Don't Get Jittery On Me--Part 10, or "Natures Mortes"

And this is the end of my most recent altered book. Thank you for enduring the previous nine entries. Rest assured that after this post, I will no longer trouble you on this topic.

But there is something you need to know. Something that I know.

You might not see it at first, but if you look closely enough at anything living, even while it's in that blissful state of seeming perfection, there's usually evidence of something booking quick to that line between ripe and rotten--natures mortes.

This used to bother me. In fact, for the longest time, while otherwise enjoying the seminal Dutch still life paintings in particular, I'd avert my eyes at the blemish on the otherwise perfect pear skin, the wilting petal summarily dropped to the table from the otherwise fulsome peony.

But if you live long enough, your perspective has to change. Stasis is a joke. I turned 61 a few days ago. That's sixty-one. That casts a bit of a different shade on the fine line between ripe and rotten and the appreciation thereof. 

And so, while enjoying the last of Don't Get Jittery On Me, you might get the feeling that happy endings exist within a continuum larger than black and white. That's as it should be. Life is so much more complex, and so much more beautiful, than that, and we as a society really do need to talk about that.

But back to the book:

We left our heroine here at last reading, contemplating empty lawn chairs,
contemplating repose.



We turn the page...and encounter a concealed trifold. You'll see this open in the next photo.
If you've been following the evolution of this altered book, you might remember the image on the
right. Yup, she's now officially a motif. Here she dispenses advice in the same way she did in the
initial pages. "Stay a while. Complete the thought?" she asks the reader. The bookmark, an
altered playing card, presents an alternate view.

The trifold. Transparencies abound, but what is life but seeking transparency?
The text snips are really important here. I appreciate images. I appreciate words.
Most of all, I appreciate words riding shotgun with images.
 

A detail. There are symbolic references galore here to my life.
I won't bore you with that. But I will show you the lift-up flap...
 

After lifting, this is what you see. I love the exclamation point.
That snip comes from the liner notes of some pretty old vinyl.
 

"She kept herself company." Another detail of the trifold. A seemingly innocent statement,
note that there is an image, and then the same image, reversed, atop, which creates
a grouping of four from a photo of two. I'm not implying the need for multiple
personalities, simply that sometimes resiliency--and self-reliance--carry the day.
 

The next spread features birds (no surprise there) and, gasp, an Older Woman.
A viewfinder circle points out the bird brooch at the woman's throat. There's
a pink pig with wings. There's text. There are holes punched along a bifold
(on the right) Someday I'll thread them with ribbon or whatever. For now I'm
liking the negative space. (For the bird-impaired, at right you're looking at
a red-bellied woodpecker and a rufous hummingbird.)

A detail. I must say, I love that she's wearing a bird brooch. This page is composed of a photo,
collaged  papers, acetate transparencies, and a bit of metal to hold all the layers together.
I'm never complacent about the number of  repurposed things that can come together under
 my hands.

 

Geez, this is complicated. Apologies. The bifold on the right opens, and this
is what you see. Note the shadow bird on the left side of the bifold (a hawk), and
how it transforms into a dove on the right side of the bifold. There are lots
of men birds in the center, looking in all sorts of directions. Remember, this book
has as its theme recovery from being raised in a family with a narcissistic parent.
 

Turning the page, there's our heroine. And she's dancing! I devised a way to
get her to lift off the page at certain points to increase the feeling of motion.
On the right is a catchall pocket thing, with an altered playing card thanking...
people...with a vintage text strip. One of the things I like about recycling old
words is that...sometimes...it's easier than pulling them up from the heart.
 

Which brings us back to a snapshot of the opening spread. If there's one thing I have learned,
it's the beauty of circularity. This page shows the dedication. This book is for one of my three
children, Emma. Other projects have been and are dedicated to my other two children, Pete and Eva.
My children are individuals and I revel in their individuality.

Whew. And that is it for Don't Get Jittery On Me, an altered book, a labor of love created with painstaking detail and quite a few emotional twists and turns over more months than I can count. I leave you, dear reader, with some sadness, as is to be expected with any project that is finally finished. And for those of you who have ploughed through this with not much idea of what I'm talking about, I urge you to dig around in the blog archives for the earlier posts, which will reveal the themes and, if you are so inclined, the how-tos. 

Whatever will I write about now? Stay tuned.

And thanks, as always, for listening.

If you've enjoyed this series, you might want to have a peek at The Target Practice Project, an international collage collaboration that I began in order to use up the piles of 1960s Sears archery targets I discovered while cleaning up my father's garage after his death. I blog about it here http://lauratringaliholmes.blogspot.com/2013_08_01_archive.html and here http://lauratringaliholmes.blogspot.com/2014/09/one-year-later-empty-chair.html

You can get a much better sense of the scope of the Project--and marvel at the work contributed by a huge group of talented collage artists-- by popping over to the Tumbler, at http://thetargetpracticeproject.tumblr.com

Don't Get Jittery on Me, or "The Tale of a Re-Altered Altered Book"

I started an altered book in October of 2011, after being profoundly moved by a visit to an exhibition of Joan Miró's work while traveling in Barcelona. My book bombed, mostly because I was on the road, but also because of poor prep. A few days ago, while cannibalizing materials for further artmaking from the Pile of Perpetual Embarrassments that exists in my loft, I stumbled upon the Barcelona book and eventually decided to rip it up and use some of the pieces in a new altered book.

The page above is one of the pieces I wanted to save. The little bit of text next to the lady's head says "Don't get jittery on me." If it weren't for this page, I think I might have chucked the Barcelona book without missing a beat. But that message? It meant something to me when I made the page in 2011 and it means something to me now. What choice did I have but to take my own advice and to soldier on in the creation of a new book?

Here are some of the other pages that I ripped from the Barcelona book for possible repurposing.

Since poor prepwork was one of the reasons the Barcelona book found itself in the Embarrassments Pile, I decided to be a little more methodical this time around and to document my process of work. For anybody who is interested in altering a book, I offer this journey as a sort of cautionary tale.

This is my new book...well, new as of 1955. It's a charming organizer that was probably used for promotional purposes by a department store headquartered in Bridgeport, CT. You'll notice that my book is protected by a cover made from a brown paper bag. It is important to protect your book. If you don't, it will get grubby. Enough said.

The first thing I do when altering a book is to remove some of the pages from each signature to create room within the binding for the new material that I'll be adding. If you look at my book, below, you will see that the pages are organized into seven clumps. Each of those clumps is called a signature.

Each signature has a centerline where the binding string is visible and it's at that string where my page-removal process begins. I have circled the string in the photo below.

When I start at the center of a signature, it becomes an easy matter to lift off book pages two at a time--in spreads--leaving a minimum of ripped paper fragments behind. My right hand was on the camera button to take this picture, but in reality it's working right alongside my left hand to slide the paper out of the binding. Note that I'm using my thumbs to lift the paper around and off the string. I am not sawing against the string, which could stretch and ultimately weaken the binding. 

This is what you don't want. Every scrap of paper left behind will cause another scrap of paper to be left behind which will cause yet another scrap of paper to be left behind as you attempt to lift off subsequent spreads. Of course there will always be a scrap or two remaining here or there, but you can invite it out with the tip of an Xacto or your scissors.

Because I got into a nice groove, I was able to remove quite a few spreads from my book while generating only a few paper scraps. The photo below shows the proportions for those who are scientifically inclined. The pile of paper on the right consists of removed pages that I might want to incorporate back into the book--cool things like some 1950s astrology and neato advertisements. There was also a Christmas Card List.

 

And here's the binding as it looks when I'm done removing pages. I have created plenty of room to allow myself the freedom to add whatever I want to my book without stressing the binding.

Now to do a little more prepwork to protect my book's paper, which is thin and somewhat fragile. Because I'll be asking that paper to handle glue either from a glue stick or gel, collage elements, and even possibly some mixed media (and probably some interactive elements as well), I'll need to create new strong pages by gluing several original fragile pages together. 

If you think of the collage elements that I'll be adding as ceramic tiles, think of this work as creating a flat and stable plywood underlayment. Therefore, glue together only pages that seem to want to be together. Try to find pages that naturally align at the edges. This search for compatible papers is less mystical than it sounds when you have a book open before you and the paper is under your hands.

In this book, I glued up two and three layers of paper for each new page, using sheets of wax paper in between to prevent accidental stick-downs. For the flattest pages, burnish the papers together hard after gluing.

Here's the book all glued up.

And here it is weighted down for the night.

Next up: I'll be working on more prepping of my altered book, but structural work this time. Maybe I'll cut some windows, construct a fold-out door, install a lift-up flap....

You can see the next step in the process here: http://lauratringaliholmes.blogspot.com/2013/03/dont-get-jittery-on-me-part-ii-or.html

The Un-Journal

Way back when, I had prepped a travel journal to take to Italy. I talked about the construction here: (“Grooving with the Glitch” http://lauratringaliholmes.blogspot.com/2011/08/grooving-with-glitch.html ). But I never used my journal. As it happened, and as I was warned might happen, I wound up liking my journal pristine, untouched by pen-in-human-hand.

Here are some of the pages from the journal. I had such fun with it, creating pockets for secret thoughts and making extra writing surfaces by recycling clothing tags.

But it wasn't just the love of pristine-ery that kept my hands off my journal during my trip and afterward. Truth be told, and as it happened, the pages were just too scratchy with texture for the good ink glide that I demand from my pen while journaling.

Hence, an un-journal. But just for now. My plan is to make prints of my journal pages on rich paper, design a cool binding, and then allow my ink--and my thoughts--to flow.

Thanks for listening.

Grooving with the Glitch

I've been prepping a travel journal that I will take to Italy in a few months. It's turning out well. The papers that I'm using for background come from a 1960s schoolbook, Italian Made Simple, which I stumbled upon in a stack of free books at my local library. My theory is that as I work in my journal on the trip, I can refresh my (extremely limited) Italian language skills at the same time. Molto bene! I've also added solvent transfers to the pages, using maps and directions for walks I plan to take.

The journal is built on a Moleskin Japanese album (5 x 8.5), which has 48 folded zigzag pages.
That first page, way over on the left? Well, that would turn out to be the Glitch.

My design inspirations come from what I think Italy will feel like when I get there. Over the base prep I've been making patterns in thickly brushed gesso, then layering on glazes of phthalo turquoise (and various Madonna blues), yellow ochre, siennas raw and burnt, and burnt umber. Vintage European postcards and other materials from my various collections make handy lift-up trap doors and pockets for tags.

Here's a selection of prepped pages and tags. I've managed to stick to my predetermined
 color pallette for the most part. On most projects I wind up doing random color additions
that wind up looking awful. I'm steely about not doing that here, although hits
 of chartreuse and purple have managed to sneak in.

The bad news is that despite all my progress today, at day's end I find myself back at the beginning. My days' ends often work out like that, and I am learning that this is not necessarily a bad thing. For refreshment for the work ahead, I call upon a brooding Malbec.

There was no chianti in the wine rack, so I thought a brooding
Malbec would be a decent substitute.

My last task of the day is not to glory in the progress of my work but to detach the first page in the journal in order to add width. I am doing this because the first page won't even pretend to approach flat when opened, and I just can't stand that. So I slice apart the front page from its neighbor and in so doing liberate the entire page block from the book. I fold over some paper from the second page onto the first, make a new crease, and lay on a ton of packing tape for reinforcement. Geez, it looks awkward. Luckily, I remember that I have a couple of scalloped metal page edges in one of my bins. They prove to be workable and hide most of the packing tape. I'll use one metal edge on the first page, and, for balance, one on the last page.  I know that there will be physical and design repercussions from doing this.

The first repercussion is that the old Italian postcard of the Madonna now sits way too close to the gutter. I will have to rip out the postcard. Such are the dangers of working with original materials.

The metal page edges are made by 7 Gypsies and are nice and heavy—the page
 edge looks okay and as a bonus it weighs down the page to keep it open.

Because I used paper from the second page to widen the first page, another issue is the new narrow width of the second page. The metal edge draws attention to this. I see that I am going to have to lean heavily on the third page to balance out the second page. I fashion a tag holder and insert one of the tags I've already made. The visual weight helps a lot, plus the tag will give me more surface to write upon when I am in Italy.

The tag holder is made from the cover of a music book for voice (1948). It needs
 work but is good enough to give me the basic idea. I've barely sipped my wine, but before
tackling the Madonna, I definitely need a break.

Back to the Madonna. I realize that I actually like the rip in the postcard. Venice is sinking, frescos are deteriorating, we are marching toward the grave, Mother Earth is roaring--at least here on the East Coast of the United States--with an earthquake past and a hurricane future. A brooding glass of wine indeed! Yet I have the luxury of piecing together a Madonna. And for pure serendipity, there is the way the infant's feet point the eye to my little solvent-transfer line of text, the one that says, upside down of course (because that is sometimes the way I am), "introducing myself."

Still life with Madonna and Malbec

And that is what I did last night. Thanks for listening.