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.

ANOTHER FINISHED PROJECT

I am starting to really love my 'down time'. It has taken a month, but I am really in to it now. I have just finished a work which I started in a Glen Skein workshop in 2007. I have called it 'Time Peace'. It started out as an homage to the important women in my life, but has evolved to be a literal and figurative reference to time - past, present and future, especially the desire to 'live in the moment' with love.

        tiny books       crystal ball     antique watch parts

The fabulous array of old watch parts were sent to me by friends Carla and Richard who are keen Clock club members. They found a big box of old stuff at an antique clock market and thought of me. Lovely friends!!

I have even included secret compartments - what fun.