ABCD March 2024

On 23 March, seven members of Artists’ Book Club Dove welcomed a new member, Diana Illingworth-Cook, a very skilled and creative bookbinder. Not only that, but she keeps hens and ducks!
She brought a selection of her books to show. One that especially appealed to me was this longstitch journal with tackets, with its heavyweight grey card wraparound cover folded and pasted back to show the white deckle edge. Elegant and beautiful.

Jane, Judith and Bron had been to the Book Band exhibition in Stroud, and came away with many topics for discussion.
Bron has made a large clamshell box to hold some prints.
Judith will be teaching us one of Claire Van Vliet’s woven and interlocking book structures in May. I have the book of the same name, bought for me many years ago by my son when he was in USA. It is now available as a PDF.
Judith recommended a podcast, The Unfinished Print, in particular the episode on Lucy May Schofield. I very much enjoyed the episode featuring Wuon-Gean Ho, whom I met many years ago in London.
Judith has made “a crazy book” (photo below) with indigo-dyed cover and cyanotype pages.

I (Ama) have been collaborating with San Francisco poet Beau Beausoleil on a project called Lives of the Poets. Some poems are by him and some by me. Three were written jointly in email exchanges. The images on some of the pages are of my papers dyed with botanical dyes, mostly from the compost-bin – walnut hulls, onion skins, red cabbage leaves and so on. The collection was recently long-listed in a chapbook competition. I brought along an A5 woven-spine version that I’m making in an edition of two, initially. And a tiny book of Poems for Leonard, my grandson. My third woven-spine book, Overheard on the Bus, is made from a large sheet of marks and writing in botanical inks, made during a weekend workshop with Kathryn John. I cut the sheet up and wrote in walnut ink a surreal fragment overheard on the bus from Street to Butleigh on the first day of the workshop: “I left my spoon in Street. I’m surprised we have any cutlery left at all. I keep fishing knives out of the carpet.” I bought the yarn in a charity shop. It looks similar to the one Jane used on her woven spine, but I think Jane’s was home-dyed. Photos below. Click on a photo to see it full size.

Jane is our Indigo guru. Here is her woven-spine book of indigo-dyed pages. I love the organic way the dye leaks under the resist when the paper is wetted before going into the vat.

After lunch, Clare taught us the woven-spine structure. Here is her lovely little book made from cut-up pages from a Gudrun Sjoden catalogue. Every double-page spread has unexpected juxtapositions of colour and image.

Pauline, now living in North Devon, will be the featured artist at the Appledore Gallery during May. Open Wed-Sat 11-4.

Our next meeting will be on April 20th. Till then, here are the edited highlights from my notes on the March meeting.

March Dove-droppings

three horses in Ilchester
to carry parsley
like a piano hinge

the Secret Belgian
used a moustache-comb
for a photocopy job

a clamshell
is a bit like a bicycle
that went down with the Titanic

where it flops
how it flips
an arthritic dragon

the Queen of Magnets
dissected an Icelandic book
on the wrong side of the ruler

she’s got sharp fingernails
eat them and you will die
a closed book