Five members of Artists' Book Club Dove met in the print studio on Saturday to share thoughts and show our work on the theme of Thread. It had been a week of much rain, and some of us had to change our route due to flooded roads. Pat is in Australia, Judith in India ...
Judy has taken a calligraphy course with Ewan Clayton. One aspect of this was Rudolph Laban's eight movements. This led us to a conversation about the BBC radio broadcasts for primary schools in the 1950s, Music and Movement, and Singing Together. I remember them with great affection.
We also talked about Simon Hitchens and his recent exhibition at the Rural Life Museum in Glastonbury, Jane had taken part in the drawing of a stone's shadow as it moved throughout the day. A fascinating project - drawing something that changes from moment to moment is like drawing time itself.
I (Ama) recommended my current reading, The Library of Ice by Nancy Campbell, and a film that was recently shown at Strode Theatre, A Year in a Field. Beautiful photography, a wonderful soundtrack and a disturbing message. And a BBC Radio 4 feature about botanical dyeing as an alternative to using toxic chemicals. Well worth a listen. I have continued dyeing papers and yarns with botanical dyes. At our last meeting there was some irritation with little books. I agree they are difficult to focus on at a book fair, but I do enjoy making little books. At our exhibitions we wisely confine them to the Librarium! I brought three little books on this month's topic, which was Thread. Labyrinth is a walnut-dyed meander, the folds connected with walnut-dyed thread. Blue Day is an indigo-dyed triangular fold with two little folios stitched in. Interglacial has a poem on Elliepoo paper stitched in. The cards with stitched corners are from the ongoing series Into the Light, and the last image shows a small scrap of linen left overnight in the walnut dyepot. I had folded it into four, and clamped it between used flat lithium batteries. The batteries corroded and left a dark outer ring with a blueish haze within the circle. The little white marks are from the clothes-peg I used as a clamp. A causal observer would see a dirty rag, but to me it's a treasure! It occurs to me that I may have inadvertently released toxic chemicals.
Jane brought the indigo box shown at our last meeting, with content added (long life, short life, luck of the draw!) This work is called Hanging by a Thread. She also brought her sculptural indigo-dyed accordion Massacre of the Innocents, made for our long-ago exhibition (Holyest Erth, 2013) at Glastonbury Abbey but achingly relevant in the context of Gaza. The figures are based on carvings at the Abbey. It needs another outing after ten years in the dark.
Pauline has been reading Wintering, by Katherine May, during her first winter in Appledore. She has made Winter Threads, a visual meditation on winter activities. A strip of paper with descriptive words and phrases is threaded through the book. She used a shiny blue thread from her grandmother's sewing box to make samples of weaving, knitting and darning. Bron mentioned Sue Palmer's Mending Circle in Frome: "Stitch it, don't ditch it".
Bron had made three accordion books from cut-up etchings with added stitching, working to music. The first, Odyssey, we had seen before. The new ones are African Walk and Waltz, stitched to appropriate rhythms.
After the show-and-tell we started assembling our Dragon-scale books - a transitional form between scroll and codex. Here is a How-to video. My advice would be not to make your first one from precious materials. Practice the folding, spacing and attaching of hinges. Most of us found the hinge attachment counterintuitive.
We agreed that a scoring board, aka groovy mat, would have been useful. These are available in hideous shades of pink and mauve plastic. I have a nice wooden one with a raised edge that makes folding a sheet of paper in half easy and quick.
The first photos show Bron's book of mokuhanga prints on lightweight paper. It hangs gracefully when held vertically.
Here is Judy's book, made from mokuhanga prints on stiff paper. It looks best displayed horizontally.
And here is Jane's. She later added strips of marbled paper at the fore-edges, which gave the pages extra weight and drape.
Mine is very wonky, and the still-wet glue stuck some of the pages together on the way home. I'll try again before the next meeting (Jan 27th) when the theme (also the theme for our exhibition in October) will be Change.
Yesterday (Monday) I was with Janine, who was unable to be with us on Saturday. Here are a couple of Chinese Thread books she made in response to the theme. I love the decorative rosettes! One is made from kraft paper and has larger rectangular compartments underneath the small square ones you can see. The smaller one is made from silk-paper, as is Janine's dragon-scale book.
Crumbs of conversation from my notebook have been digested, to emerge as the
January Dove-droppings
I checked the river maps
and this is what arrived -
is this the longest journey?
might be too thick
it's not flopping down
it's absorbed the curvature
look at the map
search amongst it
and wake up with new ideas
eight movements
for when you're stuck
being too controlled
we are the product of
Music and Movement
Singing together
classic folksongs
floating softly
circular with strength
releasing the wrist
freeing the arm
drawing a stone
nothing happening
no shadow
a gap in the record
broken line
surprise yourself
stoke the fire
Juglans Tree of Jove
it radicalises us
congressmen in their pockets
making a living takes so much time
three acres of colour
galloping after us
the Coventry Carol
packed away
and left in the dark
floating too much
perfection's not what it's about
the figures need flattening
complete darkness
having an effect on me
in Appledore
it has a rhythm
on a sewing machine
wiggle my way around it
the curve of what happens
underneath the folios
you need a groovy mat
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