by Steve | Feb 19, 2010 | General |
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.
by Steve | Jan 1, 2010 | General |
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.
by Steve Salik | Jan 15, 2009 | General |
Strange Journals is a blog about bookbinding, art journaling, photography, print making and other related art forms. I named this blog Strange Journals because the materials I use and the journals I create don’t always follow the standard conventions of book binding. Book binding can have a certain meditative quality to it and if you sit down and talk to a group of bookbinders or people who journal regularly 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.
