Photograph Books, Playing with Paper and Fairy Tales and Community
Ever since I traded my wool carpet for a camera, I have been finding different ways to take photos and experiment with how I may use those photos. Above are a couple of 'Rockers' that I created from playing with a dinner plate and a piece of paper. I folded, did some paper cutting and then took some photos to see if they could be displayed within the rockers. It worked. They are called rockers because they rock back and forth.
PETRA'S PROJECT
I placed a photo of Petra's daughter, when she was about three years old, on the cover of the book.
The fly leaf was a piece of paste paper I had made.
The first topic was flower. This was a paper origami flower that I made with some glass leaves.
next came wind
and then water.
After that was red, and
smell was the next topic, followed by
reflection.
Then along came opposite
and clouds, followed by
frame. I added a second frame photo because I couldn't decide which I liked best.
frame #2
Emotion was a challenge to decide what to photograph,
but mural was easy to find and
finding a unique set of stairs was fun.
The number five jumped off a power pole at me and
I had a great deal of fun photographing pattern. I like this photo because there are three distinct patterns, the cracked asphalt, the shoe print and the pattern in the man hole.
Abstract is one of my favourite topics to photograph and this one presented itself one sunny day when the balcony door and part of my sculpture were reflected on the glass of a painting.
Trees, another joyful topic to photograph. This photo of the sap and tree bark caught my attention one day when walking home from the bus stop.
Living in a capital city, finding a sculpture was not difficult.
For the letter topic, I found this large X when riding the elevator up to catch the train.
The twentieth topic was shadow. One day, while waiting for the bus, I was standing beside a bunch of gas pipelines. The shadow they threw was the perfect opportunity to capture the required photo. I took the photos to a printer and had them printed on a matte paper called silk, giving it the appearance of a small photo book.
The second photo book, numbers 21 to 40 is complete. I had this group of photographs printed and created a very different binding for them. It will be in my next blog post, since my friend and I have not yet exchanged this group of photos.
The next photo book came about when she told me about snow encountered in early October while on their way home from a wedding. That got me thinking about the colour of snow. Most often we see it as white, bright white, sparkling white, wet white, however, when photographed, the colour blue makes an appearance. So, playing on the title of a fairy tale, I created the next book:
SNOW WHITE AND THE 7 Ds
Looking through my bank of photographs I chose ones that provided a range of colour, activity, and diversity of what comes before, with and after a snow storm.
I made a paper case for the book and used black and white papers for it. I decorated the case with black and white leather pieces and a black button with a little rhinestone.
I used a white Polychromos pencil to create the cover page and each of the 7 D pages.
Here is Snow White dressed in her winter attire and sporting a little snow on her curves.
The winter's afternoon sun created long shadows which brought out the beautiful blue of the snow.
A little friend sent these to me for Christmas last year and I decided to brighten up the snow on the balcony. The 7 Ds are as follows:
A couple of fellows at a January 1st Polar Swim walked on water just before their plunge.
These two fellows took a big leap into the icy water while a little spectator turned blue just watching them.
The snow melted in the bright sun of a warm winter's day.
D2 brought ice that encrusted the trees, making them look like sculptures.
This little clump of snow clung desperately to a branch in the afternoon sun.
D 3 brought snow and a different way of looking at it.
D5 provided the many decorative styles of snow.
D 6 saw a visit from Jack Frost. He left his creative mark on the windows and the door.
D7 found Jack Frost lingering to catch the evening light.
Looking out through the looking glass, Snow White decided it was time to return home.
Back at home, Snow White settled in for the remaining winter season.
I have a good collection of mural photographs. For a long time I have been thinking about creative ways to put them in a book. Finally I arrived at a decision and created Murals and Night Lights. The murals are mostly from Ottawa and a few from Toronto. The night lights are photographs I took, at night, while experimenting with the camera.
I added waxed leaves to some of the pages and on others I have drawn around the photograph with polychromos pencils, ink and water colours.
I had this beautiful paper waiting for a special project. Since the murals are painted with bright colours, this paper was the perfect match.
Cover page
This is on the side of a book store called Octopus Books.
I combined a flower photo with the bird mural and paper cutting backed with a piece of suminagashi marbled paper.
The door photo is from a building in the Distillery district in Toronto and the mural is from a restaurant on Bank Street.
This mural was photographed on some concrete girders on a Toronto street. The smaller photos on the right hand corner are the pieces I cut away from the murals.
This fabulous mural I happened upon one afternoon.
This is one of the night life photographs.
This is another mural on one of the girders and a staircase photograph located in the Distillery District. The lines remind me of the night lights of a city.
Another night light experimental photo.
One more mural on a Toronto girder.
Two more murals on the girders. These faces were so colourful and full of expression. I had a great deal of fun photographing them. A waxed ginkgo leaf on the bottom right hand corner.
Multiple pieces of this girder mural and a couple of cut away pieces of the background and some red waxed leaves.
Another face on one of the girders. Love all the colours and expressiveness of it.
This is an amazing mural that runs the full length of the 417 underpass at Bank and Catherine streets in Ottawa.
Another piece of the same mural, followed by
this section, and
more movement through the underpass.
This mural is a real beauty. I enjoy it every time I pass it on Bank Street in Ottawa.
Night lights enhanced with pencil, ink and water colour.
The last of the night lights.
This is a combination of two murals: one from Ottawa and one from Toronto. The copper mountains in the background were painted with water colour.
This fabulous mural I came across one day while on a bus. It has such wonderful imagery.
This is part of the underpass mural combined with a waxed leaf.
This mural is in a very narrow laneway filled with cars. This is only a part of the mural because of the restricted space. I had the snow flakes continue off the photograph onto the page.
The final piece of the underpass mural combined with a stencilled tree.
These two stacking doll murals are part of a long line of stacking dolls. Most of them have been damaged, over time, by vehicles moving in and out of the laneway.
This is my favourite mural in the city. I love the expression on this boy's face as he appears to imagine himself flying through the air. The bird mural is on a church building farther down the street.
This is the complete mural of the boy and the city he is flying over. If you look closely at the left hand side of the city photograph you can see his hand. I added a couple of waxed leaves.
This mural warms my heart every time I see it. The photo of the open window is from a building in Toronto. Two waxed leaves added to the top page.
Being a book maker and book lover, I found this mural very interesting.
This is one of the painted electric power boxes around the city.
Another painted power box. I like the fantasy in this image and added more fish to the page.
The final mural was difficult to take because it is up high on a building, there are power lines running along it and a large tree to the right. I cut the tree out of the photograph and added, with polychromos pencil, the pieces that were missing.
This book was a great deal of fun to make and it challenged my creativity.
PLAYING WITH PAPER
One evening I was playing with some paper and folding it in different ways. I created three of the same folded pieces, but in different sizes and then I staggered them when I glued them together. After that I added some gold chocolate paper wrappers and a little pop-up section.
FINE BINDING
A few years ago I worked with a professional bookbinder, in Montreal, to learn fine binding. I did a leather bound book with leather onlays and gold lettering and a cloth bound book. It was a little French book that the bookbinder gave me to practice the French style of binding. I very much enjoyed the process and the finished product.
This is the front of leather bound book with the onlays and gold lettering.
This is the back of the leather bound book. Gold lettering was also done on the spine of the book.
HAND BOUND JOURNAL
I had a little fun this past week making a new hand bound journal (a little play on words).
COMMUNITY
I have been working on this piece for a couple of years, getting the right combination of photos together and then deciding how to put it together. Originally it was going to be a scroll, however, due to the way I joined some of the pieces it ruled out the scroll. This piece I call Community because it consists of photographs from public art, street art and gallery art. I photographed them over the years and then I had to find a printer who could print it in the strip. Once printed I spent a few days doing paper cutting on two of the pieces.
This is a top down view of the piece. There are four strips, two with paper cutting and two solid strips with bright coloured pieces. In the back row you can see three acrylic pillars that I etched streets, flowers, and trees into.
This is a section of the piece. The front and third piece are photos of a metal community sculpture I came upon in Toronto. It extended the full length of the street, positioned on a cement wall. The second and fourth pieces are a combination of street art and gallery art. The colourful pieces are photos of street art I found on girders of an overpass in Toronto. The connecting pieces are photos of gallery art found at the old Ottawa Art Gallery. They were large sheets of metal that had the words of colour connected to them. The small pieces that are supporting each strip of Community are made from a recycled book and painted with water colours.
EXHIBITIONS
The Opera Verbis exhibit at the Denver Colorado Public Library, Special Collections has not opened yet, possibly in 2021. My piece: Dr. Frankenstein's Collection of Spare Parts and other artist's books, in this exhibit, can be viewed online in catalogue form at: https://bit.ly/OVcatalogue and in video format at: https://bit.ly/OVvimeo.
The artists' book exhibition, Delires, in France has been postponed until early 2022. No dates have been confirmed yet.
That is about all for now.
Wishing you all a very Merry Christmas, happy holidays and happy New Year.
If you have any questions about my work you can contact me at: bbinder999@gmail.com or through this blog.
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