Bookmaking, printing and publishing

Over the summer, I had the good fortune of visiting three book arts, bookmaking and book printing/publishing events in Vancouver for the first time.

The first was the CBBAG Lower Mainland's 2015 Book Arts Fair which was held on June 20 at the Main Branch of the Vancouver Public Gallery. Visitors were able to "see, touch and buy  bookbinding, letterpress, altered books, artist’s journal, calligraphy, paper arts and mixed arts ", with up to up to 18 book artists and book arts suppliers will be displaying and their works.

Photo from the website: https://vanbookarts.wordpress.com

On October 17, I attended the Vancouver Art/Book Fair put on by Project Space and held at the Vancouver Art Gallery Annex. Two rooms with close to 70 exhibitors: book artists, book and zine publishers, etc.

Image from the website: http://2015.vancouverartbookfair.com/#program

On October 31, the Alcuin Society held its annual Wayzgoose event with more than 25 exhibitors, including book artists and publishers, wood engravers, paper marblers (traditional and japanese).

Image from the website: http://alcuinsociety.com/the-wayzgoose-is-coming-2/

I came away with an exquisite sheet of hand-marbled paper. I was drawn to its organic, flesh-coloured shapes and the residual fluid flowlines of the second pass.

Detail of a hand-marbled (double-dipped) sheet of paper by Phyllis Greenwood. 

New book: wood nymph

I recently finished wood nymph, my new book on blurb. It's an homage to Mary, my artist friend, muse and mentor. The book consists of a freestyle poem augmented by numerous photos transformed through various mediums: digital composite photographs, alcohol gel transfers on paper, beeswax and mixed media works on Japanese washi paper or wood panels.

This gives you an idea of the book's layout:

Mary posed for a photo shoot with me several years ago. This book is my interpretation, through images and words, of a wood nymph inhabiting a birch tree in the northern boreal forest, evokes struggle, transformation and rebirth through a deep longing for change, tempered by a strong determination to preserve an existing order. Though you cannot see her, the nymph still inhabits those woods, watching over us, smiling with amusement.

The 38-page book is available in 7" x 7" colour softcover and hardcover imagewrap formats.

To view a Preview of the book, click on the icon below.

wood nymph

by desean

Book Preview

Enjoy!

Encaustic heat table

James and I fabricated an encaustic heat table so that I can gently heat up the beeswax and apply it with a brush to thin Japanese paper. We used an IKEA KOMPLEMENT drawer inside of which I secured four porcelain lamp bases, lining the whole inside of the drawer with foil insulation. A dimmer switch allows me to control the temperature that is emitted from the four 100 W incandescent bulbs that heat up the aluminum sheet. The energy expended by the bulbs is much less than that which would be consumed by an electric griddle.

Inside the heat table

Anodized aluminum sheet covering the box (approx. 24" x 30").
Note the dimmer switch to control the heat intensity.

Wax melting in tin will be brushed onto the surface of the aluminum
plate and will soak into the paper, making it translucent.

Wax infused Japanese paper becomes quite translucent, a quality I am interested in exploring with my mixed media photographs. This process will be used as well for the pages of the accordion book (flutterbook) I am currently working on.

Inkan khipu

I've been doing research on ancient Inkan khipus from Peru. You may be wondering what a khipu is. They were a series of knotted textile strings that hanged vertically from a main cord and were intended as a record-keeping device. It was their way of keeping ongoing records on the number of crops and animals. Much research has been done on these based on the remaining khipus that have survived since 1400 AD. The data found in the khipu can now be read, based for example on the textile, colour and number of strands of the strings, the number and position of knots, etc.

Khipu UR010 (Photo: Dr. Gary Urton)

The khipu shown above, part of the 109 Series, was found at the Laguna de los Condores, Peru by Dr. Gary Urton who has researched khipu extensively and maintains the Khipu Database Project at Harvard University.

My interest, however, lies mostly with the "narrative" khipu which were used, it seems, to recount stories and recite poems,rather than with the "accounting" type khipu. However, though there is some evidence in historic documents that such narrative khipu may have existed and the fact that there exists a small number of khipu that do not fit the "accounting" type, researchers have still not been able to decode them. Narrative Threads: Accounting and Recounting in Andean Khipu, edited by Jeffrey Quilter and Gary Urton, contains several chapters authored by a multidisciplinary group of researchers who met to discuss the possibility of "narrative" khipu.

The fact that there is a possibility that there existed an ancient tactile and textile-based system to record and recount stories and poems fascinated me.  In the book mentioned above, Jeffrey Quilter, proposes in his paper, Yncap Cimin Quipococ's Knots, that the "narrative" khipu may have made use of a binary system similar to Morse code, to record their stories and poems. Urton also raises the strong possibility that such a binary system may have been used.

This revelation prompted me to adapt such a khipu-like system of recording my poetry using knotted strings and International Morse Code.

Recollections

Poems and images created ages ago, suspended in time and floating in some forgotten web space, once retrieved from those soundless confines, then dusted and polished, often rekindle strong memories or express today's musings.