I worked out a design for the book’s prospectus (a promotional flyer for the book that includes an example of the book’s paper and printing process) that utilised one of the poems on the page, but after I’d torn down and guillotined and folded them and sent them off to (hopefully) interested parties, I was still left with a large pile of one particular poem: Grieving.

The words to Grieving go:

Friends die, one after another;
Each time a dark disorder
A ceaseless banging of shutters

Upstairs there, in the mind;
Bearing of wings, loud weather
Days, nights together.

To force on the mind order:
Journeys taken on maps,
Attentive delving into

The roots of the language.
A search for the true invention
Of form by line in drawing.

Also, renewal of linen—
Keeping the old customs
Putting sides to middles.

Thus, mind and hand stilled
And with a gentler grief
To draw down the blind

The white holland blind
Like a banner of love
Against that wild confusion.

(© the poet, published in Rosemary Dobson, Poems to Hold or Let Go, Canberra: Ampersand Duck, 2009)

There are so many great ideas in there that translate to paper: language, drawing, form, line, linen (or in this case, rag), folding, ritual, the mindfulness of repetitive movement and simple motions.

I decided to make something out of this forlorn and seductive pile of paper, and once I started working with it, I couldn’t stop. My solo exhibition at Megalo Print Access in September 2009, Pressings: Recycled Bookwork, had four pieces made from this one pile of poem, grouped into two pairs:

This is all four pieces (or both pairs) in situ at Megalo, although the one on the far left (in the foreground, not on the wall on the left, which is a completely different work altogether) is cut off. The first two are plinth works, made of small geometric folded elements that can be reconfigured in various ways depending upon mood, inclination and plinth size.

Grieving 1: Folding the Sheets and Sides to Middles

This is Grieving: Folding the Sheets. All of the pieces shift incrementally in size, and the largest, single centrepiece has an inky black centre made from overlaid black inked fingerprints.

Here’s a closer, vertical view. You can see the text of the poem, again and again, alternating in direction, forming a rhythm.

This is the piece that was hiding in the room view above: Grieving: Sides to Middles. These folded elements of paper are not hand-inked, but run through the press rollers at the end of printing, which gave them a very light, even, almost gauze-like black texture.

Folding sides to middles is an old laundry ritual, where worn sheets would be cut in half and resewing them with the less worn edges now in the centre, where they would get more wear. It is also a very evocative line for me when working with paper, either folding sheets (of paper) for bookbinding or when using origami methods.

Grieving 2: Hold and Let Go

The second pair is quite different, and is site specific, although it could probably be installed again at any other gallery that has white walls

This is Grieving: Hold, and it is a unique piece constructed from a vintage book spine, antique thread (bought still on its Victorian-era factory bobbin) and pieces of the poem. It is mounted on a metal rod that inserts into the wall, and you can view it from both sides.

This is the obverse side. It’s very hard to photograph. Here’s a detail of that page panel, handsewn:

I love the shadow of the text on the other side.

Grieving: Let Go, it’s companion piece, is much freer. It is another work that can change shape at will. This time it was a tree of kites taking off from a book spine, but maybe in the future it can be something else:

Another one that is hard to photograph.

It was very meditative and calming to make these works. A few months later, I made a final Grieving work, and now I think I’ve redeemed that printing mistake, well and truly.

These works are all for sale or available for exhibition. If you are interested, please get in contact.

Julie’s brief was this: This project was borne out of the recent sudden death of my father, a handkerchief, some emotive words written by a sibling on his death and the traumatic aftermath of a death processed according to particular societal and cultural mores. Interested artists and Individuals are invited to create an artwork on a hankerchief (any hankerchief not necessarily a man’s) based around death/grief/bereavement and return it to me by end of May, 2010 for inclusion in a collaborative exhibition in June.

I’d just finished a whole body of work centred upon a poem by Rosemary Dobson that I’d accidentally overprinted during the production of her collection, Poems to Hold or Let Go. I worked with the pages in various ways: overprinting them, using origami on them to form sculptural elements, and I thought that this would be a chance to finish the process, to draw a veil across this particular train of thought. I see this as a broadside rather than anything book-related.

I’ve had an old linen hankie in my ‘collection’ box (or one of them, specifically the textiles one) for years — and isn’t it great when things finally find a purpose? I can’t remember if this one has special family significance or if it was given to me by someone… I wouldn’t have bought it. It’s gorgeous, with real handmade lace around the edges.

The text of the poem was transferred from the original letterpress print to the hankie by eucalyptus transfer (which leaves a wonderful lingering scent of eucalyptus, very Australian) and then I used some antique thread to hand-stitch a weeping thread veil over the text. It really is antique — it comes straight off a Victorian-era factory bobbin and has marvellous slubs and stains through it.

The Hankie Project link above gives a post to each entry in the exhibition, which looked wonderful. I’m sure there are plans to travel the works, so it might turn up somewhere near you. If you’re ever in Alstonville, on the far north coast of NSW (an easy daytrip from Brisbane), visit Julie’s gallery, which specialises in artists’ books and print works.

Blue, 2010. Unique artist’s book of found text collaged onto a pianola roll fragment. Available.

Book arts is such a broad spectrum of things; sometimes I make things that start as a traditional book idea and end up far more sculptural. In my head, sculpture is defined as an object that can’t be handled. This piece is so fragile that it shouldn’t be handled, and so it can only sit on a plinth or shelf and be looked at. Mind you, there are many old books in the world that can be described in the same way!

Blue is the result of my finding a number of pianola rolls in an old bookshop. A number of them were in good condition, and intact, and so lovely that I have put them aside for a while, intending to use them eventually — or not, because one day I might find someone who can use them without destroying them. This particular roll shattered easily, and pulled apart at a simple tug, and seemed the perfect metaphor for a fragile ego.

The  notation holes, when the roll is turned sideways to its original purpose, reminded me of electronic music, and as I thought about this, my eye followed the pale, dotted, almost carbon-paper blue line that ran along the length of the yellowing paper and I started humming New Order’s song Blue Monday.

I wrote down the lyrics and marvelled at how simple and timeless they are. There is nothing except the sound of the music to link it to any particular time or place. I thought to myself that I could probably find all the words I needed from any of the old novels I have piled in my studio for recycling. With that in mind, I looked through all the old books to see if any of them had faded to the same colour as the pianola roll, and to my delight, the only one that had was a cheap copy of Louisa M. Alcott’s Little Women. I found all the necessary words within one section of the book (a sewn section that is easily unpicked, as opposed to a chapter), and thus Blue came into being.

Blue was made for the group exhibition 3 Chords and the Truth at ANCA Gallery in April/May, 2010.

Feel the Fell. Unique artist’s book of letterpress and offset letterpress ink on Chinese roll paper with handsewn whirlwind binding. Text by Gerard Manley Hopkins. Design and production by Ampersand Duck.
Held in the Artspace Mackay Collection, Queensland, Australia.

Feel the Fell was made for my solo show, Pressings, at Megalo in 2009. I often run pieces of paper through my press rollers at the end of the day to remove the excess ink before cleaning, and I keep every piece of paper, because I love the random and beautiful results. They speak to me of the process of printing (especially when I have used packing sheets, and there is overprinted embossed text that is picked up by the ink) and the process is a primary part of the experience of using letterpress, because the final printed product is often so similar to something that can be produced more easily by other printing methods.

Anyway, this piece came together when I was browsing through my high school copy of Norton’s Anthology and my eyes were caught by some lines I’d read years ago and had underlined, and then forgotten:

I wake and feel the fell of dark, not day.
What hours, O what black hours we have spent
This night! what sights you, heart, saw; ways you went!
And more must, in yet longer light’s delay.
With witness I speak this. But where I say
Hours I mean years, mean life. And my lament
Is cries countless, cries like dead letters sent
To dearest him that lives alas! away.

I am gall, I am heartburn. God’s most deep decree
Bitter would have me taste: my taste was me;
Bones built in me, flesh filled, blood brimmed the curse.
Selfyeast of spirit a dull dough sours. I see
The lost are like this, and their scourge to be
As I am mine, their sweating selves; but worse.

Gerard Manley Hopkins

And the first lines seemed all I needed to unlock an emotional darkness that the ink seemed perfectly eloquent enough to convey. It’s a very specific poem, but the despair is universal, and so I let the marks do their work.

It’s a lovely piece to look through, and until Artspace Mackay bought it, I encouraged people to use their hands without white gloves to flick through it (and now it is doomed to white-glove-dom forever!). You can see white gloves peeping through some of the images here… After a day or two of having them there, I decided they weren’t necessary, because most of the beauty is in the way the soft paper feels in your hands.

I made a box for it to live in, in which it rolls up like a scroll. The box is covered with a black slubbed bookcloth called Cannapetta, and has hand-stitched detail and ties in black waxed linen thread.

It was also exhibited at the 2010 Libris Awards in Mackay.

I also made a smaller version of this book for a friend who loved it but couldn’t buy the original. That one is also unique, and lives in Melbourne, hopefully being loved and handled. It’s box is recycled from an old bible.

Artist’s book.

Viewed from the side in one of the many possible configurations

Unique letterpress concertina-bound book with removable hard cover and slipcase. c.100 x 100 x 50mm. Canberra: Ampersand Duck, 2005. Private Collection.

I often make small books from the remnants of larger projects, and this is the first of them. Playing with Anna’s Ghosts is a playful book with a concertina binding, removable hard covers and a half-slip wrapper. The title is a pun on the use of typesetting proofs and the contents of the text, which are poetry scraps from the printing of Shared Rooms. The book can be configured in as many ways as the scraps of text can be read.

view from above when arranged in a circle

This is part 4 of 4 posts. For details about the physical aspect of this book and the original premise, go here.

Essentially, this is an on-line recreation of a book consisting of three sets of postcards revolving around a set of short writings by Henri Michaux.

The first set has on one side (the ‘text’ side of a traditional postcard) the official, published translated text. On the other side of each is a collage image inspired by the text.

The second set has on one side the original French; I don’t speak or read French, so I’ve picked out the words that make visual sense as an English speaker and highlighted them. The other side has an English translation of the French, generated by Babelfish, an internet translation program. It’s a weird machine translation, very literal and sometimes completely missing the point.

The third set is highly personal. The images are drawn using ink, gouache and gold paint and then partially erased. The text is hand-written, using my own experiences, and echoing Michaux’s text without imitating it. These were written in 2000, four years before I thought about blogging — but you can see why I took to blogging so happily.

There are 12 pieces of writing in ‘I am writing to you from a far-off country’. I have arranged all the postcards into twelve sections, so that you can see the sets in the way they were meant to be viewed. The second batch, postcards II-IV are below, showing fronts and backs. If you like them and wish to read them all, they are divided over four  blog posts: I, II-IV, V-VIII, IX-XII.

IX

X

XI

XII

This is part 3 of 4 posts. For details about the physical aspect of this book and the original premise, go here.

Essentially, this is an on-line recreation of a book consisting of three sets of postcards revolving around a set of short writings by Henri Michaux.

The first set has on one side (the ‘text’ side of a traditional postcard) the official, published translated text. On the other side of each is a collage image inspired by the text.

The second set has on one side the original French; I don’t speak or read French, so I’ve picked out the words that make visual sense as an English speaker and highlighted them. The other side has an English translation of the French, generated by Babelfish, an internet translation program. It’s a weird machine translation, very literal and sometimes completely missing the point.

The third set is highly personal. The images are drawn using ink, gouache and gold paint and then partially erased. The text is hand-written, using my own experiences, and echoing Michaux’s text without imitating it. These were written in 2000, four years before I thought about blogging — but you can see why I took to blogging so happily.

There are 12 pieces of writing in ‘I am writing to you from a far-off country’. I have arranged all the postcards into twelve sections, so that you can see the sets in the way they were meant to be viewed. The second batch, postcards II-IV are below, showing fronts and backs. If you like them and wish to read them all, they are divided over four  blog posts: I, II-IV, V-VIII, IX-XII.

V

VI

VII

VIII

Essentially, this is an on-line recreation of a book consisting of three sets of postcards revolving around a set of short writings by Henri Michaux.

The first set has on one side (the ‘text’ side of a traditional postcard) the official, published translated text. On the other side of each is a collage image inspired by the text.

The second set has on one side the original French; I don’t speak or read French, so I’ve picked out the words that make visual sense as an English speaker and highlighted them. The other side has an English translation of the French, generated by Babelfish, an internet translation program. It’s a weird machine translation, very literal and sometimes completely missing the point.

The third set is highly personal. The images are drawn using ink, gouache and gold paint and then partially erased. The text is hand-written, using my own experiences, and echoing Michaux’s text without imitating it. These were written in 2000, four years before I thought about blogging — but you can see why I took to blogging so happily.

There are 12 pieces of writing in ‘I am writing to you from a far-off country’. I have arranged all the postcards into twelve sections, so that you can see the sets in the way they were meant to be viewed. The second batch, postcards II-IV are below, showing fronts and backs. If you like them and wish to read them all, they are divided over four  blog posts: I, II-IV, V-VIII, IX-XII.

II

III

IV

Digital images, laserprinted text, pen, ink and gold paint on paper, custom perspex cover. Unique, Canberra: Editioning & Artists Book Studio, NITA, 2000. Currently with Arki von Optropp, Artist’s Book Dealer, Sydney.

Sorry, this is the only formal image I have of the boxed set!

Made during my visual art degree, when I was having a major crush on the writings of Henri Michaux. This is a work about translation. Henri Michaux was French, but there are debates on how French his French was, as he played merry hell with the rules. This set of writings is arranged as one side of a correspondence, and I extended this to include my own explorations into the text.

I made three sets of postcards, and they are all included below, since my unique copy seems to have disappeared with a dealer I haven’t heard from for years, and I spent a lot of time thinking about this project and would like to look at it more often myself.

The first set has on one side (the ‘text’ side of a traditional postcard) the official, published translated text. On the other side of each is a collage image inspired by the text.

The second set has on one side the original French; I don’t speak or read French, so I’ve picked out the words that make visual sense as an English speaker and highlighted them. The other side has an English translation of the French, generated by Babelfish, an internet translation program. It’s a weird machine translation, very literal and sometimes completely missing the point.

The third set is highly personal. The images are drawn using ink, gouache and gold paint and then partially erased. The text is hand-written, using my own experiences, and echoing Michaux’s text without imitating it. These were written in 2000, four years before I thought about blogging — but you can see why I took to blogging so happily.

There are 12 pieces of writing in ‘I am writing to you from a far-off country’. I have arranged all the postcards into twelve sections, so that you can see the sets in the way they were meant to be viewed. The first set is below. If you like them and wish to read them all, they are divided over three more blog posts: II-IV, V-VIII, IX-XII.

I