Alicia Bailey – Page 3 – Alicia Bailey + Ravenpress Studio Notes

Posted on September 1, 2011December 26, 2018 by Alicia Bailey — Leave a comment

Shedding – a limited edition artists’ book, © 2010

This edition of 21 is about specimen collection and presentation, combined with journal type entries about the specimens presented (in this case, things shed by my body). Each day for 21 days I rescued something my body was shedding (eyelash off my cheek) or helped something detach from my body (plucked hair). The specimen was scanned at a magnification of 500%, those scans printed and included in the book pages. The cover of each book holds the specimen itself, sandwiched in between glass for a variable edition of 21 copies.

The concept:

Called upon to participate in an exhibition featuring works created by artists in a regular unit (hourly/weekly/monthly) as part of an ongoing
practice, and realizing that I’m simply not good at keeping up these sorts of regimented projects, I hoped to come up with something I could actually do, without fail, for a sequence of days. I thought, well, aside from what my body does to survive, the only thing I seem able to commit to daily, as on optional and chosen act is drinking coffee. I then considered just what my body does all on its own? Breathes, heart pumps, sleeps, wakes and so forth. I decided to take advantage of my bodies ongoing commitment to regular action in a way that would result in something with physical substance (as opposed to documenting an act, such as breathing).

The process:

I determined a set of rules to govern the project. for 21 days I would collect something created by my body, a little piece of me that was ready to be shed. Those little bits of detritus that flake off when we are sleeping, or are scrubbed off in the shower, or are removed with intent as part of routines rooted in comfort, appearance or hygiene. I did have to help some things along (the hang-nail that needed to be cut, the recurring hair on my jaw that seemingly springs up overnight) but it was more a matter of collection than anything.

Each morning I chose and retrieved my daily specimen, then scanned it at 500% magnification on my flatbed scanner. I had to be careful with some of these very small specimens; I knew an ill timed sneeze could result in an eyelash disappearing without hope of recovery. Happily, I didn’t lose any original specimens. Immediately after the scanning, I placed the specimen between 2 pieces of glass in a glass mounted slide and there they remain.

Then I would write a little something about that day’s specimen. Not yet sure about how the book would be produced, I opted to keep these daily observations pithy. I later settled on the laser etching process for both cutting the pages and ‘printing’ the text and was glad I’d chosen a pithy path.

The production:

In keeping with the idea of cataloging a set of specimens, I labeled each specimen date with a label simulating the typewritten labels I associate with cataloging. They weren’t actually produced on a typewriter though. Mindful of this being an edition work, they were instead laserprinted on rag paper, that I then overcoated with tinted microcrystalline wax. The wax prevents the laser toner from flaking off or ghosting on to another page, the pigment added to the wax ages the paper a bit.

The inkjet printed images I wanted to protect so they were mounted behind a window cut out in each page (similar to older photo album pages). They are labeled by text printed on mylar; the mylar placed over each image before mounting to each page, giving further protection to the photographic images.

Ever interested in using up materials already on hand in the studio, I used a variety of papers (Canson Mi Tiente ‘honeysuckle’ which is close to my own flesh color and maroon unryu for the back side of the pages) leftover from earlier projects. The unryu is a nice choice I think. Its function is to provide a backing to the Canson and prevent text bits with holes in the letters (such as an O, or the round part of a P or D) becoming cut out shapes rather than letter forms.

The text block is bound as a board book, each page consisting of several layers. The unryu makes up the interior of each page ’package’. So the outside, visible, part of each page is a color similar to my own flesh, and the inside, mostly hidden but for the endges and through the cuts on the outside, part of each page is this blood colored paper.

The cover is thick as it needs to accommodate the glass mount slide with specimen.

It is made from 2 layers of Perma-dur corrugated board plus two museum boards cut to hold the slide mount. This ‘package’ is covered with a piece of tanned deerhide suede that has an image of handprint etched into it. The outside edges of the cover are wrapped with this odd bookcloth/paper product that I know little about. It too is maroon in color.

Copies of this book held by University of Washington, Baylor University and University of Denver and private collections. Archive and process materials for this work held by University of Denver, Penrose Library Special Collections. Check on availability in my online store.

Posted on August 23, 2011September 7, 2014 by Alicia Bailey — Leave a comment

Book a Week – round 2

Two years ago, about this time of year, I initiated a book a week project. I’m feeling twitchy in that same way so am going to do it again. For this round I’ve changed the rules. Now I’m interested in speeding up my process for finishing up. So the intent is to do just that – whether it is an unfinished project worthy of completion, or determining a use for various materials set aside for a project ‘someday’ .

As an aside, the current trendy description of my comfort zone is that I’m a ‘renaisance soul’ – this means that my interest in completing projects is always duking it out with my interest in new projects. So, I have a lot of unfinished projects around.

Another of my realities is that it is hard for me to pitch things – this issue is multi-layered and deep; no need to go into all that now. Sometimes by treating heretofore unfinished projects as a new project, with a series of new challenges, I can trick myself into finishing projects that, with the passage of time, still seem worthwhile finishing.

The first, which I have to finish this week, will be for the visual journals show. I don’t often exhibit at my own gallery, but do sometimes use my curatorial ideas as incentive to do something I’ve wanted to do before.

Solo Navigations I – 2008

This book binds several individual drawings I made in 2008 into a book. These pages were made over a period of several months in 2008 mainly to combat the tedium of waiting for performances (mostly live music at various clubs) to start. Arriving early enough to get a good spot meant waiting a long time for the performance to begin. I’d get fidgety and bored and sometimes felt conspicuous because I was by myself.
I made myself a little kit that fit easily into a handbag and worked on these pages to wile the moments away. The rule for the writing was to write of things going on in the moment, either internally or externally. Every space had to have a letter, so there are no spaces between words, and no punctuation. When the end of a row of grids was reached, I’d turn the paper 90 degrees and continue writing. After making just a few, I decided to designate a few blank areas on the gridded page that I could later work on in the studio.

I wanted to use an approach to binding Don Glaister recently taught in a workshop sponsored by the Guild of Bookworkers, Rocky Mountain Chapter. The workshop was held in Kozo’s new rental space in June. Sort of a modified photo album structure, where guards are incorporated into the pages at the spine edge; those guards are folded over, sometimes multiple times, to create enough thickness to accommodate the thickness of the page being bound. This book doesn’t have particularly thick pages, but I did need to fashion a method to bind single sheets of a material that doesn’t fold well – the gridded, frosted mylar the drawings were on.

I mounted each maylar page to an inner page of white Utrech drawing paper. Before I mounted the mylar, I painted colored shapes to the drawing paper, to add more depth to the drawings.

I often do this sort of thing – adding elements that may ultimately be invisible, or at least difficult to see. I want to include those elements but don’t always want them to be articulate. A visual mumbling.

The pages are mounted to the drawing paper, now with colored shapes painted on them, with PMA. The PMA is transparent and, as a dry adhesive, doesn’t cause the paper to curl. Works great for sticking porous surfaces (paper) to non-porous surfaces (mylar).

The drawing paper is cut larger than the mylar at the spine edge, the edges that stick out are what the tabs for the hinges are made from. I then sewed the pages using a supported link stitch on tapes and cased the block into a split board cover.

This resulted in loose tabs between every sewn signature. After the book was sewn up, I decided to add more pages by tipping in mylar drawings, these in black brushstrokes, to those tabs. The end pages are scraps of old prints from the same year the pages were originally made (2008). The cover boards are covered with some of my photographs, taken and printed in the late 1980’s.

Voila – Solo Navigations I – 2008. Finished in time for the exhibition Visual Journals at Abecedarian Gallery.

Posted on April 7, 2011September 7, 2014 by Alicia Bailey — Leave a comment

Someone Like You and Education of Girls

I’ve been working on these two books simultaneously. They are part of the Lovely and Amazing series of works inspired by and created from an archive I inherited from Ruth Wheeler, who was my great-aunt. Both completed in 2010, they have been exhibited at Bookopolis in Asheville, NC and in at Vivo Contemporary in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

The covers were begun in a workshop held at my studio in 2008, taught by Boston artist Peter Madden. That workshop was held only a few days after my mother died; Peter’s mother had died only weeks before. We both decided to go ahead with the workshop but I confess here that I remember little of the workshop, the creation of these wood panels or what my intention was. I think I was just working to be working. Shelved for a time, I then created some triptych wall pieces that ultimately I deemed unsuccessful when nearly complete. Once again, shelved for a time. I mention all this because it addresses one of my theories about an ingredient in mixed media construction that I believe adds to their richness in an essential albeit non-visual way. The best I can do to explain this is that a construction made from ‘store bought’ materials (i.e. materials without a previous, rich history), even though in composition, arrangement and general selection of objects may exactly mimic, for example, a Joseph Cornell construction, it cannot speak in the same way, isn’t imbued with the richness that history gives to objects.

These panels, although constructed from newly milled pieces of birch plywood, have a short history but in that time have been altered and handled repeatedly. Many of the objects now embedded in or attached to their surfaces come from an old archive. The process of shelving and continuing work at a later date adds to these final pieces in way impossible to achieve otherwise.

Both books are coptic bound with rigid pages but they were constructed differently from one another.

The first I completed is Someone Like You. This book takes as its title a handwritten poem transcribed in Ruth’s journal:

Someone like you makes the heart seem the lighter Someone like you makes the day’s work worthwhile Someone like you makes the sunshine the brighter Someone like you makes a sigh half a smile

This text appears split in two on the inner front and back covers in a scan of Ruth’s original handwriting and is then repeated on individual pages throughout the book.

The pages are each made of a layering of photographs (scanned and reproduced via inkjet) taken by Ruth on her camping and picnicking outings with her Camp Fire Girl troops over a span of many years. Also included are pages from her teaching notebooks detailing nature games, pages from her biology notebooks with sketches of specimens and plates from her nature books.

Each page is constructed by treating the front and back as separate pages that are hinged with book cloth around a thin metal rod. So, although the pages are rigid, they can be stitched without the cord intruding on the page surface as the metal rod holds the thread in place, as the fold in a signature book would do.

These pages are rather inelegantly bound with linen cords, the front and back covers have round recessed areas that for a title label (front cover) and image (back cover) with brass pins holding the labels in place. In order to prevent the weight of the book resting on these pins when the book is lying flat, I also added pins and brass beads to each corner. These double as a mechanical means to hold the larger mica pieces on the cover.

The covers were drilled halfway through outside to inside after the mica is in place, those holes met with secondary holes drilled in from the spine edge. This allows the thick cord to wrap around the outside of the cover but not be inside of the cover. The book closes without the additional bulk the cord would create on the inside.

Education of Girls takes its title from a teaching pamphlet Ruth used. As the junior high biology teacher, Ruth’s job included teaching sex education and this pamphlet was from a multi-piece set of she used.

In addition to scans and print outs from her teaching notebooks, the pages include small bones/feathers/seeds/plants and film positives recessed into the pages and scans of artifacts too bulky to be included in the book (such as taxidermied songbirds).

The pages of this book were constructed with a museum board core, the text and images built up on each side. The thickness of the rigid pages meant I could embed the objects mentioned above and could use the more intrusive rigid page binding technique as described in Keith Smith’s book Sewing Single Sheets. This technique also doesn’t require each page be of uniform thickness.

So on two of the pages strips of film positive were sewn into the pages in a way that makes the positives visible from both sides. Those pages were then wrapped with handprinted book cloth on the edges to both protect the positives, hold the protective layer and add enough material to the pages to hold the intrusive coptic thread in place.
The text is primarily transcriptions for audio recordings I made of conversations I had with Ruth during her 97th year about some of her teaching accomplishments and adventures. Also included are pages from the original Education of Girls pamphlet, and a photograph of Ruth’s mother and aunt, with whom she travelled to Columbia College in 1928 so Ruth could take a summer course in sex education.

Both the front and back covers have mica recessed over paper artifacts. This recessing of the mica meant I could avoid having pins protrude from the covers. Each cover also has a hold drilled entirely through it. These cavities hold artifacts (one shell each front and back) suspended between layers of mica.

I wanted Education of Girls to be more elegant than Someone Like You so I bound it with much thinner cord, 4-ply waxed cord.
In this case I did wrap the cord through to the inside, which makes the cover hold tighter to the text block and not be quite so floppy.

Posted on December 28, 2010September 7, 2014 by Alicia Bailey

Wind, Water, Stone

For this piece I created a series of three books that, although they result in one boxed set, I worked on for three weeks during the Book a Week projects. The three books are made with porcelain book covers I made years ago but never found the right content for. The text use some monoprints printed off plexiglass onto lightweight Japanese paper using an etching press.

Covers:

Years ago I wanted to work more with clay so I took a class with a Denver area ceramicist, Mary Cay, at the Art Students League of Denver. Mary works with porcelain which really is the only clay body it makes sense to use for bookcovers. Fired to high temps, porcelain is strong and makes a wonderful sound when it touches itself. I spent most of the workshop on these three small sets of book covers. We used a clay body called Zen, so I imaged with covers markings that seemed zenlike. After multiple firings the covers were put on the shelf. For years . . .

Content:

Octavo Paz is a favorite poet of mine . . . I have a text based on his poem Wind, River, Stone which, I hasten to point out, is not a real translation but a re-wording of his poem that better suits this project than the more accurate translations that have been done. This one is more casual.

Water hollows stone,

wind scatters water,

stone stops the wind. Water, wind, stone

Wind carves stone,

stone’s a cup of water,

water escapes and is wind.

Stone, wind, water.

Wind sings in its whirling,

water murmurs going by

unmoving stone keeps still.

Wind, water, stone.

Each is another and no other:

crossing and vanishing through their empty names:

water, stone, wind

I selected portions of the monoprints, cut and folded them to size. I imaged the text via laserprint transfer on the back of the pages. As the pages are lightweight the text shows through as a gray rather than a black.

Each book contains one of the three first stanzas with the final stanza repeating in each book.

I then made individual boxes for each; the labels on each box are created by laser transfer onto the monoprint scraps; those three boxes are in turn housed in one larger box, the front cover and spine label produced in the same way.

I am very satisfied with the interplay between the weightiness and density of the porcelain covers and the lightweight, airiness of the text blocks. Both materials are fragile in entirely different ways from the other.

Owned by University of Denver, Penrose Library, Special Collections.

Posted on September 12, 2010September 7, 2014 by Alicia Bailey — Leave a comment

Tongue Tied

This post comes at the request of a special collections librarian, curious about the use of wax (problematic in its stickiness and fragility) on the lid and base of this book’s container. The material use of Tongue Tied is an excellent example of material selection bearing close relationship to project content/concept.

Tongue Tied is based on a poem by Patricia Beers, a disturbing poem describing the almost unbearable results of a lifetime of keeping silent.

The subject matter is a painful one. One reaction to pain is what I think of as ‘fear biting’ – holding others at bay because to allow closeness invites pain. To get physically close to this text isn’t impossible but does require caution as it, and the box it is housed in, have the sharp end of nails sticking out.

When one is silent, others have to to dig and pry to find out more. Some of the text is hidden beneath images that need to be lifted to be read, other texts have incomplete letter forms (accomplished by using an asian lace paper), making passages difficult, but not impossible to read.

Another panel lifts to hold part of a broken and smashed thimble. This obvious use of artifact links to the text line ‘whatever silenced me when young has put a thimble on my tongue’. Another panel lifts to expose the narrow shape I use to depict a scar, this one has stitching implying the wound is held closed, but barely.

A less obvious relationship of material to content is the use of a plasticized Wyndstone paper that reminds me of commercial floor linoleum. Here is the back story behind that selection:

When I was in elementary school, one of my favorite classes was science. The teacher, Miss Koury, was big boned and focused, quite often the butt of jokes I didn’t then understand. She brooked no nonsense. Typically there would be a lecture, a demonstration and then we would line up to gather materials for our assignments. I was a well-behaved child for the most part, and didn’t get in trouble for talking in other classes. But in Miss Koury’s class, wild with enthusiasm, I was frequently reprimanded for talking while waiting in line.

My punishment was to be locked in the storage closet during the best part of the class. The closet had a commercial linoleum much like the Wyndstone paper. I was silenced. My love of learning had to live side by side with a fear of being punished for displaying joy at the process. I spent the rest of my school life avoiding science classes. When I saw this Wyndstone paper at an art supply store, I was stricken by something I couldn’t then identify or articulate. I bought it not knowing why soon after I brought the paper to the studio I found this poem and began designing this book.

The book is contained in a black mesh box, the mesh walls held in place with galvanized nails, at the same time the mesh wraps around the outside of the nails; additional stitching helps hold everything in place. The use of ‘galvanized’ material is relevant. One definition is to shock or excite someone into taking action, the other to coat iron or steel with a protective layer of zinc. I leave you to reason why I chose these particular nails for the box.

Both the base and lid to the box are painted black, and then overcoated with a beeswax/damar mix that has been pigmented with dry charcoal. The result it a semi-hard surface that remains sticky, attracting bits of dirt and dust, adding another layer of the fear-biting concept to this work. Emphasizing duality by enticing one to come closer and then imposing risk of harm when one does come closer is a hallmark of some of my more succesful pieces.

Tongue Tied is held in several public and special collections including University of Colorado, Norlin Library, University of Utah Marriot Library, University of Denver Penrose Library, University of Idaho, Savannah College of Art and Design and Oberline University. A few copies remain and can be purchased by contacting any of my dealers: Abecedarian Gallery, 23 Sandy Gallery, Vamp and Tramp Booksellers.

Posted on April 16, 2010September 7, 2014 by Alicia Bailey

Cosmeceutical Collection

This collection was designed in 2006, and the first copies produced that year. It is in the Alan Chasanoff collection, and in Special Collections at the Topeka County Public Library, Emory University, Scripps College, University of Washington, University of Miami and University of Denver. The archives are also held at University of Denver. It was reviewed as part of Emory University’s Artists Book Showcase; read that review here.

Rather than completing the production all at once, I produced copies in response to orders, and this is one instance where procrastination was of tremendous value. Knowing more now than I did when the boxed set was designed and having access to different tools has benefitted the production process and end quality of the piece.

The set combines three of my miniature books (Belladonna, Compact Beauty and Lashlure), books that use cosmetic cases as containers, in a custom made box.

Production of the miniatures may be the focus of another blog entry – here I am concentrating on the box itself. Here is what the individual books look like:

The box tray has 3 recessed areas, each of different size, shape and depth, for each of the miniature books.

I considered using wood and having the recessions routed out, and also considered laminating individually cut pieces of thinner material, such as Davy board to make the base. I eventually settled on a product called Balsa Foam.

Starting with sheets of 9x12x1 inch Balsa Foam, I cut them each in half using 2 partial cuts with a power miter saw.

I then used a drawing template to mark the surface for the interior cut outs.

These were then cut out with a power scroll saw, after first drilling holes in the cut out areas for insertion of saw blade. Balsa Foam is a handy product but I don’t plan to use it again. The dust generated by manipulating it is no doubt toxic and, even though I used the denser of the two grades it is subject to cracking and breaking.

Each recessed area requires a different depth so platforms for Belladonna and Lashlure are cut from museum board and inserted them into the appropriate area, holding them to the correct height by shimmng them from underneath with built up pieces of foam core. Compact Beauty does not require a platform.

After the tray is shaped, it is sealed on all sides with acrylic polymer. This helps contain the dust and lessens the absorption rate. Pared down leather is used to line each recess sides and bottom. The top surface gets a second coat of thicker polymer (a gel medium) that shows texture, then is painted with two layered colors of acrylic paint. The top layer is an ‘interference’ pigment so has a subtle sparkle to it, similar to that of many cosmetic products.

Pink leather (from Harmatan) is laminated to 2 play museum board, then trimmed to strips the length of the box sides by the tray height plus 1/8 inch. After the edges are painted with liquid acrylic ink, they are attached to the tray box sides.

There isn’t anything out of the ordinary in the production of the box’s outer shell. Prior to gluing the tray into the shell, a ribbon is run across the underside of the case between the recesses for Belladonna and Compact Beauty – the ribbon comes up into the tray and makes removing the books from the recesses much easier. Lashlure doesn’t require a ribbon.

The case has a pink leather spine, the paper coverings are Mohawk Superfine Text laserprinted and then overpainted with a mixture of acrylic (pink again!) and methylcellulose. This is a necessary step to seal the transfer toner, which otherwise will flake off. Prior to this step, laser foil is affixed to the title portion of the text on the container lid.

Posted on January 18, 2010September 7, 2014 by Alicia Bailey — Leave a comment

Boston – Sept 19, 1901, October 15, 1901

This book was recently purchased by the Boston Atheneauma membership library thatfirst opened its doors in 1807. I am well pleased by this placement, facilitated by Vamp and Tramp Booksellers, who carry other unique and limited edition works of mine.

The book was created from glass plate negatives made by my great-great-grandfather George Carpenter Wheeler in 1901. The negatives ere made between September 19 and October 15 of that year and are of public areas in the Boston area. 9_19 & 10_5 -1901 bookc.jpg I scanned both the negatives and the disintegrating envelopes they were stored in, and printed them via both ink & laserjet. The negatives and prints from the scans are bound wire-edge style.
Comes in custom box of wood, bookcloth & book board. glass plate negatives, inkjet prints, brass, book cloth, paper, book board, in custom box 9_19 & 10_5 -1901 booka.jpg

I have more of these negatives and plan to create a similar book from them. I will photograph, post and describe the steps taken during the construction of the second book. But for now, I have only photos of the finished work to show you here.

9_19-&-10_5-1901-booke.jpg 9_19 & 10_5 -1901 bookb.jpg

Posted on September 13, 2009September 7, 2014 by Alicia Bailey — Leave a comment

Snail – class Gastropoda

To celebrate their upcoming one-year anniversary the Morgan Conservatory, a paper and book arts center in Cleveland, OH sent me two sheets of their handmade paper with the request that I make a piece — the instruction was simply to ‘to as you like incorporating the paper provided.’

Each sheet of the 12×22 inch paper is gray but of slightly different values. The fundraiser is called the Snail Mail Paper Trail so I made a book called Snail class Gastropoda, and decided on a meander book structure. Meander books are easily made from one sheet of paper, but I opted to create panels and stitch the panels together rather than using a fold.

Using a large punch with a spiral pattern, I cut some spirals out of the lighter toned paper, then hand cut some freeform shapes resembling snail trails keeping the cut outs to use in the box. I then laminated the sheets together, and cut the laminated sheets into 8 square panels, each about six inches square.

To minimize the problem of thread tearing the pages at the joints, I cut some mica washers in half, glued them to the paper edges and sewed through both the mica and the paper at each sewing station. I used lightly waxed linen thread and opted to leave the tails of each thread dangling. The text, a piece I wrote using found poetry techniques with Wikipedia as the original source, is laser transfer.

Snail class Gastropoda

found in ditches, deserts, the abyssal depths of the sea.

snails with a gill can be found on land

snails with a lung found in water

gliding along on a muscular foot

covered with epithelial cilia

waves of contractions

move down the ventral.

they walk over razors

a layer of tissue covers the visceral mass

snails need calcium

(the operculum of some has a pleasant scent when burned = incense)

most bear tentacles on their heads

eyes carried on the upper stalks

lower set olfactory

a snail breaks food using radula

chitinous structure microscopic hooks cuticulae

in a quiet setting, a snail can be heard crunching

radula tearing, eating.

the snail grows, so does its shell

secreted material added to the edge

the center of the shell’s spiral made when the snail was young

hermaphrodites

snails perform a ritual courtship

inseminate each other

each brood +/- 100

snails need calcium

eat the egg from which they hatched

cannibalization by babies of other eggs (even unhatched) has been recorded

The paintings of snails are watercolor/gouache. Each page was coated with conservator’s wax after transferring/imaging.

As much as possible I like for my work to include artifacts that have a relationship to the piece, in this case snails. I used a wooden frame with recessed plastic glazing for the box walls. I filled the recessed area with sand and snail shells, covered the plastic with a layer of very thin and translucent Japanese paper, laid in the cut shell and snail trail shapes I’d earlier cut out from the handmade paper, then added another layer of the thin Japanese paper.
The inside of the box walls are covered with gray moriki paper, the outside and top edge of the box walls with multiple layers of Thai unryu. The tray was then affixed to fabric and paper covered book board. A ribbon pull makes it easy to pull the book out of the tray without damage. The box label is laser-transfer.

Technorati Tags: Alicia Bailey , artist book, meander book, morgan paper conservatory, handmade paper, handmade book, snail

Posted on August 1, 2009October 29, 2014 by Alicia Bailey — Leave a comment

A Little Book of Drawings

I have, in my adult life, moved literally tons of objects from place to place. The decision of whether to keep or discard is ongoing and I fear my elder life will be ruled by objects, much in the way of my parents. This I find disturbing and I continuously work to rid myself of objects using criteria that varies hugely from year to year.

Some collections, such as art books, don’t come under scrutiny too often. The music collection morphs into another version of itself (records replaced by audio cassettes, those replaced by CDs and those transformed into MP3 recordings). It makes sense to keep studio materials even though my emphasis in the studio and thus material use has shifted course many times over the years.

One area I haven’t figured out how to manage is the mass of unfinished, unsold, unframed artworks. Somehow simply throwing them away doesn’t seem an option, and I don’t really consider giving them away either. Re-purposing is a favorite strategy; a project with a layer already rich with pigment and potential a rewarding way to spend some time.

This week I made A Little Book of Drawings (measures about 3x3x.5 inches). I started with old figure drawings on mulberry paper, cut them up and ordered them into signatures. Both before and after sewing the text block, I further worked the drawings with ink and some transfers. The signatures were sewn with a supported link stitch and hollow back cased in with a variation of a split board (or tongue and groove) technique. The book has a leather spine and handwritten title.

Above are some photos that show the various binding steps: the brown paper is a moriki that is attached to the hollow tube and then extends, creating the tabs (tongues) used to attach the covers. The white material with blue edges is 2 ply museum board used for the inner board (rather than actually splitting a board, 2 boards create the ‘groove’ where the tongue is glued in). The end sheets are then pasted down leaving a hint of the blue exposed. And, as you can see from the leather spine, I didn’t get it right the first time, had to detach and re-attach the leather. Fortunately I use paste with leather so re-doing the spine didn’t ruin the book. I am pleased with this book. It has a richness last week’s project did not; has evidence of my history as a mark maker, evidence of passable skills at binding small books. As I ponder this book, I decide that part of its success lies in the various qualities inherent in the materials themselves. Mulberry paper, graphite, ink, thread and leather.

Posted on July 26, 2009 by Alicia Bailey — Leave a comment

From This Place

I unabashedly join the ranks of mixed-media artists who hoard. My studio building is twice the size of my house and about 30% of that space is devoted to storage. Time spent rummaging in the ‘ingredient archives’ can bring on bouts of contented assessing and re-arranging, frustration at not finding what I seek and glee when something clicks into place as the obvious choice of object to solve a problem.

For book of the week projects I avoid purchase of new materials, and thus far have found what I need in the archives. This week’s project re-uses the unbound pages from a previous limited edition miniature book that I wasn’t pleased with and abandoned. Why I assume I can take these failed pages and rework them into something more successful is a mystery but that was the intent of From this Place.

The text of the book touches on containment versus abandon, with hints of discretion and privacy. A screen structure seems a good fit here. I have had in my studio for a long time an object whose intended use is eludes me – it could be a prototype for a full size screen, or something intended to block a portion of a desk from view. I am imaginative and still cannot come up with a function for this object. I would assume it a wall hanging but there is no way to hang it.

It is a simple construction, hinged plastic panels are bound at top and bottom with strips of continuous cloth.

For my project, I cut out and re-ordered the failed image pages (which are color laserprints, each about 2.5 x1.5), laserprinted the text on transparent sheets, and using double-sided PMA adhered the text to the image. Another layer of PMA, this time extending beyond the image, then a layer of mica. With an image on either side of each panel the layer, top to bottom is this: mica, PMA, transparency, PMA, image/glue/image, PMA, transparency, PMA, mica. These panels are ‘bound’ with a strip of acrylic tinted tyvek along the top and bottom edge. Another strip of tyvek is at either edge more as a visual than a structural device.