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.