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It speaks volumes
Jun. 20th, 2019 08:24 pmSpent a good bit of the morning on firing day on a different style of art project: a story book.
Denise has been a member for several years now of the Emerald Book Arts Group, a bunch of book enthusiasts who meet monthly to view demos, show off projects and share exchange books. I tag along often enough that I've become a de facto member; I've even given the demos a couple of times--brush making, rubber stamp carving, and the upcoming Gelli plate print workshop. Denise has also given some bookbinding demos, and holds an open studio paper making slosh-n-play every summer in the back yard.
The exchange books are a fun idea. Every month, there's a topic, or technique chosen, everybody who wants to participate makes a book to give away, and anyone who brings one takes one of someone else's home. Last month, the topic was spring flowers, and I made a little illustrated chapbook with a poem about dandelions that I wrote back in my La Crosse days.
This month, the topic was Lost and Found, and after throwing around a few notions on found object books, I remembered a children's story that's been sitting on my hard drive since 1993. I used to tell stories on the radio, back before I came out to Oregon, on a kids' show called Earticklers. It's how I met my music partner, Hans, in fact: his girlfriend was co-hosting the show. She'd had tried for years to get him to do more children's music, but he kept putting her off, saying he didn't have any ideas for songs. Finally, she said, Why don't you meet up with Frank and see what happens?
Our first meeting, I brought along a song lyric about things I was scared of as a kid, and a poem I'd written for Earticklers. Within an hour, he'd written tunes for them, and we put them on tape for reference. By the second meeting, he was talking about an album, and in fact, we recorded two, My Brother Eats Bugs and When I'm Feeling Silly, before I came out here for grad school. He's still recording and performing children's music, thirty years later. so Carol got her wish.
I'd long since left Earticklers behind in 1993, in fact had my own, folk music radio show by then, but still got the occasional urge to write a story, or a lyric. The songs I sent to Hans; the stories just sort of sat there.
Until this last month, when I realized the lost-and-found story about a little boy so absent-minded that he lost his head (it wasn't screwed on tight) was the perfect subject for a lost and found book. I laid out pages, penciled, inked and color-penciled illustrations, scanned everything into the computer, and printed three copies of Albert's Head for hard-binding (and several paperback copies for friends who I showed the proofs to). There they are in the picture, waiting for me to glue the end papers into the covers. One for us. One to exchange.
And one to send off to Wisconsin, for Hans and Carol.
Denise has been a member for several years now of the Emerald Book Arts Group, a bunch of book enthusiasts who meet monthly to view demos, show off projects and share exchange books. I tag along often enough that I've become a de facto member; I've even given the demos a couple of times--brush making, rubber stamp carving, and the upcoming Gelli plate print workshop. Denise has also given some bookbinding demos, and holds an open studio paper making slosh-n-play every summer in the back yard.
The exchange books are a fun idea. Every month, there's a topic, or technique chosen, everybody who wants to participate makes a book to give away, and anyone who brings one takes one of someone else's home. Last month, the topic was spring flowers, and I made a little illustrated chapbook with a poem about dandelions that I wrote back in my La Crosse days.
This month, the topic was Lost and Found, and after throwing around a few notions on found object books, I remembered a children's story that's been sitting on my hard drive since 1993. I used to tell stories on the radio, back before I came out to Oregon, on a kids' show called Earticklers. It's how I met my music partner, Hans, in fact: his girlfriend was co-hosting the show. She'd had tried for years to get him to do more children's music, but he kept putting her off, saying he didn't have any ideas for songs. Finally, she said, Why don't you meet up with Frank and see what happens?
Our first meeting, I brought along a song lyric about things I was scared of as a kid, and a poem I'd written for Earticklers. Within an hour, he'd written tunes for them, and we put them on tape for reference. By the second meeting, he was talking about an album, and in fact, we recorded two, My Brother Eats Bugs and When I'm Feeling Silly, before I came out here for grad school. He's still recording and performing children's music, thirty years later. so Carol got her wish.
I'd long since left Earticklers behind in 1993, in fact had my own, folk music radio show by then, but still got the occasional urge to write a story, or a lyric. The songs I sent to Hans; the stories just sort of sat there.
Until this last month, when I realized the lost-and-found story about a little boy so absent-minded that he lost his head (it wasn't screwed on tight) was the perfect subject for a lost and found book. I laid out pages, penciled, inked and color-penciled illustrations, scanned everything into the computer, and printed three copies of Albert's Head for hard-binding (and several paperback copies for friends who I showed the proofs to). There they are in the picture, waiting for me to glue the end papers into the covers. One for us. One to exchange.
And one to send off to Wisconsin, for Hans and Carol.