nothin' but time

Abby here, reporting from the craziest week of my life.

I've been doing last-minute things for Tiny Expo: I got stuff to help display my books and make everything look presentable; I took pictures of all of the books so I can keep track of which ones sell and also to have available if people want to make a custom order; I'm in the middle of pricing everything; I still need to make some sort of sign and then I think I'll be all ready!

Also been working on finding people to collaborate with for IP.  I've been giving out the info sheets to friends who are going to pass them on to people they've met who might be interested/interesting.  I also went to the kerrytown farmer's market this morning and talked to three people there, two of whom were extremely interested in working with me.  One is a surgeon's-assistant-turned-salsa-maker named Mario; the other is a girl who is part of a family-owned pastry business.  They both said they would contact me soon; I'll keep you updated on the developments!

I'm working on contacting a few local organizations with whom I have connections to see if I can find collaborators that way...

I've been making some changes to my review presentation for next week, including adding some research on the history and implications of collaborative creative endeavors.  I got these books:
- Artistic Bedfellows: Histories, Theories and Conversations in Collaborative Art Practice 
- Painter Among Poets: The Collaborative Art Of George Schneeman
- Group Genius by Keith R. Sawyer
and found some cool stuff online about collaborative and community arts and artists:
http://ascc.artsci.wustl.edu/~ksawyer/groupgenius/index.html
http://collabarts.org/
http://www.richardkamler.org/

Things are starting to fall into place, I think.

Plus, it's a perfect winter day here: chilly but bright, sunny, and beautiful!

bzzzzz

Wowza!  I'm sorry it has been so long.  I've been busy as a bookbinding bee.  I'm currently exhausted so I'll just give you some little sneak peaks into what I've been doing:

Making books for Tiny Expo.  A whole lot of books.  

Preparing for my IP review next week.  Finally came up with a plan that I am happy with and excited about.  Collaborative books!!!  I'll elaborate on that in another post, but for now here's an info sheet that I made for people that are interested in collaborating: (click to see it bigger!)

Andddd, I found friends that agreed to join me on a whirlwind road trip to Chicago on Friday for the opening of the Paper Legends show (and get back in time for Tiny Expo the next morning!)  I am so very grateful and excited.

That's all for now!  Till next time....

ideas

I have an inkling of a solution to my project woes in the back of my head.  It is still at its infant phase and it is very fragile and I am not ready to stand behind it quite yet.  

I just asked Sadashi if I could tell him about the idea even though it wasn't fully formed.  He didn't let me.  He said that I shouldn't let my unformed idea be influenced by anything but myself right now.  He told me that when he was younger he used to go to coffeeshops with a group of artist friends.  They would share ideas over coffee for hours, and feel so excited and optimistic because they believed in their ideas and had the external support to keep them confident.  But then he would leave and go back to his studio and not want to act on those ideas and make art, because the ideas had already lived their lives.  They had been exhausted and they could no longer be used. 

Nothing like a poignant piece of advice to turn your day around.

I am learning, I am learning, I am learning 

prophecy from a pen

Hi!  Sorry I haven't posted in a few days!  I'm a bad blogger!  I guess I am focusing more on life than on blogging!  I'm shouting because I had a little too much caffeine today!

Anyway.  Things are looking up.  I'm starting to kind of get somewhat of an idea of the direction that my IP project is going in.  It's still very fuzzy but I feel much more confident about it than I did before.  I have the rest of this week and then Thanksgiving break to get it all sorted out in my head so I can then explain it to other people in a mock presentation (practice for our midyear review, which is supposedly "a big deal").

I haven't yet had a chance to work on the book I mentioned in the last post, but I did cut and fold a bunch of signatures for a bunch of books that I am making to sell at TINY EXPO (I am really excited about this), and I sewed one of them tonight:

(the image on the cover is from a set of Tibetan woodblock prints that I got years ago)

I could talk about other things that happened this week but I am very tired and my brain kind of just shut off as I was typing a second ago.

OH, one quick thing: I found a pen on the sidewalk today, and it was my favorite kind of pen (Pilot Precise V5 Extra Fine), and it is full of ink and everything.  I'm going to go ahead and call that a sign of good things to come, just because I can.

some things

I promised that I would have something to share by today.  I did not get a WHOLE LOT done, but I did make a little progress.  Progress is progress.

One thing I did:
Started working on my next book.  It's going to be about something that's been on my mind a lot recently: making decisions about where to focus my energy/interests in life.  I want to do, know, and care about so many things.  I want to meet, befriend, and learn from so many people.  I want to travel to, become passionate about, and love so many places.  But we can only do and see and know so much.  So I've been grappling with how to sift through the abundance of options available to me and pick the ones that will be most meaningful.

Here are some ultra-exclusive sneak peaks into my thought process/planning via my sketchbook:

The book structure is going to be accordion-style, containing "pages" with open centers and slots allowing the viewer to insert an image of their choosing.  I have yet to decide what the images will be, but they will have something to do with choices and stuff.


This is a little model that I made to figure out the structure of the pages.  It kind of looks like a mini guillotine, hehe.

Another thing I did:
Put together this little tutorial on how to sew the Japanese Stab books.  I'm probably going to change it (perhaps add color, make everything more clear, etc.), BUT it gave me the idea to make a compilation of REALLY SIMPLE instructions for basic bookbinding techniques, because those are surprisingly very hard to come by if you are not "in the bookbinding know," so to say, or don't have access to book arts places and experts.

 


















Okay maybe I made more progress than I realized.  Hm.

Well then, I'm off!

forward!

Since my last post,

1) America made some great decisions

2) The sun finally came out

3) I spent some quality time with people I love

4) I went to a lecture by Stefan Sagmeister on the subject of happiness

5) I taught a class of 30ish 9th graders how to bind a book (with a little help from my friends) (it was hard but oh did I learn a lot)

6) I decided to start drinking coffee again

7) I laughed a lot

This list may seem a bit skewed because I didn't include anything negative (of course there were negative moments, duh)  It's part of a new personal attempt to focus more energy on the good stuff.  So far it's working out pretty well.

I'm going to spend a lot of time in my studio this afternoon/evening so I promise to have SOMETHING to show on here by tomorrow.

this one will be brief

Yesterday and today were whirlwind days and I am exhausted.  I spent approximately 12 hours scanning, designing, writing, printing, folding, and binding a book about my trip to Ghana for the International Exhibition.  Speed bookbinding yet again!  My emotional attachment to the content kept me motivated the entire time.  (I think I may be onto something...)  Here's a photo of the book, plus a sampling of a few random pages.  The covers are made with wax print Ghanaian fabric and the binding is an exposed-spine coptic stitch.

      










































I also prepped the materials for the bookbinding workshop at DCS high school this Thursday.  We're doing Japanese Stab Binding.  More on that later!

Now it's time for sleep.