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.