Leather Journals Aplenty

I recently posted some more new designs in my Etsy store for the holidays. I have my workshop elf lifestyle going these days. :)

This one is a darkly romantic journal made with black leather and a heart-shaped pewter button and wrap-around cherry red ribbon:

It has this love quote by Pablo Neruda on the first page:

"I do not love you as if you were salt-rose, or topaz,
or the arrow of carnations the fire shoots off.
I love you as certain dark things are to be loved,
in secret, between the shadow and the soul."

~ Pablo Neruda, Sonnet 17

I've also listed a handsome grey suede travel journal:

It has a quote by Lao Tsu:

“A good traveler has no fixed plans, and is not intent on arriving.”
~ Lao Tsu

Eco Friendly Leather Journals

Busy times these days over at my Etsy shop. I recently added some new designs -- a couple more eco-friendly leather journals, each with a quote on the first page. 

This one is an Emily Dickinson leather journal, made with tree-free coffee paper pages:

 The first page has a photo of Emily Dickinson and the following line from one of her marvelously enigmatic poems:

"To live is so startling
it leaves little time
for anything else."

(If you click on the image, you can see a larger version of the photo)

I also added a leather journal with tree-free banana fiber writing paper pages:

 I made it as an inspiration journal for writers, so the first page has this quote by William Wordsworth (can you tell I was an English literature major at university? :) 

"Fill your paper

with the breathings of your heart."

Handmade Leather Journal with Thackeray Quote

I've been busy adding some new leather journals to my Etsy shop. This one is a medium Writer's Inspiration Journal with a quote by William Makepeace Thackeray: “There are thousands of thoughts lying within a man that he does not know till he takes up the pen and writes.”

David Hockney on Art

Just bought a used copy of David Hockney's autobiographical book (first published in 1993), That's the Way I See It.  Haven't had the chance to dip into it yet very much, but a quote by Hockney on the dust jacket caught my eye:

"I have always believed that art should be a deep pleasure....There is always, everywhere, an enormous amount of suffering, but I believe that my duty as an artist is to overcome and alleviate the sterility of despair....New ways of seeing mean new ways of feeling...I do believe that painting can change the world."

Make Good Art

I don't usually care for graduation speeches. The general air of forced cheerfulness and optimism can be a bit depressing. However, Author Neil Gaiman's recent speech at a University of the Arts graduation ceremony is very entertaining, and includes some nuggets of wisdom, including the value of lying on your resume, the problems of failure and the problems of success, and the importance of making good art even when things aren't going well ( husband runs off with a politician, the cat explodes, etc.):

Banff Centre Residency, Part 3

The second book I made while doing a recent visual arts residence at the Banff Centre is this one:

The artwork in this book was made using my own version of "chance operations", a term coined by John Cage. After reading about Cage's work making prints and watercolors, one question I had (which became the focus of this book) was what would happen if you took materials associated with childhood memories and subjected them to chance operations.  

I developed a chart using compass points, parts of the body, animals and  numbers, and by following it derived which objects to use and  the placement of the objects (hairs from a horse's tail, rocks, and feathers) on the paper. I drew around the objects with watercolor pencils and then drew over the lines with brush and water.  It was interesting to find out what would happen if chance and randomness became part the work.

I bound the book using oak boards that are very irregular in shape, and have bark along the edges. This book is called speaking the language of horse hair, rocks and feathers.

Banff Centre Residency, Part 2

The first artist's book I made while on my recent visual arts residency at the Banff Centre for the Arts was this one:

I've been thinking lately about randomness and control, especially as it relates to using materials for art, so for this book, I wanted to work with, rather than against the nature of the wood. So before I left for Banff, I borrowed my neighbour's hatchet and tapped the blade on the front edges of the walnut covers until they split according to the grain of the wood:

Walnut is a fairly brittle wood, and chips easily, so various small chips and splits that came about as I cut out the windows and shaped the covers also became part of the design. 

The text for this book is drawn from notebooks Walt Whitman kept as he was working out his initial ideas for Leaves of Grass.  The Library of Congress website has posted pages from his notebooks, and while reading them I was struck by the visible evidence of his struggle to find the words to express and shape his ecstatic vision of nature, humanity and the soul.  Over and over, he writes, then crosses out, then writes again, as he tries to create a poetry as elemental and inevitable as nature itself.  In the book, I alternate lines from his journals with lines on pieces of mica.

This is the finished book. It's called I follow (animals and birds).