Designer Bookbinder Lecture

I said I would put up more pictures of Carnival boxes - and other things too, but they need photographing and will take longer....
Above is the first box I did - a sort of manic George Bush/Bugs Bunny Goes to War box...
actually I just realise it is on its side - I am so used to cricking my neck I didn't notice - will rotate when I have more time..... ( and add another of the inside with G B lookalike inside)

these are some that followed, ( spot the mini-mackerel in their coffins) with below- the sort of images there are inside; some drawings I made in the Munich Toy and Puppet museum, alternated with collaged bits from papers....I seem to remember there was a lot about 'hoodies' at the time, so I found a few alternative hoodies...
I am also having a sort of Baselitz moment again......

I then made a couple of Dr Caligari boxes - the Somnambulist is coming out of his coffin inside, and the outside has angles all over the place as in Expressionist cinema - I had fun with that; the second box I varnished so that it had the air of a celluloid dream, with shellac so it's a honey colour...

......For those who weren't there - the lecture was titled - Books and Stuff; the Quiddity of Artists Books, so I talked a lot about using materials - how as an artist I speak through them; how I used to make my own paint.

I showed a personal selection of slides of other people's work to open up the debate of what an Artists Book might be.

Talked about the contexts of showing - the freedom to define one's own; structures to bounce off, but the permissions the form gives; changing definitions in different historical contexts ( mentioned the 'Breaking the Rules' exhibition at the British Library )...

methods and processes, contemporary papers, the rhythm of processes, cutting text by hand ( Gawain and Lorca's Sonnets of Dark Love ) and the power of being able to do things one's self; and whether the doing is more important than the end product.

I had earlier listened to a discussion on Radio4 - Start the Week - missed the beginning of it but it seemed to be about posterity, or the possibility of lack of it, and how it might or might not alter how we make art - and this led on to technology, ecology and self-sufficiency.

I mentioned briefly the more communal book projects I have done and then went on to show Bluebeard's Castle and Beauty and the Beast, and how these led into making different sorts of books, worlds, installations, and how the viewer might relate to these....

ending up with a brief discussion of the 'Falcon Bride' , the importance of the gaps between things, and how art and life can intertwine in a ritualistic way.