The last post!

This exhibition was a group exhibition for the Libris Acquisitive Artists' Book Awards at ArtSpace Mackay.

Sleepy tired

We got back from a few days away "up North" yesterday, and today has been slow and easy as a result.  The trip was the first in a while, but we wanted to go and visit friends who've taken over a motel in Stanthorpe, in the "granite belt" wine making district in Queensland, as well as visiting my dear stepson and his partner who have just moved house in Brisbane.  Wine became a bit of a theme!  For some reason we hadn't really anticipated the fact that darling daughter would wish to spend most of her time at the motel in the company of her bestie Belinda, despite the fact that the trip was partly to give them both a chance to catch up with each other, but the net result was that dearest husband and I had a free day.  Naturally we chose to spend it driving around the local wineries and other food-y places, but I wish to emphasise that we did NOT GO MAD and stopped sipping after only three wineries, mainly because we don't have any money and it's torture visiting these places and not being able to buy a bottle of the lovely stuff you've just tasted!  Instead we interspersed the wine tasting with cheese tasting and a visit to a cider farm, and had a lovely drive through the local national park.  I've never visited that part of the country before and it was lovely: lots of huge granite outcrops (unsurprisingly) and fields full of vines or apple trees in bloom.

After the bucolic bliss of Stanthorpe we got a small hit of city life with two nights in Brisbane.  Stepson and partner have (inexplicably) moved out into the suburbs, but we're not them and they seem very happy in their newly-rented 3-bed house.  We'd booked dinner at Ortiga as a treat and spent a small fortune on a taxi ride back into the city so that none of us would have to drive.  Stepson is now a sommelier and we made a deal that he would buy the wine and we'd pay for the food - what I hadn't anticipated was that one bottle of wine would equal the cost of food for five people!  But then, wine isn't my business, nor can I claim a tax rebate on tastings for "professional development" reasons...

Next day I had the luxury of meeting Robyn Foster, Helen Malone and Jack Oudyn from BookArtObject at the State Library of Queensland, where we spent a delightful few hours with Helen Coles in the artists' book collection... We'd advised Helen about what we wanted to see, and she brought out two hefty trolleys full of books for us to look at.  Her colleague, Ann, took a photo of us for their blog and promised me a copy: once that arrives I'll blog about the visit in more detail on the BookArtObject blog, but in the meantime I can tell you that I had a lot of fun!  It was great to meet three people in the flesh whom I'd only encountered on-line, but the excursion was saddened by the fact that our mutual friend Amanda wasn't able to come out with us that afternoon as planned.  Oh well, I guess that requires me to go up and repeat the exercise again at some point!  What a hardship!

We drove back gently yesterday, with another picnic lunch en route.  Today I've managed to see friends, do some shopping, witness the tail end of the Buskers Festival in Coffs Harbour city centre at lunch time AND get out in the garden!  A gooseberry bush, a pom-pom tree (Dais Cotonifolia) and some horse radish were duly planted, but the highlight this evening was a swarm of fireflies, spotted by dearest husband out by the car port, winking their way through the darkening sky.  We stood there transfixed, watching them float around, feeling very privileged to have seen them and enjoying the silence and the standing still for a few minutes.

al Mutanabbi Street - it's hard to squash ideas

You'll have noticed I'm a bit grumpy at the moment.  Losing a job you enjoy does that to you, I find.  But today I was reminded by email that as ever, my troubles pale into insignificance compared to the misery many other people suffer.

I'm working on books for the Al-Mutanabi Street project, aiming to deliver a symbolic collection of ideas-as-artists'-books to the National Library of Iraq as some sort of consolation and message of hope in the face of senseless destruction, thanks to the ingenuity of American poet and book seller Beau Beausoleil.  He's just one man, who got angry at the attack on a city, a nation and a culture represented by the bombing of Al-Mutanabi's historic book sellers in 2007 and started a world-wide "civil" protest in all senses of that word.  Today he sent out an email about the Iraqi government's own acts of repression: sending in the bulldozers to Al-Mutanabi Street.

What do you do in the face of stupidity?  I just don't know, but I feel a bit weighed-down by the thought of it and I'm seeking distractions so I don't get depressed.  School has just broken up for the Spring holidays and I'm looking forward to taking a few days off and seeing friends and my stepson, and meeting some BookArtObject friends in Brisbane on Thursday.  I've taken my dahlia tubers out of their winter storage in the shed and I suppose the sight of tender pale pink shoots rising out of the sawdust is what has made me happiest so far today, although we're off to a wedding in a few hours which will also be happy and hopeful.  When I come back from Brisbane I will finish binding my friend Willis's books for the Al-Mutanabi Street project and then start on my own, and I am looking forward to making the acquaintance of a Syrian/Iraqi refugee family in Coffs Harbour who have offered to help me do some English to Arabic translations.  The wife is from Baghdad and knows the book market well.  I wonder if she's seen the news.

A bit of fun

I've posted about a felt music bag darling daughter and I made over on Rhubarb & Ella, but I thought you might like this Vimeo clip of an artists' book made by Bryan Ku which was highlighted on the Book Arts Listserve today. It's a "simple" concept with an elegant execution, and I really like interactivity in artists' books, full stop. I'm not even a tennis fan...

WIM•BLE•DON from BRYANKU on Vimeo.

Straightening out my head

Yes, it's that time of year again. I need to have a look at the inside of my head and do a bit of housekeeping. Out with procrastination, in with a plan!

Meanwhile I've been driving myself silly, doing silly things. Like collecting this (to my mind) rather lovely old First Aid box after months of waiting. And then leaving it in the Post Office in town and only realising once I'd driven 10kms down the road.























Luckily a rather lovely friend was due to pick me up mid-afternoon to take me off to deliver a presentation on communication skills and, hearing my sad tale, insisted on driving me back to the Post Office. Amazingly someone had spotted my box where I'd left it under the counter and had handed it in! I am very grateful to that kind person, because I felt a bit sad about having lost my box. I've always loved boxes and this one is just intriguing... I plan to fill it full of artists' books. Eventually.

Just Fun

I keep a little list in my 'Favourites' of blogs and websites I should share with you on this blog, but I rarely get around to mentioning them which is a bit hopeless. So here are some book/bookbinding related sites I've been looking at recently:

Handbound Weekly is a blog that pulls together all sorts of makers of books and book-y things in the Etsy on-line community. It's a great place to browse and see what other book binders are selling, and it's the work of Cindy Leaders, who has her own blog here.

Paperiarre is a lovely blog about handmade books and things from Kaija in Finland. I'm at once of admiring of her evident style and covetous of her beautiful books! I hope she won't mind me saying that she's put ideas into my head about embedding objects in book covers or, to be more precise, she's shown me how it can be done. She also has an Etsy shop here.

And lastly for this evening, I was blown away by the sheer, mad, single-mindedness of Watarou Itou and his paper Castle on the Ocean... Crazy and beautiful, it apparently took FOUR YEARS to make. I'll never complain about my slow rate of output again!

PS., for all you Australian book artists out there, you may not be aware that Focus on Artists Books V has been announced by Artspace Mackay, for April 2010. There is a forum, workshops and an exhibition and you can find details on the Artspace Mackay website together with information about the Libris awards. I don't know why there hasn't been a bigger effort to publicise the event? It's a big thing in the Australian artists book world and yet I found out about it through a comment on Artist Books 3.0 and even then I had to search the internet to find out the information.

Book Club - an idea

A call to book artists!

How does this work for an idea? I really enjoying bouncing my ideas off other people, I also enjoy bringing people together to do things and I really enjoy books: as objects, as art works, as stimulation. And I really miss my old book club in Bristol, UK.

If you're an artist working in artists' books, how would you like to join a book club with a difference? Members would take turns chosing a piece of writing (book/poem/play/whatever) that the group would use as a source of ideas for producing an artists' book, say every quarter or every six months. The internet can provide the connection between members, and we could write up/photograph/document our work through something like a joint blog or a Ning on-line group. Resulting artists' books would probably be radically different from each other but would have a common link through the writing that inspired them, and could potentially be exhibited as a group.








I'd be aiming to make things easy (no point in saddling ourselves with something that becomes a chore...). Easy to administer, easy to be a part of, and no sense of 'having to do something you don't want to do'. You could join and not do every book but pick the ones which take your fancy.

So tell me, WHAT DO YOU THINK? Answers and any questions would be very welcome, and if you think of anyone else who works in artists' books and might like to join it would be great if you could pass on this blog post and perhaps they'd like to get in touch.

Australian Bookbinders Exhibition at the Art Gallery of New South Wales

I'm so happy, having just found out that my little book has been included in the selection from the Pine Street exhibition that has gone to the Art Gallery of New South Wales' Research Library. On the off-chance that anyone reading this might be able to go and see it, the link to the Research Library is here.

I love it: it's a hidden treasure, located down a marble staircase from the main 19th century gallery, and the librarian must love artists' books because there are frequent exhibitions of absolutely beautiful things. It is one of the places I always visit when I can get to the AGNSW; how thrilling that I'm there and what a shame I can't go and see it!