Don't forget, it's our Book Art Session on Saturday morning, 14th March 2015. It's something wonderful to do on a Saturday, and it is bound to be a stimulating session with our two guest visitors coming along to tell us all about their Book Art Work. It begins at 10.30 am, so don't be late for this forthcoming event. Only just over a week to go!
Our visitors are Ottilie Hainsworth (ott216.wix.com/ottilie) and Rosie Sherwood (ayupublishing.com), both experienced in the book art processes and ready to wow us with a glimpse into their talented and accomplished arty worlds. See our previous blog entry for more details, and make sure you BOOK the morning off from the usual stuff to come along and join us. Everyone is welcome - you might just be curious, you may be good at book art work, you may be a beginner. We will be pleased to meet you. Just turn up at The Phoenix Gallery, Waterloo Place, Brighton (www.phoenixarts.org) to sit in and see what is happening, 10.30 to 12.30.
As well, we are going to have a chat about forthcoming ideas for collaborations, selling stuff, being in shows and other such delights, so .... especially useful if you want to move forward with your booky/papery art work and be seen out there in other places on the planet.
We are on Facebook too - http://www.facebook.com/sussexbookartcollective. Please 'like' us while you are there!
By the way, if you are a member of Meetup, look on the Creative Arts in Brighton Meetup page - we have moved to there recently.
Thursday, March 5, 2015
Tuesday, February 3, 2015
Saturday 14th March 2015 - NEWS UPDATE
Come and join us for the next Book Arts session on 14th MARCH 2015, 10.30 to 12.30 at the usual place, Phoenix Gallery, Brighton. (Map at www.phoenixarts.org) and enjoy a pleasurable morning, relaxing in great company and having a chat.
We will be welcoming the accomplished Rosie Sherwood, and the talented Ottilie Hainsworth to talk to us about their work. Recommended for a stimulating morning, and a chance to see what might influence your own work. As well as an opportunity to network! Here's a bit about them -
Ottilie
Ottilie studied illustration at Glasgow School of Art and the Royal College of Art. She makes very limited editions of handmade books, etchings and cards. She is really interested in finding ways of telling 'picture stories', particularly through comics or graphic novels.
Recently, she worked on "Brighton, The Graphic Novel". She teaches a drawing group called "Come Draw With Me" at Bombane's café in Brighton.
Her website is at http://ott216.wix.com/ottilie
Rosie
Rosie Sherwood's work is driven by storeytelling and an exploration of narrative construction. Book Art lies at the heart of Sherwood's interdisciplinary practice, with sequence, structure and language, both visual and written, playing important roles. It is Sherwood's intention to make art that tells stories: emotionally, conceptually and physically.
Sherwood founded AYUpublishing (http://ayupublishing.com) in 2012, a micro-press through which she produces her own work and publishes Elbow Room, a series of art journals and live events. She graduated from Camberwell College of Art with an MA in Book Arts in 2013. She has delivered papers on the comic book as book art, and her work can be found in various collections, including The Poetry Library, Tate Library and Archive, and the National Galleries of Scotland.
Everyone welcome! All abilities, the curious, and those seeking inspiration and a reasonably good cuppa. Grab your place at 10.30 sharp. See you there....
We will be welcoming the accomplished Rosie Sherwood, and the talented Ottilie Hainsworth to talk to us about their work. Recommended for a stimulating morning, and a chance to see what might influence your own work. As well as an opportunity to network! Here's a bit about them -
Ottilie
Ottilie studied illustration at Glasgow School of Art and the Royal College of Art. She makes very limited editions of handmade books, etchings and cards. She is really interested in finding ways of telling 'picture stories', particularly through comics or graphic novels.
Recently, she worked on "Brighton, The Graphic Novel". She teaches a drawing group called "Come Draw With Me" at Bombane's café in Brighton.
Her website is at http://ott216.wix.com/ottilie
Rosie
Rosie Sherwood's work is driven by storeytelling and an exploration of narrative construction. Book Art lies at the heart of Sherwood's interdisciplinary practice, with sequence, structure and language, both visual and written, playing important roles. It is Sherwood's intention to make art that tells stories: emotionally, conceptually and physically.
Sherwood founded AYUpublishing (http://ayupublishing.com) in 2012, a micro-press through which she produces her own work and publishes Elbow Room, a series of art journals and live events. She graduated from Camberwell College of Art with an MA in Book Arts in 2013. She has delivered papers on the comic book as book art, and her work can be found in various collections, including The Poetry Library, Tate Library and Archive, and the National Galleries of Scotland.
Everyone welcome! All abilities, the curious, and those seeking inspiration and a reasonably good cuppa. Grab your place at 10.30 sharp. See you there....
Monday, January 26, 2015
Latest News on the Collective's activities
Sussex
Book Art Collective Meeting Saturday 17 January by Alice Lunt, Guest Blogger today
Starting
from basics:
our first meeting of 2015 began with a workshop led by Clare Nias,
facilitator of flying
books (www.flyingbooks.net)
on a cold Saturday morning. We started slightly earlier than usual at
10.15. (Normally we meet Saturdays between 10.30 and 12.30 in the
Green Room, Phoenix Studios, Brighton every 2 months. New members
always welcome!)
This
was the first practical workshop our Collective had organised and we
started right from the beginning, learning about Concertina Books
(also known as Zig-zag books). Clare showed us examples of this type
of book from her collection, often small and made by her students,
one fitting inside a matchbox, another even smaller one bought from a
supermarket in Chinatown, London.
She
showed us that from this very simple structure it was possible to
elaborate in different directions: adding end boards to form covers,
and how the concertina structure could evolve into dos-a-dos books
(where two or more books are bound together within the concertina).
There were different types of papers and card for us to experiment
with during the workshop, as well as stencils and stamps. We saw how
it was possible to add 3D details with foam card and how the subject
matter could inform the shape of the book, for example St.
Bartholomew Church, Brighton. There was also an example of a double
Zig-zag book for us to look at. In this structure the pages are slit
so that a second concertina can be threaded through.
Clare
then took us through the practical basics: making the fold. We were
each given about 12 inches of till roll paper and shown the folding
sequence starting in the middle and then making a series of “valleys
and mountains”. Then we were left to experiment and play.
Dorry
(Smallman) showed us a book: “Magic books & Paper Toys” by
Esther K.Smith, published by the fantastically named Purgatory Pie
Press in New York City, a book brim full of ways to manipulate paper
and card to make mind-boggling paper structures that I could happily
use myself and with my daughters (who attended the meeting and by
this time were having a great time collaging, folding and sticking
with all the interesting scraps of paper provided.)
Dorry
also introduced us to the Hougie board (www.hougiecrafts.com)
a “double sided plastic scoring board that gives you accurate
measuring in centimetre and inch increments” and seems like an
important tool for crafters working with card and thicker paper, “as
it really helps to get a good clean fold exactly where you need it”.
By this time I was deep into the activity, Paddington Bear style, so
there was nothing neat or clean about my folds. But I’m sure that
with time and less frantic behaviour (looking through books, finding
paper/card/tools, photographing other people’s work, writing notes
for the blog, keeping my girls away from the biscuits) I too would
master the Hougie board and the concertina book structure. I already
have an idea for a piece inspired by the concertina/Dos-a-dos
structure brewing in my head as I write this blog.
Here
are some images of work-in-progress created by members of the
Collective:-
The
workshop was followed by a talk by Vanessa Marr, a Graphic Designer,
who has completed the MA in Sequential Design and Illustration at the
University of Brighton and previously worked for the publishers
Dorling Kindersley. She talked us through her work, her interest in
sewing and fairy-tales, poetry and domesticity.
She
showed us pieces that she had made during her MA, her work based
around Cinderella evolving into her latest project, a series of
yellow dusters with text embroidered on to them by herself and
members of the public. The piece is called “Women &
Domesticity: what’s your perspective?” and will be shown in a
pop-up space in Eastbourne to coincide with International Women’s
Day, on 28th February.
Alice
Lunt is a practising interdisciplinary Artist working across Live Art
and Installation boundaries using anything that fits her vision
including text, image, film and objects. She studied at Brighton and
Chelsea and is a keen member of the Book Art Collective, sporadically
making books, sometimes to document her performances.
Monday, December 22, 2014
Seasons Greetings
Seasons Greetings to you all, and may 2015 bring you much happiness, especially book and paper-related activity happiness ....
Look forward to seeing you in January for those of you at the Workshop. It is popular, and is now FULL! Lots of inspiration no doubt for brilliant ideas about future or current projects....
Our next Meeting after that will be in March, details to be announced, although the talented
Rosie Sherwood is already scheduled to come and chat to us about her work on that session. Watch the blog posts to see who else will be coming along, and updates on news as it arrives.
Jingle Bells!
Look forward to seeing you in January for those of you at the Workshop. It is popular, and is now FULL! Lots of inspiration no doubt for brilliant ideas about future or current projects....
Our next Meeting after that will be in March, details to be announced, although the talented
Rosie Sherwood is already scheduled to come and chat to us about her work on that session. Watch the blog posts to see who else will be coming along, and updates on news as it arrives.
Jingle Bells!
Thursday, December 4, 2014
Turn the Page
A reminder to all budding book artists - don't forget entries for selection to appear at the Book Art event, Turn the Page, in Norwich next May will be closing on 8th December. You would need a body of work to take, and you do have to pay to enter, although it looks like a good place to go along to and see what is happening on the book art scene. Best wishes to anyone applying ....
Friday, November 21, 2014
Annie's Blog from the meeting of Sussex Book Art Collective, Saturday November 15th
Here's Annie Kerr's terrific blog from the morning, packed with lots of interesting details:
In Saturday’s session at the Phoenix
gallery, 3 group members gave 5 minute presentations of their work in progress
and our special guest Amy Strike came to show and talk about her work.
Annie Kerr - Pocketbooks
Annie Kerr works as a musician and writer.
She loves the visual arts and makes most of her own pocketbooks and sketchbooks
for her creative projects at her kitchen table. Currently in progress are a
series of folding forms that she hopes to turn into pocketbooks soon.
Annie brought the dummy for one of these
new projects which is a fold out pocketbook. It can be viewed from any angle
and can be folded and re-folded in varying ways to reveal or hide segments of
the text or images. The base format is made from one sheet of paper and uses
Annie’s own text piece - Unfold these rooms - and collaged magazine images, to
explore the idea of unfolding sketchbook plans to reveal a 3D home.
Annie also brought some small format
shop-bought swatch books which contain writing, music and sketching prompts.
One of these opens to reveal one of her extended poems which is written like a
series of views seen from a train window on a long journey.
Annie is interested to explore the folded
forms that can be made from a single piece of A4 and is learning more unusual
folding techniques by trial and error. Some of these were inspired by seeing
the extravagant folded napkins at a dinner party and while she doesn’t want to
take it that far, she hopes that some of these shapes and angles will find
their way into new pocketbooks soon.
Annie’s music sketchbook is online at
https://soundcloud.com/annie-kerr-1
She has a slightly neglected blog at
http://inkhaven.blogspot.co.uk
Jane Savage - Tracing the Numinous
Jane's current work, under the umbrella
title of Tracing the Numinous, explores our moments of upliftedness, or encounters with
the numinous. It considers our awe-responses to architectural space, to
sound, nature and light, using languages of materials and stucture within
the book form. Jane’s work attempts to evoke rather than illustrate these
moments of connectedness.
Her beautiful watercolour piece - Speed of
a brown hare - hopes to give you a moment of the memory or the feeling of
seeing a hare race away, with rhythmic foot falls, across open ground.
Jane is interested in exploring the idea
that a book works beyond its physical confines, and a great example of this was
truly magical in its opening. A red hardback book cover revealed a beautiful
coppery inner light that played with the odd colours accidentally screened
across the room by a projector.
Jane is fascinated in how light might work
through architectural spaces and a small book called Red fort at Dehli tells
the story of entering a dark chamber and of having the mirror-decorated ceiling
illuminated into life by the strike of a match.
Some of the work Jane brought to show us
uses folded forms. The life force of trees impacts through the use of a folded
book form laid on top of a flat sheet.
Written and painted in a semi-transparent
booklet, human history and memory weave haunting pathways through the forest.
Sax solo is a tiny folded music score that
just begs to be picked up and played again. As Jane commented - “It holds six
minutes of unrepeatable joy, impossible to capture, many tiny bursts of
improvisation.”
Jane does not have any work on-line, but is
hoping that might change soon.
Mariya Ustymenko - Fear of Disappearance
Mariya Ustymenko is a London based
visual artist, who uses analogue photography to create work ranging from
installation to live performance.
Mariya brought the folio she has made to
show us today and outlined the stages, challenges and frustrations involved in
bringing the piece to completion.
Essentially, Mariya wanted to make a
pocket-sized, keepable folding image booklet. Not a business card. Not a flyer.
But a self-supporting booklet.
After experimenting with landscape and
portrait formats and the layout challenges these different image formats
brought up, Mariya decided to embrace the limitations of the folded form and
has produced a folio that wants to be turned in your hand and seen from other
angles.
Mariya says - “I am planning to upload my
folio as a free pdf and add it to my website soon. So I will send out an email
when it's done to all in case someone finds my layout template useful for their
own purposes.”
The project is supported using public funding
by the National Lottery through Arts Council England. Hosted by bookRoom
Farnham, with additional mentorship by AKINA, it will run from September 2014 until the
end of the following year, accompanied by a series of public events. The new
photographic work-in-progress associated with the project will be first shown
as part of the group exhibition titled State of Origin at Unit 24 Gallery London. The exhibition will run between the
13th of November and the 9th of December this year.
Please take a look at Mariya’s website www.mariyaustymenko.com
where you will find more details about the her work, this project and also the
exhibition and events that accompany it. Mariya blogs at http://photoprojection.blogspot.co.uk/
Amy Strike - Our special guest of the
morning
Amy Strike is a book artist, set designer
and illustrator living in London.
Her book art practice involves cutting,
folding and sculpting found books to create the structures and creatures of her
imagination. Often, these pieces resemble miniature sets with rooms, buildings
and ships created out of the structure of the book.
Paper, leather, gold leaf and thread, glue,
fonts and ink are used with all the materials found within a book to create
these other worlds. Amy’s work is both a celebration and an exploration of the
book, and the ways in which we stitch together stories.
We were so lucky to have a closer look at
the 2 book art pieces which Amy brought to the meeting - one inspired by the
Voyage of the Beagle and the other by the story of Snow White.
Initial work on both these pieces involved
cutting down through the main body of the book to create a space in which to
hide images and to build the 3D objects that can then emerge from this space.
The books don’t open. They become solid 3D objects, but they can be very
fragile, necessitating the use of a rigid frame on which to construct ships,
buildings, rooms and cities.
Although the Snow White piece uses twigs
around the main surface of the work, Amy usually finds that any natural objects
needed for the piece would be made out of clay. The apple core here was moulded
from clay and then decoupaged with text from the book itself.
Amy told us that people don’t tend to read
the text in her work. Although the text used in the Snow White piece is
significant and secret to Snow white, often she will hide a quote somewhere you
would not expect to see it.
Book jewelery is made to look like books,
It isn’t made out of the books themselves The piece Amy brought for us to see
has 3 small leather bound volumes containing cut out letters. These tiny books
are attached to a dark neck chain. Maybe the letters create a hidden message?
Amy’s work reminds us that by starting
simply with a scalpel, glue and varnish, you can create something very poetic
and beautiful.
Amy displays her work at exhibitions across
the UK and sells it on Etsy and at various UK art markets. Her beautiful
website is at http://amystrike.com
Thursday, November 20, 2014
Calendar of Events for Book Artists
We are keeping a calendar of events, prepared by our Book Arts Collective member Jane, to review what's coming up. Please let us know of any additions, and remember we need to apply as a Collective early on to take part in up and coming exhibitions.
CALENDAR
CALENDAR
|
December
2014
|
Thu
11th-Sat 13th
12-8pm
|
Rea
Stavropoulos’ Open House, Unit 9 Level 5 South, New England
House, New England Street, BN1 4GH
|
|
January
|
Sat 17th
|
SBAC
meeting – book structure workshop (places to be booked, £12)
|
|
February
|
|
|
|
March
|
Sat
14th
Early
in the month, date and venue tbc
|
SBAC
meeting, 10.30-12.30. Visiting artist: Rosie Sherwood
Leeds
International Artists’ Book Fair
|
|
April
|
Sat
11th
11am-6pm
Sun
12th
11am-5pm
|
Bristol
Book Fair run by UWE, Arnolfini Centre, 16 Narrow Quay, BS1 4QA
|
|
May
|
Fri
1st
& Sat 2nd
10am-6pm
|
‘Turn the
Page’ Artists’ Book Fair, The Forum, Norwich
|
|
June
|
|
|
|
July
|
|
|
|
August
|
|
|
|
September
|
Late
in the month, tbc
|
London Art
Book Fair, Whitechapel Gallery
|
|
October
|
|
|
|
November
|
Mid-month
(tbc)
|
Small
Publishers’ Book Fair, Conway Hall, Red Lion Square, London WC1R
4RL
|
|
December
|
|
|
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