Canvas to the Imagination

Last Saturday I was playing around with coriander seeds Boris had brought home from his food shopping trip. There were a few scattered on the kitchen table and I started to wonder what they’d look like in the tiny bottles I’ve had waiting in the wings for their own altered book to call home. I loved how they looked in the bottle so I went searching through more things for different items to try. The photo above shows what I came up with: coriander seeds, feathers (thanks Jess), dried rosemary, and salt. As I’ve mentioned before, playing with materials is the best way I’ve found to come up with ideas for my altered book art. It moves me from abstract thinking about objects and the vague ideas I have, to playing with them and clarifying what works and what does not. Now I know I do want the bottles to contain things, and it makes me realize they’ll need to be sealed. I have an idea about that too which I need to explore.

The paper flowers in these two photos are from the altered book I just finished this week. The flowers were created using a flower-shaped paper punch on the book pages. It was an experiment because I wanted to see what the book would look like with pieces of the pages removed, but it wasn’t a very effective technique this attempt. It did leave me with piles of flowers and I decided to string these together and make them part of the composition in the book.

More on the finished book later this week. I haven’t yet had a chance to photograph it.

I’m not sure about other artists, but I always seem to have a bunch of ideas in the back of my mind that resurface every once in awhile, but never quite make it to reality. I think some of these ideas aren’t meant to be, while a very few seem to be biding their time waiting until I eventually have the right knowledge and skills to make them happen.

I’ve wanted to create art from old books ever since I came across Tim Karpinski’s illustrations painted in a book in a Portland art show two years ago. I made a few attempts at using heat transfer paper to print my photos in books, but the paper was too delicate to take the high temperatures needed for the process and I wasn’t satisfied with the results. Since then I’ve taken up collage which has involved figuring out techniques and exploring an art form that is an alternative to taking photos. It is also more hands-on than photography tends to be these days. I think it was a direction I needed to take in order to learn how to work with the books in the way I wanted.

On the weekend I went to the grand reopening of RubyDog’s Art House and bought (among other things) “New Directions in Altered Books” by Gabe Cyr. It’s full of ideas for turning old books into interesting pieces of art and has inspired me to finally explore my thoughts on creating things from old books.

Today I experimented with my first one, which is featured in the photo at the top of this blog post. It’s pretty basic, and is really more of an experiment than anything, but it was oh-so-satisfying to make, and I want to do more more MORE! (Colour me excited.) The collage contains sewing pattern paper, a silver coin, locking mechanism parts, a metal bird, and a watch face. The red spiral pattern was created with a rubber stamp and ink. I also used gel medium to glue the edges of the pages, and wash of gesso along the edges.

When Boris and I were in Victoria earlier this year I came across the motherload of medium format expired slide film in a small camera store in Bastion Square. At first I was hesitant to buy it all because most of the film was 220 and I wasn’t sure I could shoot this in my holga. For those not familiar with film formats, medium format film come in 120 rolls which allows for 12 exposures or 220 rolls which allow for 24 exposures (this varies with the type of camera). The larger roll also doesn’t work with every medium format camera, at least that’s what I’d been led to believe. I went ahead and bought the lot deciding to take my chances because of the cheap price of four year expired film.

The shots I’ve included in this blog post were the first taken on the roll of 220 with a holga. As you can see, I had a lightleak and it went through the entire roll. With 220 film the whole camera has to be taped up, including the window at the back of the holga, because the film doesn’t have a paper backing the way 120 does. I’ll add more tape for next time. The trickiest part of shooting 220 is keeping track of the number of exposures because you can no longer see the numbers at the back, as well as being careful to count the number of clicks between frames.

For more detailed instructions on shooting 220 film go read “How to Use 220 film in a Holga.”

I love this piece. It actually started out as a test to see how a particular Japanese paper (I don’t know the name of) looked layered over the gel medium transfer I’d done of one of my tree photos on wood. I did a test of each colour of paper – green, blue, and an off-white – and suddenly it was becoming a composition rather than just a “test piece” for collaging techniques. The leaf skeleton, splashes of watercolour, bird stamp, and coating of gel medium were further additions to make it complete.

On another note, I’ve been having doubts about making Christmas presents versus buying them. My thoughts are whether handmade presents are less valuable, or maybe less valued, than something store bought, and is it cheaping out to do things myself. I know this isn’t true, and I love it when friends gift me items made with their own hands, but not everyone appreciates a handmade item. I’d love to hear your thoughts on this.

A few weeks ago I came up with the strange looking portrait of myself for my 52 weeks series. The idea was inspired by double-exposure shots, which can’t be done with digital as far as I know. I decided to take four shots of myself, one sharp, and the others as I shook my head from side to side, and then overlay them in photoshop. I liked the resulting surreal effect so much I’ve decided to shoot other people in a similar manner and create a series of these portraits. Kirsti was my first model, and she looks just as strange as I do. Who shall be next…?