Books, Books, Textiles, Silkscreen, Woodblock Prints and more Books

This has been such a wonderful journey. I started out with a basic idea/direction of what I wanted to research and focus on, then found myself having to make decisions as to what to hone in on. I chose to incorporate my new found interest in printing with my previous textile interests and the additional processes of bookbinding. I began by choosing books and artists who did printmaking and bookmaking. My journey began in Oak Cliff, then moved to Houston, New Jersey, New York with two additional trips back to Houston. I have found that there is not enough time in my evenings and weekends to complete all the work I hunger to do. Part of my choice to focus on bookbinding came as a result of a purchase last year of three very expensive hand-made leather art journals. I have enjoyed just the experience of holding these hand designed books, and creating art in them seemed to be more pleasurable than working in manufactured books. I decided that to make the book along with working inside it had to be the ultimate of joyful artistic expression.

I have made ten books in the following sizes:

6.5 x 9.25, 6.75 x 9, 6 x 8, 6.5 x 7.25, 7.5 x 8, 4 x 8.5, 4.75 x 5.75, 5 x 7, 3.5 x 4.75 and 2.5 x 2.75

My favourite is the gray one, which was the last one created to date. The casing is leather, the paper is watercolour, pages are almost square (7.5 x 7.25), and it has four signatures. The first two signatures turn and open in a traditional fashion so when two pages are open, the total dimension is 7.5 x 14.75. The last two signatures have the papers folded into each other, so that when they are completely open, the total length of the page opened up is 7.5 x 29.

This book will be sent to my daughter as a birthday gift. I have painted a dedication on the first page.

The class that I took on dying fabric was wonderful, and I had hopes of making a hand-bound fabric book using some of those pieces as well as textiles I had created this past summer at Junction. After viewing Louise Bourgeois' beautiful hand made fabric book at The MOMA in New York City, I realized that I did not have enough time to create one for this class. This will be a future project. 

Back to the Drawing Board

The next part of my journey was to try my hand at silkscreen printing. I decided I wanted to hand bind my own book using some of the woodblock prints I made this past summer in Junction, some additional woodblock prints I made during this Semester as well as silkscreen prints inspired by screen printed books of both Louise Bourgeois and Pat Steir that I was able to view at The MOMA. I took my class and created a silkscreen based off of the 24" x 48"woodblock print I created this past summer at Junction. Here is the silkscreen I made at the Print Center of New Jersey. The Red and Black version is an edition of 7, the teal and black versions are each mono prints. Unfortunately the screens were not mine so had to remove the image from the screen before I left New Jersey. 

Upon returning from the workshop, I made some additional mini-screen prints at school to see if I could create a small hand-bound book with my prints. I did not make the screen correctly and so the images would not sit in the right place when trying to put together. I had to step back and begin designing the book with a mock-up of dummy papers to see where to place images on the screen for correct printing location. Time was now running out. I had one more workshop to complete as well. I wanted to be able to make my own books and create all the papers inside. This last class was paper marbling. The class was only one day, and it was a 4 hour drive each way for the class (this past Saturday). I did not arrive home until 10 Saturday night. The marbling papers were not completely dry until this morning so I have not been able to complete a book with my own marbled papers for this class. Below are some of the papers I created. I learned several different techniques and got quite messy in the process. Lava soap to the rescue! 

The timing of my workshop classes has been a premium issue. I was unable to make the signatures with my silkscreen and woodblock prints, add the marbled papers to the front and back as well as bind a book before class ended. I look forward to completing one during my Winter Break from teaching.