In the beginning....

A recent review of some of my first attempts at making books, reminded me of some of my work which I had almost forgotten, and some of it I was quite pleased with, such as these nesting, folding boxes, made as a response to the project to make pocket sculptures, for a Conceptual Art workshop session on my Foundation course at Bristol School of Art.  At the time, I was in the throes of moving house and retrieving my possessions from 4 months in storage - it seemed like boxes, and their appearance and disappearance, was filling my world....

These are some books I made as part of the project we did on the zoo at the end of the first year of the foundation course.   I used old copies of the RWA ART magazine as a base, and then inserted photos of all the myriad warning and prohibition signs scattered around the zoo.  I liked the idea of using wooden sticks (stakes?) as the binding - reflecting on the cages and fences which keep the animals enclosed and the people out.

This book was one of a series based on the high-level rope walk-ways constructed for the gorillas in their enclosure.  The two days I visited the zoo, the big gorilla was just sitting morosely at the top of one of the tree-ladders, looking down at the world.  The walkways was unused.  The gorillas must be terminally bored with it all.  I made a print suing a card and indian ink, and printed a never-ending walkway on large sheets of paper which I had folded to make into a folded/concertina book.   I folded it round so the end met the beginning, so it was literally never ending.

I made several smaller versions based on a book design made from a single, folded and cut sheet of paper, scaling the print accordingly.

My portfolio was also an opportunity to record some of the things I've one outside of the Foundation course.  Last summer I did a letterpress Printing course at UWE with Tom Snowden and Angie Butler.   I continued experimenting with books made from a cut and folded single sheet.  This meant I had to work out how to lay out the type so it would all work and be properly located/centred on the pages.  I made three separate prints and bound them into tiny books, using covers made from a print workshop done a couple of years ago.

I also did a week learning Bookbinding at UWE with Guy Begbie: a few of the examples I made.