Tag Archives: Artist books

Amazing how quickly time passes

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All the books were finished in October, but I didn’t get my copies until the middle of December.

Here is a picture I received in October of the finished books.

WSW celebrated its 50th anniversary in November, which accounts for the delay. As a recent resident I was mentioned and pictured in some of their promotional material. The local NPR station, WAMC, published a story here. HYPERALLERGIC published a long piece here and used my picture at the top.

HYPERALLERGIC made me 2 years older and WAMC went down a rabbit hole about older women being invisible, which had nothing to do with my book. Unfortunately WSW went down the same rabbit hole but also gave me a nice write-up here.

In the meantime I visited the Newberry Library and found a book structure I want to use. Not sure exactly what I want in it, but I’m stuck on how to make it. I’ve looked at it and photographed it three times at the library but I will have to make at least one more visit. More about this latest obsession next time.

Back to reality, but not finished

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I’m back in Chicago. My experience at the residency was wonderful and I loved every minute. I loved being with all of the younger women, the change in my routine was great and the need to work full days, no naps, was stimulating and energizing.

I still have one more decision before the book is finished by Chris Petrone and the great people at WSW. The cover image and color remain a question. We began with this sample and played with different paper colors and whether the image should be positive or negative.

Finally decided to go with blue, but which blue and again positive or negative remains to be seen. Chris ordered the paper and will send a printed sheet to me for the final decision.

Last day

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Tomorrow I go home. There are still a few things to decide about the cover, which makes me a little unhappy. I spent time today scoring; tedious, labor intensive work that has to be done right or the books won’t fold properly.

The ruler is lined up with the hash marks and the bone folder is pulled twice against the ruler creasing the paper and insuring a clean fold. Each sheet gets scored in 19 places. After all of the scoring is finished the sheet will be cut, each book will be folded individually and hash marks will be trimmed off.

Books will probably not be completed for another month. A plate will be made to do the letterpress printing on the cover. It will then be diecut, scored, folded and the text block will be inserted into the cover. Women’s Studio Workshop will handle sales and distribution.

Next step

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All of the books are signed. They will be numbered after all of the scoring, folding and trimming is finished and we know how many books are actually completed. Sixty books were printed; we are hoping to get at least 50. Scoring and folding are done by hand. Trimming can be done in a more mechanized fashion.

Vertical lines are guides for scoring and folding. Horizontal lines are trimming guides. All will be trimmed off.

We are still working on the cover. It will be letterpress printed, diecut, scored and folded. Final decisions wil have to be made tomorrow or Saturday before I go home. Here are pictures of some of the sample prints and the printing press.

Women’s Studio Workshop

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Located within a small group of houses next to the Wallkill rail trail in Ulster County New York, these two buildings house printmaking, paper making and ceramic studios. I have been working in the bindery and will also be in the printing studio when we work on the cover of my book. I am living in a house just down the road.

In the nineteenth century this area produced Rosendale cement, which was used in such famous landmarks as the Brooklyn Bridge. Today the quarries are evidently covered in water and all that remains is a chimney, kilns and a few other stone ruins.

I have been walking on the Wallkill Trail, much different experience than my daily walks in Pittsburgh during the covid lockdown and my recent walks in my new neighborhood in Chicago.

Finished, but not done

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The book is finished. As usual, I am not happy, so there will be another iteration, this time with design changes based on experience. Usually I'm just speculating. The book, opened out fully, is about three feet long.

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Here is a picture looking through the opening.

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Sorry the pictures aren't better. I didn't set up properly; since I'm going to do it again, I'll worry about good pictures the next time.

I think this is not a tunnel book in the usual sense. It's really a tunnel, of sorts, but you can't see all the way through it unless you open the folded pages.

I've made several decisions about the overall look:

1. I want one more bridge after the second folded page.

2. I will remove the accordion fold next to the cover, connecting it directly to a folded page. Otherwise the whole thing is too loose.

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Above, I clipped the first accordion fold closed.

3. I will be more careful with the outside accordion folds so they will be more closely repetitive, unlike what you see below.

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I will change the back end of the book so that it is a closed sheet or another bridge. This is the one thing that needs a decision.

I want to decrease the number of pieces I have to glue. Unfortunately, even though I can print front and back with reasonable registration, some of the pieces have to be doubled in order to have some place to hide the glue tabs. My first thought was to print the bridges on one sheet, but the card stock is not heavy enough to support the other pages. So, each of the six bridges will be doubled, the three larger accordion folds will be double, and small accordion folds will be single.

I made a diagram:

Diagram

Double lines are glued pages. Single lines with yellow triangles are single accordion folds. Probably makes no sense to anyone else, but I want it as part of my record.

All about glue

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or as much as I can bring myself to write. I dislike glue almost as much as all of those details. I'm beginning to develop a technique, but it's still a challenge; either too much or too little.Too much soaks into the paper and you get streaks in solid color areas, like the sky. Too little and there are gaps between the sheets. Here you can see one of those gaps and the blue in the last page is streaked.

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I tend to forget what gets glued to what. This is the second iteration. Each page has been glued to one other page, but when I got to page three I should have glued to two pages, one before, one after, and I forgot the after pages.

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I did it again in the third iteration, but caught it before the glue was entirely set, making for a sloppy joint, but I wanted to see the entire thing put together. I finished on Friday and have spent the weekend trying to figure out how to do it better.

I went over to Staples to look at printers and paper (card) stock, and had a funny experience. The copy center has books of paper samples. When I looked at the samples I knew they had labeled them incorrectly. So I told this to the young man behind the counter. He was very nice and took me over to the paper stock shelves where he opened two different reams and then concluded I was correct. Evidently he had been stung by the mistake and hadn't figured it out. He thanked me for teaching him something. I hope what I really taught him was that old ladies often know what they are talking about. I bought a ream of something they labeled 110 lb. cover, but I don't think it is. It just happens to be the heaviest, brightest stuff they sell. I decided not to get a new printer, but bought more ink instead.

I still have lots of thinking to do. Next post I'll have pictures and the redo plan.