ABCD February 2024

It was good to be back at the Dove last Saturday with other members of Artists’ Book Club Dove. Hellebores and snowdrops were flowering just outside Bron’s print studio.
Pauline has been drawing the ever-changing sand-bars in the estuary where she lives, and finding pigments in the beach. Investigating this subject online later, I came across this interesting blog. Pauline also had exciting news about a potential exhibition opportunity for us in September.
Judith has been in India, and as usual she brought interesting finds back with her! She’s been papermaking, ruining bits of kitchen equipment by processing hemp fibres. The photo below shows a piece made from hemp fibres drawn wet from the vat and stitched onto a scrim backing. I turned the photo sideways and it looks like the edge of a pond.

And here are just a few of her experiments with cyanotype, salt, bleach, and botanical inks.

Judy came with her teenage granddaughter Hattie, already an accomplished book-artist (her dream-book was in our exhibition at ACEarts last year.) Here is part of a big project Judy is engaged in:

Jane has been busy celebrating a very important birthday. I forgot to photograph the delicious vegan avocado chocolate cake Bron made for the occasion.
Clare showed us her current sketchbook, handmade and full of observations and lovely watercolour sketches including landscapes and birds.
I (Ama) brought along a tiny meander book I’d made in an edition of two. I gave the first one to my seven-year-old granddaughter Hazel. One side of the paper has a photo of hazel catkins blowing in the wind. The other side has a poem dedicated to hazel the tree and Hazel the girl, with an Irish folk-tale running along the bottom of each page. It has a slip-case decorated with pictures of Hazel fairies, from Cicely Mary Barker‘s Flower Fairy series of children’s books with botanically-accurate illustrations. The second photo shows a book I made by cutting up unfinished watercolour life sketches and dipping the pages in botanical dyes. I love the randomness and unpredictability of this process.

Other news: The Bookband are are having their first group exhibition – “Fully Booked – The Book as Art” at the Lansdown Gallery in Stroud from 12 – 23 March 2024.  An exhibition, on until 21 March at the Atkinson Gallery in Street is of Sustainable Art and looks interesting; lace-edged Magnolia leaves, all kinds of foraged materials, drawings in snow …

Our next meeting will be on 23 March. My father’s 103rd birthday! Meanwhile, here are the sweepings from the studio floor.

February Dove-droppings

don’t answer the door
it was vile
down in the cellar

blue and ripply
uncontrollable marbling
strange bits of silvery fungus

it’s dangerous
it’s going to change
it might fall apart

how is it done?
with open folios
like the tower of babel

the bottoms could be dipped
into a dream book
depending where the moon is

low tide and full moon
white waves where they meet the sea
colours in the beach at low tide

nine maps west to east
barrowloads of dove droppings
two sets of black shiny chopsticks

half a vole in the bottom of my boot
a lying head at each end
sprayed neon pink over four bicycles