Bind Challenge - 4

The Bind Challenge rolls on and the third of my four books has now been completed. It's a response to the query "What were you doing in the year of your 21st birthday and where did you live, work and play?"
The book Letters from Alice draws on memories of time spent as a vacation student in the Australian outback town of Alice Springs. What was intended to be a grand adventure turned out to be a lonely excursion into a racist world where difference was despised and where changing the status quo was never an option.
Like books one and two, it's a drum leaf binding. It will be the smallest of the project's four books, measuring just 65mm x 65mm.

For Martin ...

This week's image of is for Martin, who was taken by a detail of 7POEMS that featured in an earlier post and asked for some more information.
Completed in an edition of five, it's a simple work consisting of a clam shell box that houses eight accordion fold loose leaves (the seven Maxwell Bodenheim poems plus a title-index-colophon).
7POEMS grew from frustration at being unable to secure a 'licence to use' for part of the text of a planned work and a subsequent on-line search for 'poets-who-died-in-1953'. For those unfamiliar with Australian copyright law, the 2004 US-Australia Free Trade Agreement extended the 'copyright-after-death-of-the-creator' period from 50 to 70 years, meaning that new 'out-of-copyright' material will be not become available in Australia until 2024.
7POEMS is currently part of an exhibition at Artisan Books that runs until 12 October.

Guild 13

This week sees the opening of Guild 13 in the Mezzanine Gallery of Canberra's Civic Library. It's an exhibition of recent works by members of the Canberra Craft Bookbinders' Guild and features thirty six works (including three of my own) by nineteen bookbinders and book artists. The exhibition marks my debut as a curator and I've also taken on responsibility for catalogue design and preparation and exhibition graphics. It's been a busy (but satisfying) time and, fortunately, the pace is starting to ease now that the bump-in has happened. For anyone who might be interested a copy of the exhibition catalogue can be viewed or downloaded here.

A Third Lakeland Sketchbook - 2

After a couple of weeks in the doldrums, things have really taken off. A Third Lakeland Sketchbook - a French simplified binding that's headed for an exhibition in Sydney in November - has gone from go-to-whoa in just a couple of days (at right is a detail of the spine and cover boards). Its completion has marked the start of frantic times with two stalled projects wrapped up, a new project started and finished, and the beginnings of another book drying under weights while I work on this post. More on these in coming weeks. All this activity has been overlain with preparations for an exhibition that opens in Canberra in a few days. I'll have three pieces in the exhibition but, more importantly for me, it will mark my 'debut' as a curator. The deadline for entries was a few days ago and last week saw a steady stream of binders and book artists delivering their work. It felt like Christmas!

A Third Lakeland Sketchbook

The second step in dealing with binder's block is to take yourself off to your binding bench and start working on something mundane that doesn't require too much agonising about design or detail. I've set myself some forwarding tasks on the rebinding of a copy of Arthur Wainwright's A Third Lakeland Sketchbook and it seems to be doing the trick. My enthusiasm is returning and I'm feeling about ready to deal with a backlog of exhibition and other commitments and even starting to think about ideas for new projects.

Books ... beyond words

Over the years I've developed what, so far, has been a sure-fire way of working through binder's block. It's a two stage process, the first step of which involves just getting out and looking at what others are doing - not as a potential source of inspiration but simply a way of getting excited again. Step 1 is now complete with last weekend spent in Bairnsdale for the opening of East Gippsland Art Gallery's Books ... beyond words exhibition. The exhibition (which runs until 4 September) features over eighty artists' books from Australia and overseas and is a treat. There was a real buzz around the opening on Saturday evening and I was thrilled that my entry Cartographica (detail above) was awarded a Judges' commendation. The fun continued on Sunday morning with an opportunity to present my work as part of a series of floor talks by local book artists. More information on the exhibition can be found here.

Binder's block

Back from a month's walking on the Arnhem Land Plateau and suffering from a bad case of binder's block. Usually I'd come back all inspired and ready to go but this trip was physically more demanding than most and I fear that I'm just worn out. There's no enthusiasm to get back to work in the bindery, despite opportunities to take part in interesting projects, a new bunch of students looming and lots of work to do curating an exhibition that opens in Canberra next month. I took the photo above (a local rock platform detail) a few days ago in the hope that it will provide the inspiration for the cover board design for a landscape format book of sketches that I'm intending to submit for a fine binding exhibition scheduled for Sydney in November.