Artists' Books and Printed Matter

 This project was interesting... I was not quite sure where to go with such a broad topic so I really wanted to focus on colour rather than dealing in a lot of content I chose to make a lot of book. During our demo I asked Petra how big she would recommend for the lay flat technique and she didn't really give me an answer so I chose to make a massive lay flat book. I used 360 pieces of paper making 720 pages total, my signatures were 4 pages and I spent hours folding, poking holes, folding again, and sewing them all together (it was hell). I am very happy with how it came out and enjoy the way it can stand and make an entire circle really playing with how colour shifts in different lighting, especially when I was folding the paper together all the different shade of paper all looked the same causing a minor meltdown but we persevere. The cover was looking sad so I added the title Purple and on the back Just Purple which I think captures the book very well. #Purple4life #cantstopthe...

  We looked at different examples of Japanese stitching techniques. I found this somewhat interesting and for a first try I feel like I did fairly well, it helps to be a proficient hand stitcher. I looked at some other resources and found some other really cool stitch patterns.

 I spent the week sewing and sewing and sewing #purple I had struggle with the glueing of the book as it always gets all wrinkly on me but I'm not sure how to fix that because its glued... almost forgot to do a colophon but I didn't

I enjoyed this project and chose a more touchy idea for my subject matter and found the techniques I used lent themselves very well to the subject matter. for the images I chose to make prints and the gouging of the lino was very similar to cutting as a form of self harm (SH). I wanted to have the prints get progressively more cut up as it's similar to how scars build up on the skin. I wanted to end with a peony since its something that I am looking at getting to cover up my scars, a peony because it is my mom's favourite flower. this motif acts as a double edged sword as it is both my mother who I had a poor relationship with and much of my SH was set off by events with her, but as our relationship has healed I have more and more appreciation for my mom.  for my second book I included some of the scans of my prints and used text focused around the conversations in my head and I think the two work well together. for the third I used all text again surrounding my inner monologue...