Blog

Tony

For the LAB theme of crescendo I wanted to explore the idea of quiet drama where the climax of the action is muted and has to be searched for rather than shouted. My favourite example of this the Bruegel painting The fall of Icarus.

The unfortunate youth drops from the sky in a flurry of feathers totally unobserved by the people going about their business in the landscape. I thought the structure of this book allows a slow journey through the painting and quietly builds up to Icarus’ legs as he plunges unseen into the sea.

Isi

For the theme Crescendo, I played with two structures/artist books using the vocabulary found in the  discourse of culture wars and material such as paper. The main focus was the experience of “tension” with forms, words and structures so to illustrate my perception of the extreme polarisation that I see in today’s discourse and language, particularly online.

Joan

Our theme this month was ‘Crescendo’. I struggled to get away from a simple image of musical notation. In the end I made a ‘bookwork’, with no text. I made an upward-sweeping curve of card and paper, held together by black thread to represent musical staves. The ‘notes’ suspended from the ‘staves’ are cut re-used prints. They go from a strong black to a white.

Patti

This small book is based on Hedi Kyle’s “Sling Fold”, pressed to lie flat.

Is it about sex? About art? About life? I couldn’t possibly comment. At my great age I’ve learned some things are better hinted at than explained.

Alison

For this theme I wanted to share the search through my house for my phone. An occurance that happens far too regularly. The snake book presented an appropriate labyrinthical format and the photos are all the places I would search and in the same order, ultimately finding the phone in my bag where undoubtedly I had just placed it. 

Gill

For this month’s theme of ‘Lost’ , I have decided to comment on the frustration of trying to get anywhere by car or by public transport these days, in particular, the council’s decision to cover the countryside (in Surrey) with diversion signs. The piece of work is a maquette, as the final format has not been decided yet.

Isi

Lost in translation : a pamphlet about juggling with several languages.

A polyglot, someone who dances between languages, is mapping thoughts to sounds, feelings to forms, meanings to rhythms. Words are your tools, your compass. And yet, sometimes – inexplicably – none of them are quite right.

Being a polyglot is being at home everywhere but never on safe land instead you are constantly surfing the big linguistic waves. You carry worlds inside you, but when lost in translation, they feel like rooms with locked doors. You fumble with keys, knowing exactly what’s behind each one, yet stuck outside — watching, feeling, remembering — but unable to fully enter.

Joan

I was thinking about all the things we have lost – or think we have lost – in everyday life – keys, phone, glasses, credit cards and so on. This is a simple, irregular concertina structure, with collage, using Canson Mi Teintes paper.

The images are from copyright free sources or my own photographs.

Patti

This title, Lost, could only lead me to my daughter’s loss of sight and short term memory. It made me reflect not only on what she, and we, have lost, but what we still have – touch, laughter and memories, but – more importantly – hope and so much love.

The photographs are of her wedding day, her husband and children, things they have made for her that they can describe to her and she can touch, printed on cartridge and vellum papers.

Tamsin

Lost

I knew that I wanted to play with the idea of being lost in the pages of a book for this theme. I was then struck by the resemblance to map contour lines in the sumagashi paper I recently marbled. I decided to create a book of mostly blank pages, with the occasional page of marbled ‘map’ paper randomly interleaved.

Tony

I made this photo album shortly after my mother died. I had been to India and the press of people made me miss her even more. 

I took photos of places which were empty (a rare event) or I removed the crowds digitally when I got back home. The images fade away to nearly nothing, like memories as we get older or washing out as photos do as they age. The postcard says “Wish you were here” on the back. Interpret that as you will.

Joan

I enjoyed responding to this month’s LAB theme, which was Wild. I had been making a few Flag Books and wanted to do something bright and colourful which would have immediate impact. As you pull this book out of its envelope it just springs to life. Cheerful and fun.

Alison

This is based on a poem by Wendell Berry about seeking comfort from the world’s problems in nature. I don’t usually work with legible texts but this writing resonated with me. I wanted to create an atmospheric scene with the book covers mirroring the solitary retreat described in the poem. 

Patti

I had lots of circles of Heritage Bookwhite paper from a previous binding, and they seemed fitting for this month’s theme. I wrote a short poem about brambles and bindweed, and stitched them into this little book. I backed the circles with some drawings from a Kings Cross drawing day, and the end papers had been created at a Phoenix workshop. A wild mash-up – and fun! You can read the poem here.

Tony

The prompt of #wild from @londonartistsbooks reminded me of when my dad saw us climbing trees on his way home from work. His famous words to my mum were “Violet the children are running wild. They’re feral!”  This became a running joke and makes me think of the long hot endless summers where we were banished from the house.  “Don’t come back till teatime”.

Many thanks to @triciatorrington for helping me make order out of chaos.

You can read Tony’s full poem here.

Isi

This theme is inspired by my experience of growing up in the South of France. It is a place with landscapes and terrains that evoke wilderness and an architecture from the Middle Ages. The work is made of paper, inks, water colours, photographs. A fun project to execute for this subject.

Tamsin

Moments of meditation

The embossed images in this project grew out of sketches I made immediately after meditating each day. Sometimes it was obvious where the images had come from, prompted by sounds I heard or thoughts that had distracted me, others were more abstract. The images were embossed onto Khadi paper using a postcard printing press from the Open Press Project. The box is covered in Japanese linen and lined with washi paper.

Tony

When the scent faded

For the prompt of quiet I thought about quiet as the absence of noise. This made me think of the lack in senses other than hearing, say the lack of smell. I had a project I had been thinking about for a long time after I found an old cologne bottle in a junk shop. It reminded me of a novel I had read years ago about a woman who misses the scent of her lover. I couldn’t find the novel again so in the end I asked ChatGPT to find it for me, it supposedly having read everything. After a lot of prompting it couldn’t find the book I wanted so I asked it to write a short story from my prompts. ChatGPT’s story is uncannily like the story I read all those years ago – you can read it here.

Gill

My book contains words and thoughts that I made during my residency in Finland, which is a very quiet place without many people or cars; a place where you can spend a lot of time in peaceful contemplation, thinking about and responding to nature.

Isi

The theme, Quiet, reminds me the calmness experienced within. It is a calmness, not necessarily a constant state of mind, but a mental space to draw strength from and recuperate. Calm as if nothing mattered and one can let go of life and worries. 

The shape of the book is a sober cover to keep in place that feeling of calmness.

Patti

The quiet, so unwanted, is the absence of my morning phone call from my daughter; the last one was on 9th May 2024. What wouldn’t I give to have this silence filled, this peace broken, this unbearable quiet gone?