Tuesday 24 January 2012

BookArtObject


BookArtObject began a couple of years ago with eight artists working on Edition One. Numbers grew with Editions Two and Three and have exploded to 60+ artists for Edition Four. Under the BAO banner, we make small editions of handmade artists' book in response to agreed texts that we share with each other and the world. We also share our stories, ideas, creative processes and our work-in-progress. You can find out more about us here.
The inspiration for Edition Four is Kurt Johannessen's Exercises (1994), a handbook of gently subversive tasks that prompt readers to reflect upon their world. One of Kurt's exercises, "write 100 stories and bury them in the forest", inspired British book artist Sarah Bodman to do just that. Her 100 stories, collected as An Exercise for Kurt Johannessen (2010), have been buried and are quietly decomposing in a forest in northern Denmark. The Edition Four artists have, with Sarah's permission, taken the titles of her stories as the starting point for their work. My title is #41 It's beginning to hurt.

Tuesday 17 January 2012

Babushka Boxes

For the next little while, I thought that I would mix up some works from my archive with work-in-progress reports on BookArtObject Edition 4 and other projects. First up is something from the archive.

About this time last year, I came across some vintage Japanese cottons that triggered memories of the babushka apron patterns found on the painted figures of traditional Russian matryoshka nested dolls that had fascinated me as a child. I subsequently wrote a short meditation on the delights of nested objects, bound the work with a simple case binding and then made a series of seven nested boxes to house the book. The finished work, Babushka Boxes, was part of a group exhibition at the Art Gallery of NSW in late 2011.

Wednesday 11 January 2012

Welcome

Hello and welcome to my blog!
I am an Australian book artist and bookbinder with a passion for the 'complete' book. My studio, BEMBindery, produces unique and small editions of artists' books and contemporary design bindings. I exhibit regularly with Artbound, the Canberra Craft Bookbinders' Guild and Australian Bookbinders’ Exhibitions and teach traditional bookbinding skills to artists and others through a local community organisation. I am also a member of the artists' collective BookArtObject. This blog is my way of sharing my work with other BAO artists and with you.