Slightly Off Center

Did another tunnel book! It was originally planned to be an exchange book for our October book group meeting. Then I wasn't sure I wanted to part with it. Then Denise really wanted it. Ultimately, nobody else brought anything to the exchange, so we got to keep it after all.

Denise and I have a long-standing tradition in celebrating romantic holidays: Do an art project! It's only very occasionally clay; much more often, we do something in the paper or book arts genre. So it was this time.

Last Sunday was our 34th anniversary, so we made marbled paper.

We'd tried marbling before with a quick-and-dirty kit that turned out not to work at all well--used a spirit based paint that only worked on very small surfaces, otherwise the solvent evaporated off too fast. It was also nasty and plasticky, really only suited for dipping bottles and knick-knacks. So this time, we got a proper kit, with paints, carageenan gum, alum for mordanting. I prepped eight sheets of drawing paper a few days in advance, dipping them in alum solution, hanging to dry, then putting them in the press to flatten. Saturday night, I mixed up a half gallon of the carageenan size in my stand mixer, left it overnight to settle. Sunday after lunch, I set up the work table, filled up the thrift-store cake pan, and we made a splash!

To make your paper, you drip successive colors onto the surface of the size, then manipulate them with a skewer, brush or some sort of rake--I made one from nails in a length of 1x2" wood. Then you float the mordanted paper on the top to pick up the colors, set it aside to dry. Like so:



We each did four sheets, suitable for book covers or end papers. Here are some more of the results.


They're all dry and back in the press again. And we celebrated with supper at Beppi & Giannis.

I really seem to have a lot of hand-carved cat stamps. Can't imagine why...

Well, Valentine's, anniversary, sometimes even birthdays: we make art together! Sometimes clay-related, more often a paper or bookbinding project. We've done woodcuts, mono-prints, gelli-prints, paste-papers. One of these days, we'll break out the paper marbling kit. This time, though, we did something called paper batik. It's a multi-step process that yields some very cool results. I used it on the cover of last fall's Inktober sketchbook.

The first step: rubber stamp patterns onto brown kraft paper--recycled paper bags--or possibly while recycle, we cut up a bread bag as well. I have a lot of carved-eraser stamps, so decided to try a bunch of those this year. We also have some from the workshop where we learned the technique, made from craft foam sheets.

Next, color over the sheets with wax crayons. Denise has a jumbo set of Crayolas, so we had plenty of colors to choose from. You can color over the stamps, or around them, your choice. I tend to go over, Denise around.

Brush a thin wash of colored acrylic paint over the whole page. It will bead up on the crayon, soak in uncovered parts, maybe darken your stamped images if you didn't color over them. I used purple on the whale sheet.

On a big patchwork bunny sheet, I used blue with a tiny bit of silver. If you look close, you can see the sparkle.

Once they're thoroughly dry, seal the entire surface by rubbing over with a tablet of beeswax.

Now they're ready to wrap book board for covers, reinforce spines, maybe use to cover boxes? Will have to experiment.

Saw something interesting on Instagram lately, a three-dimensional folded art piece. Looked like fun, so I thought I'd give it a try.

My first try was an exchange book for our book arts group. The topic for the month was rain/showers/water, and I was reminded of the culverts we used to explore on the farm when I was a kid. Didn't have time to do a tunnel book, but thought this might give me the dimensional feel as well. It's an anime pen--Sakura's Pigma Sensei 04--on mixed media drawing paper, folded and cut with an Xacto knife. Turned out pretty well, so I didn't feel that disappointed that nobody else brought an exchange and I got to keep it.

Had so much fun--and half a sheet of drawing paper left--that I decided to try again. This one was inspired by a watercolor in my sketchbook that we've made into a card for Pulp Romances, though with our current generation of kitties. I also decided to do it in full color, both sides, so borrowed some color pencils from Denise--my usual default, Crayola markers, dry too slowly and wind up getting smudged all over on this particular paper. Turned out really well, I thought. And it doubled as a card for Denise's birthday on Friday.



That's Flynn and Tiki, the kitties, and bears Bigfoot and Christiaan Bearnard.

Our last responsibilities as visiting artists were to each present a two-hour workshop. Denise's was publicized as "Sketchbook Workshop," mine as "Clay Workshop."

Neither was completely accurate. Denise was presenting on making your own sketchbook using artist's paper, card stock and the Coptic Stitch bookbinding technique. I, of course, was teaching brush-making and ceramic decorating techniques. Both were quite full: I had fifteen students, Denise had twenty-five, including my college color theory and watercolor prof. We both also had ten students from the Decorah Iowa High School Art Club.



As usual, I took requests from the audience for the decorating demo. This time's "stump the painter" champions: stingray and harpy eagle. Considering I painted the eagle from memory while the requestor looked for an image on her phone, I think I did pretty well.

Denise sold her last coptic-bound journal last Saturday, so had been working on new ones all week. Here are the two that were ready for Market yesterday.

While I was in frantic production mode, I also managed to keep up with my October drawing challenge. Here's the next series, taking me through the end of the month. They've already been on my Instagram, but I'm catching up here. There's still fourteen days yet to post--I ran out of pages November 15--but they'll have to wait until after we're set up for Market.



You'll note I did actually use the mountain goat pattern in glazing the last batch. Sold two tall mugs right out of the kiln, too.

In other book news, this is my Exchange Book for our last book arts group meeting. The signature covers were gelli prints from a workshop we took several years ago. They weren't exciting as prints, but cut down and matched, made a really nice graphic statement. They're both pulled off the same plate, positive and negative, using buckeye leaves.

I never did a follow-up post about how the tile book covers came out. Here are a couple of pics from the last firing.

They look gorgeous.

The Exchange Book topic for our July book group meeting is "Summer Activities," and I had no idea what I was going to do (and every time I tried to think of one, my brain served up Mary McCaslin singing Loudon Wainwright III's "Swimming Song." Not helpful, brain).

And then, suddenly, I did.

I had a bit of long printer's offcut that I'd folded into an accordion, but it was too tall, so I cut it in half. And cut angles on the top. And I had this.

A perfect little EZ Up show canopy. Perfectly suited for a row of art fair booths. Since Roseburg was our last show, many of them are my neighbors from there. (A few are made up or composited from a bunch of sources.) Had a so much fun!




Turned out way cute. But then I didn't want to give it away.

So, just like with Gnosis, I made another one. With different booths. You can see it at the Emerald Book Arts Facebook.