Shell Book

7.5 x 7.5 x 5 cm

I love this book....

This palm held book has a paper cast shell attached  on both the front and back cover.
The imagery on the cover and inside is created through drawing then using lithographic print.
Within the pages paper tongues spit out type written (on 'Erika')haiku inspired by the ocean.

 

 

All constructed with and on Japanese paper

shore, dream and rain noise the end of phase one

As this residency draws to its close we review our work.....

The shore dream and rain noise books are all printed, collated and ready for binding, no matter how many weeks we have to work together we always need one more week.

The next steps.....
To produce an e book with the resonant' collaborative book
We have quite a few maquettes for the beach work series including haiku this and our previous collaborations and the following weeks will be spent constructing these for next exhibitions interspersed with skype talks.

On a final note we have some people  to thank.

One more time a huge thank you to our funders, the Welsh Government, the national lottery and the Arts Council of Wales.

Thank you to

the Moray Art Centre Studio and people who came through to visit us
the chef Mick Corr
Roger Morin for the photos of sam&sue above
our two collaborators in Scotland Gillian Neish and Fiona Byrne Sutton
Jenny Smith for inspiring me to make the 30 minute book
and finally to all the people around the world who have visited this blog

Printing the shore book

Wonderful work done today

Madeleine has started printing the pronto plates for shore ....

you can see the newsprint proofs taped into the maquette here.

It flows beautifully through from one side of the book to the other...so above you can see the side with the beach drawings 

And here the other side with the dune horizon drawings

Shore Today

The last book of the trio Shore, Dream and Rain Noise.

Madeleine has been working hard today on the Shore book, whilst I have been receiving new computer skills....

We decided on a double concertina binding for the last book and the way it has been constructed makes it move like a wave reading from left to right and right to left. We are going to use drift wood as a spine

On one side of the concertina we are going to pronto print the horizon outline of dunes interspersed
with haiku text.

On the other side we will print drawings created using tools from the shore such as seaweed, pieces of driftwood, reeds and roots.

Drawings for the shore book

I

We spent yesterday drawing with ink and acrylic on to acetate to make pronto plates using seaweed as a drawing tool...

And drawing with carbon to create lines, these later got scanned on to pronto through the laser printer.

Below drawing with reeds on the beach and round the reeds with graphite

Below two separate layers on top of each other, one using acrylic tusche reticulated and the other one a line drawing

These are all destined for the shore book and this is the cover.....

Shadow photos

The photos we took with the very old black and white disposable camera turned out amazingly well, I am thrilled with them.  We have been considering them as a series working together in sets of three or four.......

My new studio!!!

The first prints being created in studio down....studio up is upstairs where technology is based....!

Pronto plate inked ready to be printed on Japanese  paper for the 'dream' book

Little shell book....we are thinking about titles ......

Litho printed Japanese paper with typed inserts on onion skin paper.

A maquette of book using the plaster cast paper shell

Plaster cast shells and Japanese paper

So we have  now tried three different kinds of Japanese paper on the casts

Two on the left with mulberry paper

Two in the middle with gampi paper

Two on the right with bib tengujo paper 

They each have their own qualities

I might try to varnish one and see if that increases the translucency......

Black and white prints

I had one of those black and white disposable cameras tucked away in a drawer, really old, and thought it would be a good idea to take it with us to Findhorn.  I am blown away with the results ...beyond any expectations they are stunning.  Just going to try and work out how to use them, they are so wonderful  it will be quite tricky.  The quality of them is so beautiful it has made me consider reviving my old Olympus SLR.  This is just a quick digital photo of the B & W photo, a taster as it were

Razor clam book

Another book reaches completion today, really pleased with this one as well...it is lovely to hold and flip through reading the beach haiku as you go

The pages ready, folded and typed ( on my old eastern block type writer) on Japanese paper

The cover and beautiful spine....

Some pages

The cover is mulitple layers litho printed 

Paper casting

During in our collaboration last year we went paper casting and made some fabulous casts with Stephanie Spindler and Alison Newman of PULP in Glasgow.  Yesterday we had a go at casting some Japanese paper in the plaster shells with great success ...I am really excited with the results especially the thinner more transluscent shell

This one is two layers of paper

This one is three layers of paper

When placed on a printed background the detail of the shell is more pronounced.

We are aiming to adhere the cast shells to the front and back of this book  ...

mussel book

Having had a fraught day yesterday with technology we drove to Dinas  Dinlle beach  and collected some shore debris for our project.

Today we are finishing off the first book from Findhorn...the mussel book

Looking at the entire page collection we have drawn to get an idea of what we want to work with

We divided the collection into two piles  each working from dark to light and stitched them....

The book with the pages

Madeleine suggested a black cover which worked beautifully with the shell/spine...

however we ended up using a litho print from our last collaboration of beach work, incorporating black and blue which echoes the mussels colours.

And here the finished book....really pleased with this