Praeterita

I've taught a lot of classes in the past two years showing people how to make different kinds of artist's books. Two of my own small handmade books recently made their way into the Joan Flasch Collection at the School of the Art Institute, Chicago. For me, this all started in 2010-2011, when I embarked on an extensive project: a 100 page accordion book of lithographic prints, each page printed in up to 5 colours. Closed and stacked, the book measured 6 x 5 x 4 inches: Extended to its full length, it was about fifty feet long: To store it securely, I made a clamshell box for it: And so it sits on a shelf in my studio, occasionally unwrapped to show to visitors, waiting for the time when it can be added to another collection. It's still the best artist's book I've made.

First of all: I've noticed that the most-read post on this blog is something I wrote last November about seeing an Anish Kapoor sculpture in London, which I coupled with a funny anecdote about said artist, told to me by a friend of mine. Which is weird, considering that most of my posts this year have been about my own work. Which brings me to this. I took photos of all the pages from the 100-page accordion book, together with eight of the texts from the imaginary Lucerne diary, and sent them to the online print-on-demand company Blurb.com, to be printed in book form. I did that last week, and the first copy arrived today. I'm extremely pleased with the result: The cover is an image that wraps around from front to back. Then inside, I arranged the images two to a page, broken up every ten pages or so by text: Copies will be on display in the gallery in October, and the book will also be available then for purchase from Blurb.   Subscribe to Praeterita in a reader...

Covering the base for the clamshell box, which will house the 100-page accordion book. Using burgundy coloured linen, to echo the Swiss flag ( The Lucerne Project , remember?):   Subscribe to Praeterita in a reader

Actually, this was a studio day, but I didn't go to the studio. I spent a lot of time preparing image files of the 100-page accordion book for the Lucerne Project, which I am sending to be printed using the on-demand publishing site, Blurb.com. This is so that visitors to the exhibition in October will be able to see the prints from all the pages. The real accordion book will be displayed accordion style, and so not all of the images will be visible. This means that for the the first time, all the pages of the book have been photographed and digitized with a consistent tonality, size, etc. Here is an album of all 100 pages. Page size: 6" x 4.5". BFK Rives printmaking paper, light grey. Paper-litho transfer prints of found internet images, drawings. All of the pages have between 3 and 6 prints on them.   Subscribe to Praeterita in a reader

Today went much better. I said to myself: There is no reason why something you have done for eight years should not work. So I used the formulas that I remember from the very beginning when I learned this printmaking technique, and every print turned out fine: The linear elements are xeroxes of blind contour drawings (much enlarged) which in turn derive from the photos stolen borrowed from the internet. To further disguise their origins, and also just to find interesting shapes, I cut into the xeroxes. Here are a few of those cut-outs waiting to be inked up and overprinted onto the book pages: I am close to finishing the printing - at least for now. I suspect, though, that when the exhibition is over at the end of October, I will continue to add to them every now and then.   Subscribe to Praeterita in a reader

I'm creating the hundreds of prints for this 100-page accordion book using a technique called paper-litho transfer, also known as gum arabic/xerox transfer. I've described the process several times already. I've been using the technique since 2003, and I have created many hundreds of prints this way. So I was mystified, during my latest studio visit, to spend hours with not a single print coming out right. I kept altering the mixture of water-gum arabic to sponge over the xerox. I altered the ratio of setswell compound in the etching inks. I tried different kinds of xeroxes - some copied using the 'Text' setting, some the 'Text/Photo' setting - and still they came out too faint, or the ink just spread all over the xerox, instead of being rejected from the white areas. I struggled gamely on, and finally got a few prints to work: But only after one point where I was literally beating my temples with my fists in frustration. Ach, so ist das leben!...

Thinking ahead to the exhibition in October, I tried this way of arranging the accordion book. It would still require a 12-feet long table.   Subscribe to Praeterita in a reader

I'm being interviewed about The Lucerne Project for a magazine next Wednesday, and the photographer asked me to bring along the 100-page accordion book. On my last visit to the studio, I started making a clamshell case to house the book: The 'flaps' are created by scoring halfway through the bookboard, then bending them upwards (or downwards, depending on how you're looking at them, like if you were in space or something). The upper box gets reinforced with a strip of paper, then I can test how they fit together: A snug fit! Next stage: covering the boxes with a map of Lucerne. Final stage: cutting and covering the base, then gluing everything together.   Subscribe to Praeterita in a reader

A studio drying out from a recent flood; a sore back that made it difficult to do much printmaking; flies coming through the window that I opened to let in some much needed ventilation. These were some small challenges I overcame to continue printing images onto the 100 page accordion book for the Lucerne Project:   Subscribe to Praeterita in a reader

Continuing to add fresh layers of prints to the 100 page accordion book for The Lucerne Project (the red shape on the left, and the blue shape on the right). I'm doing blind contour drawings of details from the images of Lucerne that I took from the internet; enlarging the drawings 400% on a xerox machine; then transferring them onto the book pages using the paper-litho transfer technique.   Subscribe to Praeterita in a reader

I spent hours cutting up bits of mat-board and masking tape, working out the design of a box to house the 100-page accordion book for the Lucerne Project . I'm considering this: a box that folds out flat, to reveal more prints fixed to the inside, or a continuous print like a map or something. Here are a few photos showing how it folds back together: The sides would stay closed using some tiny bits of velcro embedded into the book board.   Subscribe to Praeterita in a reader

The 100-page accordion book, if unfolded like so: ... amounts to about 40 inches for 14 pages. So to display it all like that come October, I would need a table or shelf approximately 23 feet long. After doing those calculations, I went on overprinting shapes in blue and sanguine: Click to display nice panoramic image.   Subscribe to Praeterita in a reader

I measured up the 100-page accordion book in preparation for making the box: I continued adding more images in blue and sanguine: Oh, and I started one of these ... ... this time on a panel with a 2 1/2 inch profile. Circles drawn in acrylic, sanded down and partially erased when dry, then covered with a thick layer of gel medium.   Subscribe to Praeterita in a reader

I glued together the second half of the signatures of the 100-page accordion book. Here they are with my most excellent vintage iron pressing down on them: I have ended up with a few signatures to spare from the 100-page accordion book, so I experimented with different colours: I tried a rose-red colour, but that didn't work at all, so I used sanguine, and that worked better with the brown, silver, and blue: The first colour was a mixture of sanguine and black, so it makes sense that using one of the original component colours would harmonise more easily.   Subscribe to Praeterita in a reader

Back to Chicago, and back to working on the 100-page accordion book for the Lucerne Project. Above are two of the pages with the first image (sanguine-black), and the second image (silver). This time, I added a third colour -- a mixture of white and blue: Close-up: So begins another couple of weeks of overprinting images in this third colour.   Subscribe to Praeterita in a reader