two kitties: Good Mail: How to Make Artist Books

I decided that today's studio project would be a letter to one of my best friends. He lives over in Australia. I didn't have anything special to say, I just miss seeing him.

This week, I've been playing with book structures in the art studio, so I decided to work some of those ideas into mail. I used some envelopes I thrifted awhile back.

In each envelope, there was a random (but interesting) piece of paper. There were vintage postcards - this one from Kobe, Japan to a person here in NW Montana dated 1947.

Another vintage postcard of St. John's Cathedral in New York City notes that the sender sailed for Brazil that day, in 1949.

Other envelopes contained simple books, made with papers from my collage pile. This one is a one inch high modified accordion-fold book made with a cyanotype printed two years ago.

This one is just a photocopy of an aerial photo of commercial flower growing fields in California. An almost Rothko modified mini-accordion fold with belly band.

Another is an "instant book".

Folded flat, the inside looks like this:

The outside:

Dancers from American Ballet Theatre at the height of the company's success. A wordless narrative from this fat ballerina with the ruptured tendon.

I put my letter in the last envelope, shuffled them, and bound them together very simply. All of these techniques came from a great book I keep in my studio - Esther K. Smith's How to Make Books. Autographed copies are available here.