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.