the binding!

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  8. A splendiferous result... must've been SOME workshop.

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  9. Love those pages. I did a 5 day workshop with Glen a few years ago, a lovely man would love to do one like yours the binding looks interesting.

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  10. I agree with Leslie. This is yum, yum, yum! Great book.

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  11. oh its beautiful
    love the warmth of the colors and the texture, and the look of the text, its cool.

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  13. N- you have demonstrated just how much texture you can fit into one book - heaps. Go well. B

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  14. Love that book,
    I wonder if Glen is heading down Victoria way at all.

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  15. EBP, Elfi and Jennifer - thank you for your comments of support - the book making is becoming quite addictive for me...
    NB- I hadn't thought of journaling - what should I write??...
    Annie, Eric and Jo - thanks for the feedback - flipping the pages certainly adds a new dimension to the project...
    Penny, Aussie Jo - yes, Glen's workshops are inspirational - perhaps email him for future workshop opps.....
    Leslie - don't know what Google has done to us, but I agree with the new word verification nightmare .... ughhhhh,
    Thanks Ronnie - I will glue down end papers...
    Rosie, Barry, India - yes, you can never have enough texture in your life - hahahah.
    Thanks to all for the wonderful communications - love the feedback xoxoxoxo

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  16. wonderful! bind it up. you'll like it more!

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  17. Just fabulous, I wanna make one! The whole book looks amazing. Any change of you giving a workshop!!

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  18. wow- inspiring and how cool is this- man- the coolest!!

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  19. Hi Velma, Mieke and Kristiina, thanks for your comments - I am about to 'bind it up' to make it cooler, and sure Mieke- talk to Ken about a workshop :)

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  20. you are so fortunate.. I would love to take a workshop from Glen Skein.. I think is work is very creative and intuitive.. and his blog is very artistic. your book is terrific.. love the text and the textures.

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  21. en regardent une deuxième fois.. toujours aussi enthousiaste de ton travail!

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  22. Thanks for coming back a second time, Elfi, and for making another comment.
    Hi Donna, I'm sure you'd love Glen's work - he is very intuitive and extremely focussed :)

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  23. How utterly gorgeous is this... Found you via Robyn McClendon's page on Pinterest. For a texture junkie, this is just fabulous! I love your muted colour palette and all the yummy texture, and especially the Oriental scripting. The cover is a dream. For me, a book is the best way to display art and so much more satisfying than a picture on the wall. It is tactile, and interactive. I would just love to hold this book in my hands...

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