Stacked, Layered and Behind the Lines

February 09, 2021

It has been a beautiful winter, this year, in Ottawa. Sunshine, mild temperatures and lots of light, white fluffy snow. I have been having fun making artist books using my photographs. Luckily I was able to get some photos printed before the shut down again. I also experimented with Turkish Map Folds, using photocopies of photos and illumination in others.

TURKISH MAP FOLDS

CITY SCAPE

The nice thing about this paper fold is it can be stacked with multiples of the same fold.

Using photocopies of city landscape photos I decorated the largest piece of this map fold.

This is the largest piece with the next smaller piece which I decorated with water colour paints.

Here are the other two pieces that stack into the larger pieces. The smaller pieces were also painted with water colours.

Stacking them back together. The nice thing about this piece is it allows for text to be written into the centers. It would be perfect for a poem, a nursery rhyme or a letter that can be told as it is taken apart.

ILLUMINATED TURKISH MAP FOLD

For this particular map fold, I experimented with some illumination images. After drawing the images I painted them with water colours and ink. It turned out beautifully.

As you can see there is a lot of white space in this stacked piece to write.

LOOK WHO'S COMING TO DINNER

This book is comprised of photos of people I have met and photographed on the street over the years. I had some fun putting this together.

For the cover, I used a red patterned leather. The hologram is recycled from an old music program from the National Art Centre: Beethoven and the National Art Centre music director, Alexander Shelley. It was the perfect piece for this book.

I reversed the pattern of the leather on the back cover to complement the hologram image as it is moved back and forth.

For each page I created a fold over piece on which I drew closed and open eyes: the blink to disclose the individuals underneath. I used a combination of black sketch paper and a grey tone Tiziano paper. Here is a sample of the pages. There are a total of 46 photos: two per page, in the book.

MEN AND THEIR MACHINES

When I had a bike I travelled around the extensive bike paths, in Ottawa, with my camera. During the summer in the city there is always some form of demolition or construction to be found and the workers who operate the machines. But there is more to the machines: a combination of work and play. In this book there are cranes, trains, planes, automobiles, bikes and heavy equipment. As with construction sites, railways and airports, there are always fences to look through. I have used paper cutting techniques to create the fences. There are 48 photos in this book and 24 pages of cut work, each one different.

When looking at the front cutting of the fence, one sees the lines.

When the cut page is turned over the photo, on the previous page, the lines are missing and one only sees the photo through the cut section, without the lines, changing how one sees the photograph.