beginnings

We've just had three days of incredibly heavy rain, lovely for my tank and garden but also a lovely start to my new artist book project with Book Object Art. When it's fine I have trouble chasing distractions like my garden, swimming, children and grandchildren before I settle down to some art practice. Naturally this doesn't always leave me much time to sink my teeth in. I've been jotting down my thoughts and exploring media possibilities and probably found more things that maybe won't work than actual solutions. But since I want to make something I haven't tried before I expect to find a lot of blind alleys and dead ends. I'll make these the starting points for my next assignment so the circle keeps going as I find solutions to old problems in new ways.My theme is "Transparency" and I've been playing with some of my old X-rays - can't think of a nicer thing than chopping them up a bit, scratching into them and making new images, now that they've outlived their usefulness.

I have been inspired attending my friend  Robyn Foster's exhibition of altered books here in Cleveland. The exhibition opened last week-end and runs for a while. Check out Rob's blog for a taste of her stunningly creative books and details of her exhibition. The sheer volume of beautiful creative books makes me feel very lazy and unfocussed. The precious little works were mostly housed in museum display cases at the Cleveland Museum, an ideal venue for the difficult task of displaying artist books. So thanks Rob, I'm finally off the ground and a lot more focussed. (Having a deadline probably helps a bit too.)

I don't usually document my creative processes or keep details of materials of my artist books but have decided to keep a notebook with all sorts of useful information this time round. I'm sure it will be helpful for future projects as my memory is becoming increasingly unreliable. Also, I'm finding that reading the way other artists work is interesting and helpful and keeping records very important in collaborations.