fifty pages… i can do it.

bad news… I can’t exactly find my old proposal at the moment but am pretty sure I left it at home (when i was in GB last weekend) with a folder full of things i ended up needing this week…

so i will post that over thanksgiving when i go home again,

My book is of a poem by bob dylan written for woody guthrie, talking about life and how people and you should be living it, about the hardships that woody faced, about life as a whole and the thoughts that generate your every day life)

I really want to play with text. i have never taken a typography class or anything like that but i love when text is used as imagery and can make a book a whole new experience. so each page has its own crazy curves and angles for the text that i am working on corresponding with the actual words… i think i decided on size 11 font “Optima” it looks clean and simple and professional my text will be in a darker grey color…

the only thing that i really changed from the last proposal was the binding (or lack there of) i decided it would work so much better with my line of stitching if i were to do an accordion folded books, also Leslie brought up a good point that it would be next to impossible to make construct and bind 20 fifty-page books.  i still technically have about 50 pages for my book but only have have that many folds because i am planning on having text on the front and on the back of my pages. i plan to stitch a continuous organic crazy line from the beginning to end to tie it altogether, make it more visually appealing and to move you through the poem

each page is going to be about 4×5” meaning i can fit 4 pages on a regular 8.5×11″ piece of paper… so if i divide 50 (pages) by 4 that means i need 12.5 pieces of paper per person

12.5(pages) x20(books) = 250 pieces of paper

i got cover quality paper from the paper source:

cream-colored paper: $.30 each x 250= $75

glue: $10.00

$75.00+$10.00= $85.00

i bought some really cool thread this weekend.. each book is about 10 feet long so had to get a minimum of 200 feet of thread… so i got 600 feet just to be safe haha it was cheap. printing is going to pricey and im not looking forward to that,

$.04 x 250= $10.00

i also i need another layer of paper so i will be looking at my options this weekend for that…

stonehenge at utrecht is $2.00 for a 22×30″ piece, if i cut that into strips 5 times i would have 6 strips and altogether would be 132 inches long since each book is about 10ft (120 inches) but pages would be over lapping, i would need a page per person…

$2.00×20= $40.00

i think daryl sells it for cheaper though.

$85.00 + $10.00+ $40.00 = $135 for the whole thing

i used the tablet pen thing to draw the lines that will be my guides for the text.  here are some photos to get an idea…

my book o’ scans

http://issuu.com/mylibrary

insomnia is a four letter word

i just got so so frusterated because i could not remember my password for this blog. i swear i entered about 14 words before i found the winner.

its around 2am on a tuesday and i am too say the least a little tipsy, which is why i am about to blog… and disredard all spelling errors and punctuation,..

i dont have any class on tuesdays so its hard to take the day seriously. but my day was on-so-serious.  it started off with a brand new crisp parking ticket and turns out my wind-shield wiper is good for something after all. i went to school right away and worked on my scans for-wait for it- 6 hours straight. not one break. (except to pay my meter which i realized was and hour and a half past paid which resulted in yet another parking ticket…)

my scanning went well and i was amazed that i didnt need to ask the lab tech one question.  my finished scanning everything but havent finished the text or captions blah blah blah

i like my cover for it tho

i got home and talked to my mom for the first time in a long time. my friend cassie came over and brought noodles and co and too much wine… i am emphatically tired and have far too much homework to be writing in a blog right now. with that i bid you goodnight…

what was everyone for halloween?

next year im going to be May Day

book as sculpture

looking over the netvibes site it was really interesting to get a glimpse into this whole world of book arts an artists that i otherwise wouldnt know much about. it is a bigger community than i thought and it encourages me to keep pushing my book art skills one artists who books caught my eye specifically was on the “book arts web page” Pamela Moore creates these masterpiece sculptural pieces out of mostly already existing books.  she explores the concept of books as objects by incorporating the elements of light, texture, time and space.

When Smith refers to the transition of a book he mentions how the viewer is always engaged to the book, usually not in the traditional sense, but “still, the viewer must turn the page.  The act does not reveal a collection of single pictures, but the total experience of the boo, of which turning the page is an element.” … ” To this extent, transition is literally physical, and all books, blank, with text and/or pictures, much deal with physical transition” and then there is an image of a book-as-sculpture that he mentions is much more dramatic and theatrical and have much more dazzle than a sequence of photographs. although i have not working in this way myself, it is admirable to see other people in the class thinking of the book as a blank canvas for a sculpture and i think it takes a unique mind to create a very successful one.

*also dont forget the book on page 341

not going to proof read this so i hope its not all sorts of messy.

chocolate chip cookies…here i come.

so the next assignment that is due is a book with 20 pages…

again i have been struggling for a solid concept that will link with something aesthetically pleasing as well… I don’t know what it is about junior year but geeesh.

alright so i really wanted to keep in mind that this is a scanned book so everything is flat. 2d… i get mad when i see pictures of sweet 3d things like keys or interesting textures because i just want the real thing… pictures of paintings are especailly frusterating..  So I jumped to collage.. i like collaging and i think when is done right it can look really cool and interesting. i know i dont like scans of a bunch of collages though- because again, i want to see the real thing… the only guidelines i really remember are just that it was to be 20 pages and scanned and that we might get them bound (?) at digicopy. thinking of all these aspects… everyones final book will look very clean, orderly, (a little boring…) regardless of the subject matter simply because of the physicality and its restrictions. (obviously there are many professional bound mass produced books that are interesting and fun to look at etc… but as far as artists books go i mean… compared to altered books or original prints or 3d anything… yeah-this ones boring.)

i finally decided i wanted to have my book be about housewives or typical women from the 50′s-70′s because i wanted clean images that are still visually interesting but that would look good when put together with these “guidlines” I went to downtown books in search for vintage magazines with less luck than i was expecting… I ended up using most of my grandmas home and garden and housekeeping magazines, i cut out all of the interesting images i found and x-acto knifed out all the “negative spaces” the images look cool and seeing them together in a book will be neat

next i want to either cut up contemporary images from other mags mocking the generation gap, or maybe embrace that time period and after scanning the images in, type up rules on “how to be a good housewife/keep a clean home/keep the husband happy” etc… i read an old home-ec book my mom had from high school and almost died. i couldn’t stop laughing, i was so disgusted at some of this books suggestions and “rules” as to what constitutes a proper woman.  ill work with my images further tonight and see where it goes…

holy cow im hungry im gonna bake some cookies from a recipe in this magazine from 1962…..

peace

hello sunshine

alright so I think im supposed to writing more in this blog… hopefully this helps my grade leslie?

so we had critique this morning… lovely.  i love that special collections place that is my 3rd time being there this semester and definitely not my last… its addicting.  Max seems to always pull out the same few books when im there though… (oh and do you remember the name of that artist thing he was taking about in seattle and now here in milwaukee? it was like the red line or something…?)

critique went well and i realllly enjoyed seeing everyones final pieces.  unfortunatly i was up the entire night finishing up mine so i did not make it bed hence i was dead this morning and didnt voice much of my thought or opinions on peoples work.

i was delirious

well actaully i still am…

hopefully ill come up with an idea i like before a week before critiqe next time and i wont have to pull numerous all nighters….

wait isnt the next project due a week from today?

well shit, nevermind then.

since i dont have much to blog about because we just had critique i guess i will elaborate on my theories of sleep and the oh so cherished rem cycle…

who needs sleep anyway… every hour you are sleeping is an hour you are loosing of being awake…

that sounds stupid

…but really…

its not just ‘an extra hour of sleep’ its loosing a whole hour of life you could be living! u know?

well i have to meet in the lab now, ill write again hopefully later today on thoughts for my next book…….

and i bid you goodnight.

p.s. Thank you so much Leslie for the AmAzInG lunch! it was sooo good and i cant remember the last time i ate real food… ha so thanks again that was so nice of you!

mock ups

4+3=

ahhhhh

that was a long sigh of relief because i finally came up with an idea i like for the altered book project and have been working out ideas for it non stop… ill try to take some photos and post them on here before class on thursday.

so i read over my last blog reading about what catches my eye in an altered book and what i find amusing or neat and i think the problem was i was trying to make THAT the topic instead of incorporating those things into a topic… i wanted there to be a number of things in my book, but i didnt want it to be too much or something i wouldnt be able to finish in time,  i wanted it to have a very hand made quality to it but with good craft and i needed a theme… bad.  i was really worried i was never going to come up with something i really liked the thought of (this is after hours of “brainstorming”) until i read my horoscope and it said to not stress because great ideas were coming my way! (CRAZY!) so i went to bed.

Yesterday morning i took the bus over to brady where a morbidly obese person sat next to me cracking jokes about his weight.  he was funny so i didnt mind he was all up in my personal space.

when getting off the bus on brady one might notice that there alllways seems to be a homeless man in the little station area… just sitting there, sometimes asking for money or sometimes minding his own business (last time a man took my subway sandwich out of my hand and started eating it) but yesterday i saw not one or two but three “bums” (if you will) “interesting” i thought.

(i swear this story is going somewhere)

i went into walgreens and saw a mother literally ScReAmInG at her child saying she couldnt have any nail polish. such anger.

throughout the day i saw:

one guy who had the coolest backpack i have ever seen

one girl with the cutest dress i had ever seen (i asked her where it was from but i have never heard of the store…)

and another girl with the greatest skin i had ever seen, it was like the super white porcelin perfect skin you know?

so jealous.

anyway so these events seem normal enough and not out of the ordinary than any other day but then on the way home on the bus i began thinking about my theme for my book again when a thinner lady sat next to me (even tho there were other open seats) with some of the perkiest boobs i had ever seen.  without a doubt they were fake. this lady was also very  nice although she chewed her gum with her mouth open and i couldnt help but glance at her chest on account that i thought they might actually fall right out. she started flirting with the guy across the aisle who was waaaay to young for her, (she was probably in her late 30′s and he was definitely no older than me,…) and so i went back to thinking about my book

okay so this is when it hit me…

gluttony, sloth, anger, envy, lust…

just that afternoon i came into contact with 4 of the 7 seven deadly sins

(unfairly assuming certain things about these certain people of course…)

i loved the idea of incorporating these into my book, i grew up in a pretty religious household but dont really remember learning about these “7″ is it a catholic thing maybe? i looked on some bible verses and cut out alot of images and have been putting together a mock up book…. i like the conection between the every day life of these themes and how my book will be a handmade connection between it, this tangable, touchable, intimate thing that anyone who looks through has been guilty of at least one of these sins,

actually i dont like thinking about about that part really.

ill put some pictures up this afternoon but so far i have some collaged things and some cut outs from the book itself and the hidden pockets are on their way…

this is a really long post and im sorry if you fell asleep.

lust

gluttony

greed

sloth

wrath

envy

pride