by Steve | May 31, 2013 | Bookbinding |
This morning I fired up the table saw and took out my hostility on some bits and pieces of wood I had laying around. I trimmed them down into blanks that I’ll be using as the covers for some books. There is some Birds Eye maple, Walnut, Shedua, Purple Heart and some Mesquite which is left over from a tree that fell over in my yard a while back. That’s a quarter over there on the right side of the image so you can get an idea of how small some of these books will be.
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about altars and reliquarys so at the moment, the chances are pretty high that at least a few of these potential books will be part of a larger sculptural piece. Stay tuned to see what happens.
by Steve | May 26, 2013 | Bookbinding |
A few years ago, I made a set of 12 editions and a slipcase as a show piece. Essentially, when I was teaching a class somewhere, it would be put out it with a few other samples of my work as an example of what you could expect from my class.
Most people who see this thing really like it and periodically, I do bind editions for a variety of reasons. The covers for this set were made with a decorative paper but I was more interested in doing something with graphics. The books you see below are the same ones I’ve made for PLAY in the past but this time I used an image of Sedona, Arizona for the cover art. I wanted more than that though, I wanted the same image to span the spine so you could see the entire image across the set. I wanted these to be a piece of art on the shelf so that when they were in the slipcase in the correct order the image itself was the primary focus.
To get this effect, I used Adobe Illustrator and laid out guides so I’d know where the spine was. Then, I used transform to keep shifting the image across the cover so that each edition had the correct section of the image on the spine. This was just a proof of concept to see if I could get the alignment correct. I’m planning on making a set of twenty so the image is much larger on the shelf but I’ll need to shoot a panorama to have an image wide enough to pull it off.
by Steve | May 7, 2013 | Polymer Clay, Recently Bound |
I recently finished a new pocket journal inspired by the science fiction classic The Fifth Element. The journal is constructed from polymer clay, the front of the journal features a sculpture of a Mangalore and the four stones. The back of the journal features an image transfer of a Mondoshawan created with liquid polymer clay. The book block is constructed from 300 gm Fabriano Artistico bound with a coptic stitch.
by Steve | Apr 21, 2013 | Notebooks |
The Spring 2013 edition of Field Notes showed up in my mailbox a couple of weeks ago. This time, they chose three images typical of the “American Vista” and printed them in with what they describe as “1960s imprecision.” The images on each cover are slightly out of register and in a storage way it’s a nice change from the crisp precision of your standard laser printer.
An America the Beautiful waterside decal is included and Field Notes thoughtfully provided an installation video to make sure you get it right.
On the downside, it seems as though there is some sort of curse on my Field Notes subscription. This is my third year as a Field Notes subscriber and it seems as though each shipment alway has a kind not from the Post Office attached to it. What’s the deal Mr. Postmaster?
by Steve | Jan 5, 2013 | Polymer Clay, Recently Bound |
I was searching for a texture plate the other day and while I was rifling around in one of the drawers that I keep molds in, I stumbled across one of those silicone ice molds. Someone gave it to me at a birthday party as a gift, I think was the sentiment was something like “Ha! you’re getting older now, here’s a mold to make ice dentures”. I threw it in a pile with all the other silly cliche presents and apparently it got tossed in with all the other molds.
I pulled the mold out of the drawer and decided to make something out of it. I molded up a few sets of heath using some Pearl Premo and Super Sculpey. They sat around uncured for a few days while I though about exactly what to make out of them and for some reason, what emerged was The Book of Tasty Peas.
Here’s a shot of the from cover.
