ABCD: Afterwards

Artists’ Book Club Dove has a new member: Judith Warbey. Her little book-in-a-box is called “Running River and Afterwards”. It is a one-off accordion structure, painted in ink on Yupo paper – a smooth non-absorbent synthetic substrate that lets the ink flow and blend on the surface before it (slowly) dries.

Judith also brought another take on “Afterwards”, an accordion sketch-book containing abstract ghost-prints inspired by a performance of Karl Jenkins “Stabat Mater”.

Karen has been experimenting with willow bark strippings. She brought a basket of “stripples” and a sheet of gorgeously textured paper she had made incorporating fragments of bark. Click on the images to enlarge.

Her book has a braid of withies on the spine, a bundle of withies on the front cover, and rings inside, made from stripples. We thought of a great many uses for these rings …

Clare’s hand-painted book is a tender and eloquent evocation of an empty house whose much-loved occupant is no more.

Jane’s book was inspired by geranium plants that had dried and whitened in a derelict glasshouse. Each fragile ethereal page is labelled with the name of a cultivar. The pages are bound in an elegant reversed Japanese stab-binding with robust Khadi paper covers.

The only book I’ve made since last month is this one in an edition of seven. It is a pamphlet of the script for our forthcoming performance at the Bath Litfest, a sound-collage for six voices and rain-stick. Clare and I are two of the voices. The cover-photo was taken by my son or daughter-in-law near Loch Lomond at Christmas time.

Janine missed last month’s meeting, so she brought her cat-themed book this time. It contains photos of her old cat, and one of T.S Eliot’s cat-poems.

Judith gave last year’s calendar of Japanese prints an after-life in a “Secret Belgian” binding, a neat and flexible structure that can seem baffling at first try but is not hard to master.

After lunch – a feast of assorted salads – Clare demonstrated how she makes and prints with rubber stamps made from ordinary erasers.

Bron quoted from memory a profound observation, source unknown:

We imagine we are nouns, but in fact we are verbs.

Next month’s word is “Blue”.

PS! Apparently the quote is from Stephen Fry, and Clare has flexed her Googling muscles and found an earlier source: Buckminster Fuller

I live on Earth at present, and I don’t know what I am. I know that I am not a category. I am not a thing — a noun. I seem to be a verb, an evolutionary process — an integral function of the universe.

She also recommended this, which I’m sure will strike a chord of appreciation in anyone who is coping/has coped with elderly relations. Well worth a read, and as a bonus there’s a photo of two pretty girls on a classic motorbike!

Thank you Clare.