Jumping off the Art Garage roof

So, here I go again. This time its an art journal round robin. I have been shopping for blank journals all over the place. The ones at the bookstore already had beautiful covers and they were mostly lined (yuck) and of rather flimsey paper. At the art supply store they were mostly ugly spiral bound things with only sketch-weight paper.

I thought of making one of water-color paper, but I was thwarted again. The art supply store only carried Arches papers which I've been told have very short grain fibers and they crack when folded. Then, at the rubber-stamp store, way back in the corner of the rubber stamp store were book making supplies!

So I have made a small format (3" X 5") accordion pleated, reversible journal. Side one is titled "Secret Lives of Women". The flip side is "What Men Forgot". I hope a few people use the space and do an entry on each side. I used the first spread for instructions and then a collage on the next.

....the devil's workshop

Now that the altered book project has finished and the art journal project hasn't begun, I've had the old "idle hands" problem. While cleaning up my work space I realized that I've accumulated a lot of small collage scraps which tend to get swallowed up in my bigger scrap bin. I've tried saving them in plastic page protectors and in little boxes - but both have been unsatisfactory.

Then this week, several serendipitous things happened. First, I found that someone had given me tiny scraps stored in a CD envelope. Then my husband was tossing his old PC gamer demo disks - and they had very sturdy cardstock envelopes - so I kept them. Then I got an email offering an Art Journal retreat from a teacher whose workshops I've always enjoyed. Finally, a collegue at my Fiber Arts Guild gave me all her back issues of Somerset Studio.

I saw right away that the CD envelopes would be a super way to file all those scraps, so I gessoed a handful. I was wondering how to manage them as a filing system when I ran across an article in one of the old Somersets I was reading about a tag book. Light dawned and I saw how I could make a book of the envelopes. So I glazed and collaged for two days and today I put it all together! Now I'll be able to take a collection of small scraps with me to the retreat. And it looks good too!

Photo Finish

Today I finished the book! The final title is: "Relics of an Undiscovered Country Vol. I: The Grateful Dead." Not that there is a Vol II- it just sounded neat.

The *&^%bleepin#$@ adhesives still don't want to dry...each in its own way. The "permanent" gluestick lasts about 3 days before evaporating into the air or something. I had used it to glue pages together, at the end, a lot of the pages were coming apart, so I had to force glue into the open parts...not fun. Acrylic medium feels dry but sticks to opposite pages also glazed in acrylic no matter how long its been since I glazed them...the stuff never dries completely. Sobo glue doesn't act like glue. Nothing sticks for 5 or 10 minutes - then bingo - it works.

So - the cover of the book is done in "oil paper" with a linen thread grid. This paper is very crisp and crackly so I wetted it (brushed water onto both sides) to make it more pliable. This worked great for actually wrapping the cover onto the book. Once it dries, it is crackly again and tends to tear at stress points. This is an OK look for a Decay theme, but not so good for the book. I experimented, and found that hand moisturizer lotion keeps the paper pretty supple and less likely to break.

The cover art is a rendition of a Peruvian mud-mummy with macaw feathers and false hair made from silk ravellings. The doll is made from sticks and linen twine and paper-clay painted over with a tinted gesso. The title frame mount is treated with rusting agent. I had to tie the book shut because I have many dimensional elements that I didn't plan ahead for. That is the drawback of pre-glueing all the pages.

I've updated a couple of spreads...fixed Incorruptibles to cover the blemishes from it sticking together . I also added the weedy fringe to the Bog Man spread.

The inside front cover spread was a particular problem. Putting a spread here is just not my style. I prefer an endpaper that loosely keeps to the theme of the book. So I was very minimalist in this space. I found a paper that looked like distressed and dirty paint and simply added the group and project name with dates and who the recipient is. The inside back cover hold the niche, but has a facing page. which I used as a sort of recap - "How to make a Mummy". The distressed box is decorated with crackle medium over rust. It contains rose petals, myrrh and a pewter scarab pendant.

Last - my artists statement. Sigh - this gave me a lot of trouble. Various renditions were too stuffy, too casual, too pedantic. I can't say that I thrilled with the final version, but at least it sounds more like ME. I like the title page a lot. I played around with parchment and tissue and white and colored papers, finally deciding on a transparancy.

I am so not wanting to give this book away! It is probably the best art I've done. My plan is to make a PowerPoint slideshow of the pictures. I still need to make sure that I've saved all the narratives. Then its goodbye and I wait for my exchange to arrive.

Moving towards the finish line

I've been putting the finishing touches on. I had to outline the last 10 steps because I got bogged down on which steps were dependant on others being done. This end-game has been more like an engineering project than art. The glue and acrylic medium drying is still a big annoyance. I had another spread stick together - at least it was the Incorruptibles page which I wanted to add to anyway.

I was very glad for the extension to the 15th. I spent my extra time mostly in bed feeling very crappy and achy. We thought it was the flu until the newspaper described a more virilent than usual cedar-fever season. Cedar-fever works like hay-fever but is tied to the winter blooming of some invasive juniper tree that is called "cedar" here in Texas.

There will be pictures soon.