When I saw this funny little song, I instantly thought of Tiphoni Moore. For those of you who don’t know here, she’s Tracy and Teesha Moore’s daughter and she is a color mixing demon. From a basic mixing palette, Tiphoni can mix any color and match it perfectly within seconds. It’s fascinating to watch and I wish I could do it half as well as she can.
In this video, Sunni Brown speaks to the power of doodling.
One of my favorite art forms over the past several years has been mail art so I’ve had mixed emotions about the news of the past several weeks. Like anyone else I’ve had the negative experiences with the USPS and customer service. You know the story, thirty people in one with one clerk at the counter who moves like the old man character Tim Conway made up for the Carol Burnett show.
This week though, I got a surprise. I had ordered some Field Notes and although the online tracking they provide showed the package had been delivered, it was no where in sight. I called my post office and Eddie answered on the first ring, I told him about my missing package, gave him the tracking number. He told me he’d talk to the carrier and get back to me by the end of the day, I thanked him but didn’t count on hearing back. I was surprised then when a couple of hours later, Eddie called me back and told me he had talked to the carrier, who found that the package had been misplaced in the mailbox below mine and that it was now in my box waiting for me. This was great customer service and the experience made me feel worst about the future of the USPS.
Thanks Eddie!
I was talking to a friend about the cahiers I mentioned in the last posting and he turned me on to Field Notes Brand. Apparently these little books were conceived of graphic artist Aaron Draplin. Unlike Moleskines, Field Notes are made is the USA and based on the reviews I’ve read they’re sturdy and well designed. I’ve seen some pictures on the Field Notes Brand website and a host of reviews that discuss the printing on the cover both inside and out.
After watching the preview to this video, I was sold and ordered a subscription. A subscription gets you two 3-packs of the current seasonal offering called Raven’s Wing, two regular 3-packs followed by two 3-packs of each seasonal offering each quarter. Here’s a video that features the selection of colors that were issued over the past year as part of the subscription.
The subscription is $129.00 and while that may sound like a lot of money for some memo books, I’d rather support the people who are making them then the politicians who are screwing us. More when my order arrives.
It’s funny how fortuitous happenstance works which is why I suppose it’s called fortuitous happenstance in the first place. A recent collision clogging the freeway forced me to bail onto the surface streets and as it happened my detour required that I drive by the local woodworking shop. Knowing that the wood supply in my studio was getting low I decided to stop and see what they had on hand. I often use wood when binding my journals, even when I make journals out of polymer clay, the back cover is almost always wood. While I like using wood for the very practical reason of workability there’s a wider range of aesthetic reasons that I find it compelling as a raw material.
The only problem I have with wood is finding it in the thicknesses I need for bookbinding, I want it no more that 1/4″ thick. Sure, I can order it online but I’m not crazy about buying it sight unseen — I want to be able to see the color and the grain when I choose my wood. Occasionally I’ve been able to find thin hardwood at this store but it’s often hit or miss and something they don’t stock regularly. This time, there was a whole rack of it and I bought four boards in widths of four and six inches — my choices based solely on the interplay between the color and grain of the wood.
Two of the boards were Peruvian Huayruro, one was Bloodwood and one was Brazilian Yellow Heart. In the picture below you can see what I mean about the interplay of grain and color, while the top two boards in the picture are both Huayruro the color and grain patterns are significantly different. I’m already thinking about the books these boards will turn into.
Over the past year, I haven’t really put the energy into this blog I would have liked to but like almost everyone else I was a little more focused on survival over the past twelve months. That said, I had accumulated a few good posts and now, they’re gone. What happened? Let’s just say I zigged when I should have zagged while making some tweaks to the database. I’ll try and reconstruct those posts over the coming weeks but for now… I’m going to move on.
Structural Meditations is a blog about bookbinding, journaling and related art forms. Why Structural Meditations? Sit down and talk to a group of bookbinders or people who journal regularly for any prolonged period of time and the word meditation will eventually pop up. They’ll talk about how the creative act of sewing a binding for example; the deliberate and repetitive nature of it leads to a meditative state.
I started this blog as a response to requests from several people; those who have taken my classes, a large group of people who know me online and several people who had been reading my intermittent ramblings on one of those free blogging services. Generally speaking, people were asking me to post images of the things I was working on and when possible an explanation of what led to to make that particular thing.
For those of you who may have been reading my stuff over at the free service, thanks for joining me here. For those who were expecting me to start about six weeks ago, I’ll simply blame the economy like everybody else; I’ll catch up. For those who are just stumbling across my blog: I’m a self-taught bookbinder and artist; I started as a photographer long ago but I dabble in things like graphic design, silk-screening and other paper-based art forms. So let’s begin.