Jumpin' at the Labside ...

After all the cryptic-ness that was this entry, here is what I finally produced:


So, the rationale ... erm, I still don't know what bacteria have to do with jazz (I did find a nice quote about bacteria and music that I put inside the front cover), but anyways, I ended up doing a very long concertina book, kind of inspired by how 'Peter and the Wolf' is put together - ie, each character in the story represented by a musical instrument. I went through my whole collection of swing music looking for something with very distinct solos by particular instruments. In the end choosing Count Basie's 1938 version of "Jumpin' at the Woodside" (yes,I can just SEE the lindy hopping crowd getting excited) ...

Listened to it till I couldn't stand to listen to it any more, then started working out how I might represent each instrument as a type of bacteria. After many iterations (and a bit of artistic licence), this is what you get. Each page is roughly 16 x 4 bars (or that's 8 x 8s for you dancers). Its not very clear here but there's also de-bossing (opposite of embossing) on almost every page. The bacteria images were all sourced from the Science Photo Library.

I'm still not sure what I think of this piece. It was a real stumbling block. Two of my passions - science and swing; and I found it really odd juxtaposing the two. Still, it was a great learning exercise in more ways than one! I'm most happy with the "introducing the band" page, as I was so tired, I thought I'd give them 'scat-esque' intros.

yes, its a bit small here at the mo... (might split it into a few chunks as blogger doesn't seem to like such a big image). Will be uploading individual page photos onto my flickr site soon - but right now, I just want to go to bed ....

EDIT: Done it , they're here now ... and for your amusement, here's my favourite page:

One down, many more to go ...

Abstract book all printed and bound - hooray!

The SS Great Big Blue

Phew, I've finally managed to get my act together and take those photos I've been meaning to. So here you go, an expanded version of the book project (otherwise known as the "narrative and sequence" module).


Book-ship? Ship-book? How does that work? Well, right at the start of the module our tutor, who is a bookmaker by trade, brought us lots of artists books to look at. A lot of them didn't look like 'books' in the traditional sense. The concept of 'book' that we were asked to explore was a collection of' 'spaces' (pages; in my case the sails), within a 'context' (the cover; in my case the ship). So you see now how my book-ship-book works ...


I was going to do something based on wood and bark, but that didn't really come together. Then, hugely influenced by Ann Wood's ships, I decided to go down that road. I took her basic premise, and made it my own.

Some details - this is what the ship looks like 'naked':

I used hooks-loops to make the sails easily attachable, detachable and swappable.

I made up three sets of sails, each giving a very different feeling to the book. Each set of sails also had its own main flag (very proud of my paper mache crow's nest!) ...

... and own set of little bunting flags on a string. I wrapped the string round the top hooks to keep all the masts and the ship under tension.

The first set of sails is based on the a children's nursery rhyme to help them learn to count.

The lyrics are done by machine embroidery and read:

When I was one, I had just begun, the day I went to sea
I climbed aboard a pirate ship, and the captain said to me
We're going this way, that way, forwards, backwards,
Over the deep blue sea
A bottle of rum to warm my tum
thats the life for me!

The flags on this set of sails had numbers on as the verses then repeat with "When I was two" etc, with the child doing something rhyming with that number.

Next was a set of sails of an Irish sea shanty called "Haul Away Joe" (for which I must thank this man for bringing it to my attention!). Colours and fabrics obviously a bit more adult.

The lyrics (of which there are many verses) are quite funny - but I had to select a few choice ones to include on my sails. The original idea had been to stick on some fabric laser cut letters, but that plan failed badly, and so I ended up with plan B of the lyrics printed onto sticky-backed acetate. I'm not entirely happy with how this looks so if any of you have any ideas, give me a shout ... I'm still up for tweaking this.

Last but not least, SS Midnight Blue, which is based on the shipping forecast, that those of you who stay up late at night and listen to BBC radio 4 will instantly recognise.

It was Sunshine's brilliant idea actually, and the tutors loved it ... can you not just hear the sweet tunes of 'Sailing By' in the background? I had to do some funky CAD-based machine embroidery with this one.

The flags were of the shipping region names.

And the sails all had some of those really strange forecasts in their strange formats.

So there you have it... Lots more photos including work-in-progress ones, are in the flickr set for it.

At the presentation I had the SS Midnight Blue rigged up. Once I'd explained my book concept I asked for some audience participation - would they prefer the nursery rhyme, or the sea shanty? Unanimous vote for the sea shanty. So while I changed the sails, I taught everyone the chorus of "We'll haul away, we'll haul away Joe". Then I read my book to them (ie sang the verses) while the whole class (tutors included) sang the choruses ... it was WONDERFUL! Just after I finished, the fire alarm went off, and as we all walked down the stairs and out of the building, I could still here a bunch of my class mates singing away ;)

I am sailing ...

So this is why I've not posted the last week - has completely taken over my life ... its still got a few little details that I'm not done with but I just had to stop at 2 am last night and call it quits. I set them up this morning (same hull, 3 sets of interchangeable sails) so I could practice swapping them - and make sure everything was hunky-dory and take these photos. Its all packed up (dismantleable ... thank goodness!) and I'm off to college to present it in about 10 minutes. Individual crits tomorrow so you'll have to wait till a little after for more better pictures!

Edit: Oh yes... the state of my desk: And thats not even the half of it!

Bookforms

We spent the last two days on a bookforms workshop. I made something titled 'Choreosophy in Blue'. Choreosophy is Greek, meaning 'the wisdom of circles' and my book is based on circles. Our brief had been to make something with just shapes and colours, no text, but thinking about pacing, rhythm, and structure. There were some really creative things that people managed to make in a day and a half. Here's mine:

This is what the whole thing looks like all concertina-ed out.

More pictures (with some macro shots) here.

I also did a small mock-up of another book which is a looping story of shapes and colours.

Bookbinding - day 2

Today we did the covers. I've tried to document the process as best as possible ... more to remind me, than to teach any of you lovely people out there ;)

FLYSHEETING and reinforcing the spine

COVER boards and fabric (see here for an annotated version of this photo)

Doing the CORNERS

Doing the SIDES

ALIGNING bookblock to cover

A few more things happen here - gluing the flysheets to the cover using Jonathan's (our tutor) funky technique. And tidying up the spine area. Couldn't do it and take a photo at the same time. Then the whole lot clamped lightly with protective pieces of paper between the cover and flysheets, and cover and clamping boards to let the book SETTLE.

And there you have it. I did two books - One with prefect binding, and one with coptic binding (the two you see in the picture on the top). One covered in this lovely blue bookbinding stuff thats used in libraries. The other we used a fabric of our choice - and Jonathan showed us how to alter the gluing steps to deal with thin and flimsy fabric. He also showed us two types of corners, and something else called 'stack and glue' for making quick dummy books.

I'm so inspired now ... I think there is a lot of potential here for making presents - and never will I need to BUY a sketchbook ever again!

Bookbinding - day 1

Today we have been mostly learning how to bind books.

PERFECT BINDING

Leveling the papers (Jen's one already done to the right)

Leveled and clamped

Scoring the edge (so the glue sticks better)

PVA squirted along the spine

Glue spread out (with a finger) and let dry to tacky

Piece of muslin glued on

De-clamped and cut out from clamp once dry

SEWN BINDING

Punch holes with a braddle and SEW! French Folio

Sewing two signatures together

Coptic binding - when you have more than two signatures

Clamped and glued

My own handmade sketchbook... The ones above were done with cheap paper just to practice making them. I then made up a new coptic bound book out of nice off-white thick cartridge paper.

Neatly done coptic stitches (not very neatly cut paper though!)

Closeup of my coptic stitches

Clamped and glued, ready for tomorrow - COVERS!!!

All the glued stuff is drying and tomorrow we will be doing covers for them! I'm not going to attempt to describe the processes as I find it hard to do it without showing people, live. Look round the internet of you're really interested - or better still, borrow a bookbinding book from the library...