Bookish Mary

  IF YOU FORGET ME is an artist book with Pablo Neruda's poem, If You Forget Me.   Leather cover: the leather is vegetable tanned and has a silky softness to it on both sides.  The pages in this book vary in size to replicate the increments of loss and gain, as the poem flows. The images in this book are hand drawn and painted.  Two people, one talking to the other.  I have since coloured these two figures with water colours and ink.  I enjoy working with poetry and song lyrics.  I find thinking about and drawing images, for the words, challenging and rewarding at the same time. 

  Around this time last year, a call was posted for the Vilnius Artist Book Exhibition.  The theme was, "To Be". While thinking about the theme, I kept asking myself, 'what did I always want To Be?'  The answer is, I always wanted to be an artist and I made an agreement with myself that when I retired I would become an artist.   To Be An Artist, is an artist book with a culmination of techniques I have taught myself over the years: leather work, illumination, drawing, painting, embossing, photography, and cut paper work.  I submitted the book to be considered, however, it was not accepted for the exhibition.   While the book was away, I created a second book, which is a lot alike and a little different from the first one.  This is the book I am displaying here.  The cover for this book is a patent leather that behaves like a suede leather.  It has a nap to it: brush it one way and it turns light, brush it in the opposite direction and it turns dark.   The fly leaf is

Hidden Treasure: 6 X 6 Inch picture frame: resin over marbled Japanese paper.  Hidden Treasure: Back: book 4 1/4 x 4 1/4 inches.  Marbled paper over book board: 100 pages of sketch paper.  Bronze Japanese paper over book board.  Coptic bound:  6 1/4 x 4 1/2 inches, 60 pages.  Bronze: fly leaf - parchment paper embossed with hibiscus flower.  Japanese chiyogami paper over book board.  Book cloth spine. Hard cover over soft covered book: 5 3/4 x 4 1/8 inches.  Inside book: soft cover.  The book is attached to the hard cover.  Suminagashi marbled fly leaf, 100 pages of sketch paper.  Star: hard cover: Japanese paper and stamped leather spine, metal closure with synthetic sinew.  6 1/8 x 4 1/2 inches.  Star Book: etched acrylic cover, Coptic bound, 6 x 4 inches, 100 pages.  Star Book: back cover, etched acrylic.  Clam Shell box with book: Clam shell box: green leather over green hanji paper and book board. 6 7/8 x 5 3/8 x 1 3/4 inches.  Book in padded clam shell box. Open, padded clam shel

  It has been almost a year since my last post.  I created more books, boxes and zines in the past year, then I have in the past.  I will post one of the new pieces once a week or so rather than try to put them all in one post.  DREAMING OF WORLD TRAVEL This accordion book was created in response to a call with the theme of Dreaming.  It is done with water colours, ink and collage. Each card (4 x 6 inches, 105 x 148 cm) was painted with water colours, decorated with stamps, text and images and glued to an accordion fold.  Front and back covers.  The front cover has a Tarot card image of Il Mondo (The World), from the first Italian tarot cards.  I used stamps from around the world, drew a light outline of a medieval city and wrote about what I would enjoy when travelling the world.  Open accordion.  MAIL ART  I have been having fun responding to calls for mail art exhibitions.  I find working on these small pieces of art help fuel my creative juices for making artist books.  The theme f