The changing face of the Archibald: 1921-2015

Sample Box - Concertina Fold Book Exemplars

Sampler box of 1 medium format and 16 miniature concertina books. 

Made as exemplars for beginners workshops.

(Housing measures 21w x 30h cm).

Constructed from 200gsm kraft paper, 180gsm Canson Aquarello, 

vellum, vintage book pages & found images.

Examples include:

 niches - tabs - pockets - sewn in signatures - stitched pages -

envelopes - magic wallet - woven - pop-ups -

fold-outs - windows - doubled - frames -

convoluted folds - slides - cut outs 

Vale - Betty Churcher

Vale - Betty Churcher (1931-2015)

Brisbane born Australian artist, wife, mother, grandmother, teacher, author, arts media presenter, former Director of the Art Gallery of Western Australia, former Director of the National Gallery of Australia, national icon, inspiration and treasure.

New Work - Two Sides to Every Story

 TWO SIDES TO EVERY STORY

Convoluted Concertina Fold, set of two, handmade  artists’ books (unique). 

Craft paper, rice paper, waterbased printing ink, acid free adhesive

(14.5cm h x 7.5cm w x 2cm d  - closed or 54cm d – fully open x 2 books)

Once again playing around with interwoven concertina folds, craft paper and printed feathers.  Good fun!

GOODBYE 2014 - HELLO 2015

HOPE EVERYONE HAS A VERY

CREATIVE, INSPIRING AND

HAPPY NEW YEAR

Double Accordion Artist Book Structure

Trying out different looks for the double accordion fold format

I have been playing with.

Prototypes

Have been working on some prototype book structures which have been rattling around in my head for quite a while.  So glad to get them out of my brain and into the real world - even happier that my ideas actually worked so flexibly in a structural form.  Now to work on some ideas for content.

Image via National Geographic Kids

Not a lot going on over here.

I seem to be keeping myself busy organising the

Personal Histories exhibitions and maintaining the 

blog and website for that particular project.
It's all going along swimmingly with over 100 artists
from around 23 countries now involved
and 3 definite exhibitions lined up for 2014-2015.
Fun and games!

I have been making a little bit of mail art for 

Theresa Easton's WWI Mail Art project
(as well as working on the project with my students).

I've also been flubbing about with Cheryl Penn's 
Encyclopaedia of Everything project,

along with dabbling in some lino cutting and printing.

Lots of toes in the water, but not much deep sea diving going on.

Early Morning

The up-side of getting up super early to get my daughter to the train station when it is still cold and dark is being able to see the sun rise over the horizon (after filing in and out of the constant stream of headlights).  The sun isn't showing itself around here until just after 6am at the moment and disappearing around 5.30pm.  Lovely, short, cool & sunny days.  BLISS.

Contributions to 'An Encyclopaedia of Everything'

Over the past little while I have involved myself sporadically with making a few books for Cheryl Penn's artist book project "An Encyclopaedia of Everything".

I am currently working on another edition for the project.  This time pamphlet stitch books as part of a collaborative trade between Artist Book 3.0 members.  For this latest edition I am incorporating lino prints with the subject of refugees/boat people.

I think this will be the final call of works for the project as the exhibition is imminent and Cheryl will reach her goal of 500 (?) books by the conclusion of this latest collaboration.

The most recent book I contributed was "After All", a concertina fold book about the final silence which awaits us all.  A bit of a dreary subject, but don't we all love a bit of melodrama now and then?! Unfortunately, I forgot to take a photo of the cover before I sent it off into the never, never.

A small extract from a well known  Edgar Allan Poe poem "The Raven" weaves it's way across the folds 

(Deep into to that darkness peering, long I stood there wondering, fearing, doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before) 

along with images of gravestones, dodos, skeletons and the like - all symbols of memento mori and eternal demise.

The other books I have contributed:

You are my everything......

 and

Missing