Art of the Book: Solo Show at the Experimental Art Gallery

I will be exhibiting my artist bookwork from the last 5 years at Habitat in the Experimental Arts Gallery next week.

It would be wonderful if you could make it. I will also be talking about Book Arts, and conducting workshops. Email me for more information. The workshop details are below, and the exhibition poster is attached with this email.

Hope you can make it!

 

2-day workshop, 25-26 April 2015

Make an Artist's Book
Decorative bookbinding and low-tech printing methods

On the first day we will learn two basic bindings and learn how to generate content for our books. Participants will learn low-tech printing and image-making methods and create imagery for their books. On the second day, we will bind these pages together to make your very own artist's book!


Date : Saturday - Sunday, 25-26 April 2015
Timings : 10 am - 1 pm on both days

Cost : Rs. 5,000 total (materials and tools included)
Venue : Experimental Arts Gallery, Habitat Center

Participants will leave with 1 completed artist's books and examples of three binding styles by the end of the second day.

Women's Studio Workshop: Update

Lizz just posted a great article about my project with some beautiful photographs. Read all about it here and about the finished book here.

It feels like it has been snowing non-stop since I arrived

 

 The icicles have been building for days and look almost like they are going to become pillars!

Going for short walks after a snowfall has been something I have been enjoying.
Its also perfect time to be printing in the studio

 

The binding of the book I am working on has been revised and is working better- more handle-able

and able to stand up for display

 

I cut 50 sheets of Sakamoto and 75 sheets of Kitakata for an edition of 50 books. The barn was freeeeezing but a couple of space heaters did the job. Plus, when the board shear and guillotine are so
wonderful to work with, the cold bothers you less!

 

Starting on the second run of the first spread

 

I managed to finish up all the image runs in a couple of days

 

Meanwhile- I have been teaching the Art-in-Education classes

 

Some students really enjoyed making their paper portraits

 

Some are particularly fetching and simple,

 

And some are more complex...

 

 and involved

 

After printing all the images and the colophon, I decided to start on cutting the shapes out.

I used Mylar stencils to help with accuracy and registration

 

Ten down, fifty more to go!

 

With all the squares finished, I started on the triangles

 

These were harder to register, but I go them all cut finally!

 

And I finally finished printing the title

Now to fold, fold fold!

IAPMA Conference in Fabriano, Italy (2014)

I meant to blog about this shortly after the conference, but just couldn't find the time. I attended the IAPMA conference in Italy last summer. It was simple amazing. The spaces were beautiful. The conference was held in the papermaking and watermark museum in Fabriano which was right next to a church, where the presentations were hosted. I delivered a presentation on watermark stop-motion animation and talked about a 4-second animation I was working on for my thesis. I also gave a demonstration on Islamic-style papermaking and talked about Mohammed Hussain Kagzi and all the beautiful paper they are making India. Read more about them here.

 

Apart from an extensive collection of watermarks (that were hard to photograph)

the museum also had a wooden stamper

 

They also had a functional papermaking set up that was used to make paper (just as in the Capellades mill) as well as for demonstrations

 

The entrance to the courtyard was decorated with this cut paper stencil that made the

light coming through beautifully dappled

 

All the windows in the museum overlooked the large courtyard.

This where the demonstrations took place 

 

I set up an angled vat that was deep enough to simulate the dug-out vats used by the Kagzi family. It was hard to the back! Samples of their paper as well as paper from my hemp fermentation experiments were available for people to peruse

 

 

The crowd was extremely interested in the process and in the family

 

Amy and Roberto helped me with couching and parting!

 

 The church where the presentation were delivered- from the pulpit no less!

Women's Studio Workshop: Art-in-Education Residency

I am currently in upstate New York doing an Art-in-Education Artist Book Residency at the Women's Studio Workshop. Its just the start of my second week of the ten-week residency. I teach papermaking to eight-graders for two days every other week. So far I have taught one class and it was great fun! While I am here I will be working on a new book project. The book questions the taxonomical system of classification, Systema Naturae, created by Carl Linnaeus, currently in place and widely used by us today. During the research phase of this project I learned that the system does not take into account the fact that everything is constantly evolving. This was a problem- one that remains largely unsolved. The system is therefore somewhat arbitrary. To highlight this arbitrariness I devised my own classification system- one that categorizes things in the natural and man-made world according to their basic geometric shape. Very broad and arbitrary.

* Lizz just posted an update on the progress of my book on WSW website. Read it here.*

  This is the main building of WSW, where all the studios are

The printmaking studio

The paper making studio, where I am teaching the class

 A student from Bailey Middle School creating a self-portrait using embedments in
between a sheet of Corn and Abaca

 Couching!

 

 More wonderful self-portraits

Clean up was super-efficient and well done by the class

 

 This is an early mock-up of the book I am working on here. The cut-out shapes highlight the
illustrations/objects that fall into the category of the taxonomy of the circle

 

A pumpkin, a bulb, an octopus and a button are in the category of the circle

 

The taxonomy of the triangle   

Things like a pear, a slice of pie, a mountain, stamens, kites are all in the same category because they are all the same general shape of the triangle

  The latest mock-up of the pages looks something like this. Its easier to handle, and larger because it lacks two folds

  Creating new images. The earlier iteration of the book had the taxonomies of the circle, square, rectangle and triangle.
I decided not to include the rectangle since its more of a secondary geometric shape in my mind

 

An option instead of cutting out shapes was to make the paper for the overlays with the shapes as very fine watermarks. For this, we decided to expose a silkscreen and make a sheet of paper off it. I was excited about trying this out, because this could be adapted to so many other ideas!

 

Ellen, an intern here exposed the screen and got it ready for the experiment

  

The triangles appear!

Making the sheet using a small deckle

 

 It was almost immediately evident that this wasn't going to be a total success without a lot of fidgeting and tweaking

The finished sheet looked good enough for what it was, but it didn't come close to what I wanted. Only one shape on this sheet came out close to clear. Oh well. I am excited about trying more of this for another project though

Anatomia Botanica

I finally have time to post some of the images from the finished book. To read about the making-of, click here, here and here. After being in the group show, Finite Landscapes held at the UICB, the book was also shown at the Pyramid Atlantic Book Fair in Maryland, where it won the Maryland Institute College of Art Book Prize.

The deluxe and the standard edition. The deluxe edition has been bound using a modified paper case binding with case paper. The paper for the edition of ten was handmade using hemp and cotton fibers. The standard edition has been printed on Hahnemühle Biblio and bound in a drum leaf binding with a hard case

The deluxe binding comes in clam shell box with a set of three movable prints

 The title page. The flourish under the title has been printed using linoleum reduction

The taxonomy of the Nelumbo nucifera

A detail

 

Nelumbo nucifera text spread, set in Bembo italics and roman

 

Hibiscus rosa-sinensis title page

 

Detail. The scallop pattern has been printed using photo polymer plates

 

 

The taxonomy of the Hibiscus rosa-sinensis

 

A detail

 

The taxonomy of the Magnolia grandiflora

 

 

A detail

Afterword