Exploring Woven Concertina Books

At a recent meeting of Papermakers & Artists Qld, we learnt an interesting technique of woven concertina books.  I've also completed Helen Hiebert's online weaving course this year, so I've had an interest in the idea of using my old folio monoprints to create new images in a woven form.

For the upcoming Compassion exhibition (details below), I decided to make a small series of woven concertina books, using old monoprints, collagraphs and rusted papers.

The technique I used was to fold a long concertina and cut long strips through the middle (reserving the ends for covers).  Then weave pieces of another print for each of the concertina pages.  The result gives maximum contrast and interest to a couple of ordinary prints.  Most of the prints were double sided, but with those that weren't I added more strips of left over prints, some of them not even the same size.  I applied some glue so that the book didn't work itself loose and they look better without too many gaps.

I'm happy with the completed books....and my folio and print drawers are a little bit less full now :-)

These books will be on sale at the Compassion exhibition at the gallery shop.

Step 1 -fold concertina then cut strips along middle

Step 2 - weave strips of contrasting prints.
The width of each strip is equal to the
width of the concertina pages/

Finished woven books, showing prints
glued to create covers.

The weave.  This one is interesting - it looks like the
Magpie is walking past a Venetian blind :-)

The one weaves a feather monoprint with a brown collagraph.

Collagraph print as a cover, I love the scratchy texture
of this one.

This one has rusted paper with feather monoprints.

This is where they will be on sale.

Artist Book Exhibition - Compassion

Over the past few months I've been busy finalising a group of new artist book works for an upcoming exhibition called 'Compassion' (details as per image below).

For one of the new works, I wanted to use prints of feathers as a representation of bird species that are endangered or threatened (of which there are many!).  I did the prints a month or two ago with no idea of what I would create with them.  I've been doing some work over the past 18 months with migratory shorebirds so luckily I had a few leftover monoprints that I could use.

After digging around in my 'stash' (and avoiding the temptation to go the community second hand book shop!...again!), I found a lovely hardcover book entitled 'Birds of the Seychelles'.  I removed the inner pages, leaving the blue map endpapers intact.

Then I needed some time to think about how I wanted the book to look, pondering the options - concertina or not -  hunting through my library to explore possible techniques, scanning my saved images in Pinterest, thinking, thinking, thinking.....  I knew I didn't want to rush it, and it was tricky starting this process with the finished prints, and finding the right technique and format to suit my prints and to bring it together to communicate my idea about endangered shorebirds.

I finally settled on the idea of the prints coming out of the book, attached to the endpapers, with the prints loosely sewn together with waxed linen thread.  I'm happy with the finished book, of course it features a lot of blue and blue-greens (its funny how I keep drifting back to the blue colour schemes!).

The book is titled ' Everywhere and Nowhere', and this is my artist statement:

"Migratory Shorebirds such as the Eastern Curlew make a twice-yearly migration across the world, over oceans, hopping from one island continent to another. No country or island is their home, as they are both everywhere and nowhere. We're making their world smaller by destroying their feeding and breeding grounds and as a species, they seem to be disappearing into nowhere."

A dummy run, trying out the sewing and
structure options.
Its a good idea to make a dummy when
using one-off prints to prevent disappointment!

Sewing the pages together

The completed book.  The feather prints
are on smaller panels.

This photo shows the altered book and how
I have the new concertina coming out from within.
The concertina folds up neatly inside the book cover,
because I've removed the book contents.

A more detailed shot, I love the feather prints!

Exhibition details.