geraldine newfry

politics

i'm not sure if my embedding this object worked.  this speech was given in 1967.  rice posted it to her blog yesterday in remembrance of martin luther king's assassination on april 4, 1968.  it is his speech discussing his stance on the war in vietnam.  she suggested that you listen and replace the words "vietnam" with "iraq" and "communism" with "terrorism."  it's a 20 minute audio piece.  give it a listen (if i embedded correctly).

the parts that struck me were:

• for every soldier killed in vietnam the US spent $500,000.  yet for every poor person in the US, we spent $53, most of which went to salaries of people who were not poor.  i can't imagine that isn't true today as well.
• he said he did not despair because "the arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice."
• he quoted dante: "The hottest places in hell are reserved for those who in times of great moral crises maintain their neutrality."
• dissent does not mean disloyality.  don't we hear a lot today about those who disagree with the war are unpatriotic?  he said he was greatly disappointed in the US but that kind of disappointment can only be possible with great love.
  

the words really seem relevant to today's political climate.  i wish my small post could be as elegant as his speech.

i don't talk much about politics on this blog.  i like to reserve it for artwork.  but, as you know, with my hiatus some other topics tend to push through to the forefront of my mind.  when i'm sick i have a hard time listening to politics.  but i am political.  my husband and i met working for greenpeace.  we spent two years knocking on people's doors, getting petitions signed and raising money.  now my participation is lessened but at least i have a history.

there aren't that many great speeches anymore.  obama speaks well, but it doesn't compare to MLK.  i wonder why that is.

bee address book

i used to make a lot of these address books.  they're simple and not too costly.  this style is called "simple artifact."  the book is quite small, maybe 3 x 2 inches.  i got the blanks from the paper source, and just cased them into polymer.

i love the paper source.  so much paper!  but they are starting to look a bit like a scrapbooking store.  still, there are lots of bookbinding supplies, and i have three or four locations from which to choose when i shop.  each has it's own merits.  i took my first bookbinding course there and wondered what i had been doing with the rest of my life.  why hadn't i been bookbinding all along?  i've always loved journaling and was always searching for the perfect blank book.  now i could make my own!  and that's how it all started.  i decided i didn't really enjoy glueing and thought the whole process would be easier with polymer clay.  viola!  something uniquely my own.

i'm beginning to get a bit of the creative spark back.  soon i will get together with my student for private lessons.  i'm so glad it's warming up!

autumn

this is the second incarnation of the board books.

i started with book board and created a background with acrylics.  the foreground was created with a rubber stamp and gesso.  all the board books were treated with dorland's wax to seal in the flavor.  :)

this is a relatively recent one.  i'm going in alphabetical order, so you may see some recent and some vintage ones as i carry on.

this is sewn with the paired needle coptic stitch.

i'm waiting for inspiration and motivation to make more.  hopefully that happens before i run out of picture files!  my hiatus seems to have stretched on.  i've not signed on to teach or do shows this year.  the best i can say is that i need to recharge and heal and that i will be creating again within a year.

at the beach

the first board books i made were with little fabric collages i created.  all the board books have been made in the past year, so you may have seen this one before.  the image of happy bathers is covered in tulle and held in place with eyelets.  this one is about 6 x 4 x 1 inches.

clickety click!

do you forget you can click on the images here and see a much larger picture?  i sure do.  i just realized that if you look at the larger pictures in my last post that you can see everything much better!  you can actually read the text of the ebsq page and see the binding.  and in the 52nd street book image you can see the 52 and a better image of all the stamping in the polymer piece.

so clickety click!

alchemical direction

since my creativity seems to have left me, i thought i'd share some of my older works.  this is the only picture i have of alchemical direction.  i really loved this book.  the small squares contain bits of alchemical imagery beneath mica, sealed in with copper tape.  this book was featured on ebsq a while back.  i think i may have blogged about it, so forgive me if you've seen this image before.

the stitching is paired needle coptic with coptic endbands.  the book is a small 4 x 3 x 1 inches and fits nicely in the palm of your hand.

the picture was taken before i had my light box.  the light box really makes a big difference as you can see here!  you can't even see the stitching, which comes off like an afterthought.  and you know i hate it when the bookbinding seems to take a second seat to the cover design.  both are important in my mind.

this book has already made its way to the heart of a collector.

i should say something about the book i posted last week.  here it is again.

i used to make a lot of japanese stab bindings.  it was a way to add some lower price points to my offerings.  for instance, this book cost $25.  now that i'm making board books, i have something to replace the stab bindings as lower price points.  those books cost about $35 and are coptic bound, so they seem closer to the work i do in polymer clay.

52nd street house was made with a stamped polymer square.  you can't see it in this photo, but there is a 52 in one of the smaller squares of the stamped image.  you can see the "STR" which is what gave me the name for this one.  i stamped the image on translucent clay with copper ink.  then i assembled the collage.  well, after baking the clay, of course.  the binding was done with silk ribbon which feels oh so wonderful in my hands.  i think the texture is lost a little in the finished book, but i had a great time feeling it while doing the binding.  so there is joy sewn in.  the text pages were made with index cards and the book measures 4x6 inches.  this one has also left home to brighten the days of a collector.

i'm starting to do my taxes.  it's more complicated when you sell stuff.  i've been going through my paypal receipts.  i'm all the way through to november.  november is a hard month because i went on that etsy spree.  but i'm plugging away.  i've also been adding the books to my database, along with the name and address of the collectors.  i use flick! which is really helpful.  i can put in a picture of the artwork, the binding style, date of completion, paper used, etc, etc.  then i also plug in the date it was sold and the client's information.  it keeps track of the location of the work, whether in the studio or in a gallery or in a collector's hands.  of course adding to the database makes the tax work that much more complicated, but it's great to have all that information.

it's freezing here.  literally.  i think the windchill is in the -20F range.  no wonder i can't create!  no heat in the studio.  but...it's nice and sunny for a change and i think it will shape up to be a great day.  i hope your day is bright as well.

52nd street house

quiet

"How often it is that an idea that seems bright bossed and gleaming in its clarity when examined in a church, or argued over with a friend in a frosty garden, becomes clouded and murk-stained when dragged out into the field of actual endeavor."  March, Geraldine Brooks

you might think i've been quiet because i've been doing so much bookbinding since my last post, but you would be wrong.  oh sure, i cut paper and cut leather.  but binding, no.  i've been sick again and the studio is still cold.

i felt a little weird having that post of grandiose ideas just laying out there when i wasn't actually following through.  but i'm feeling a bit better now and should be able to get back to binding soon.  i've been reading again.  i've been reading a lot.

i wanted to read atonement before seeing it in the theatre.  it was pretty good and i'm looking forward to seeing the movie.  also, at ginny's recommendation, i picked up march.  actually i picked it up for three reasons.  ginny's recommendation, the author's name is geraldine, and it won a pulitzer.  i like award winning books.  i usually look for the booker prize.

i don't usually like civil war historical fiction, but i did enjoy march.  no antebellum stuff, just a story written against a back drop of slavery and horror.  i put it on my shelf of books to keep.

into the books to sell pile i placed everything must go.  i was hoping for a lot more drama from this book.  it was the story of a pathetic man who takes care of his alcoholic addict mother.  i thought there'd be a lot of drama around the "life changing event" that was touted on the cover.  but this wasn't really developed.

i finished the road by cormac mccarthy today.  it's a post-apocalyptic novel.  it was haunting and very moving.  it also won a pulitzer.  my husband said it's very popular on the subway right now.  i always look to see what people are reading on the subway.  sometimes you see the same people over and over and you can discern their individual tastes.  i think it may be one of my favorite books of all time.  it started out a bit slowly and i wasn't sure i was going to like it.  but then it drew me in.  i could barely sleep because it was so much in my thoughts.  so i'd highly recommend it.  maybe you need to be a bit pessimistic like me to enjoy it. it's not a light book.  have you seen "no country for old men?"  cormac mccarthy wrote that too.  he's best known for a trilogy which includes "all the pretty horses," but i didn't enjoy those at all.  anyway, give him a try.  i'm almost afraid to start a new book because i want this one to linger.

that's it from chilly chicago!  over and out.

branching out

this post by  rice seemed to be written directly to me.  go ahead and read it.  i'll wait.

...humming to myself while you're gone...

there.  welcome back.

i think i put the cart before the horse as far as teaching bookbinding.  certainly not for polymer clay, with which i've been working for 17 whole years.  i've been binding for 7 years.  when i was ready to begin teaching, i started with books.  it was, and still is, the element that set me apart.  people taught polymer, others taught bookbinding, but no one taught them together because no one else was doing that.  frankly it was the combination that made me blossom as an artist.  the gestalt was all mine.

so i made several books and started teaching those projects.  and started selling similar books.  i taught just as rice said you shouldn't do.  "here's how to make the cover.  do this step, then the next."  a project class.  it made sense to me to narrow people's focus since i couldn't convey everything i knew about polymer in half a day.  so i told them exactly what to do to make a book exactly like mine.  people really did like that.  but then what?  do i want people making exactly what i make forever?  not really.  i want them to develop their own style.  so why wasn't i teaching that?  it's harder.

then after everyone was tired from learning and working with polymer clay, i'd have them set all that aside and prepare for binding.  but everyone was too sleepy, full, zoned after lunch to really pay attention to me.  and i wondered why more people didn't seem as interested in the binding.  good grief!  a whole new thing after lunch!

i actually wonder why, in general, more people don't try bookbinding.  there are plenty of people making books, but not in the method of the traditional craft.  there's a lot of tying things together with ribbon, making holes for those circular office supply rings, using some shoddy technique for sewing.  it's not THAT hard to bind correctly, why aren't people doing it?  i don't know the answer to that one.

i did try in one of my last classes to get people to bind first and embellish later.  i thought it would be good to  concentrate on the new skill, binding, instead of the comfortable skill, embellishing.  that didn't work as well as i planned.  i went to lunch and a bunch of people began to embellish.  the idea swept the room like wildfire and i still didn't get a chance to really teach people the binding.

in my tv appearances on craft lab and that's clever, the very same thing happened.  they spent lots of time on the polymer while the binding was an afterthought.  it must be me.

that's the conclusion i've reached.  it must be me.  i know a lot more about polymer than about binding and i must somehow be conveying that when i teach.

so what's to be done?

bookbinding.

today is the last day of my hiatus.  it's been relaxing.  but now i think i should explore more bookbinding.  i generally use the coptic or ethiopian stitch and i'm pretty good at that.  but have i explored it fully?  have i neglected the other stitches?  would it be helpful to make books out of materials other than polymer clay?  it sure would because a lot of folks aren't interested in that medium.  and it's too cold in the basement studio to work with it all winter.  again, it's scary to work with other materials because the polymer makes me unique.  but looking at other media doesn't detract from my polymer.  i can still use polymer, and will most likely make a ton of books with it.  but stretching is good for artists.

so tomorrow, the start of a new month and freshly back from hiatus....bookbinding.  maybe i'll start with leather.

polymer clay daily

i'm featured today on polymer clay daily!  well, actually, it's not me, but this book.

Each page of this handmade book was created from polymer clay. A number of found objects are incorporated into the surface design. Two pieces of an ancient heart are brought together with street sweeper needles, which were collected by Geraldine's husband. A small metal frame encases a single hand typed word, "beloved." The remnants of a car logo provide the author's initial, while a storm window tack announces the number of years the couple had spent together to this point.

The pages of the book are illustrated to coincide with one of the songs played at the pair's wedding. The artist has used a number of transferred images, textural elements from her wedding ring and more found objects. The entire collection is bound with waxed linen in a single sheet version of the Coptic stitch.

i'm pretty sure if you click on those images, you'll see a picture large enough to make your eyes fall out!

i made this for my husband for valentine's day several years ago.  his eyes welled up with tears.  unfortunately i think i peaked in my valentine's day presents.  i have no idea what to give him this year!

if you're interested in polymer clay, there are two great blogs for inspiration: polymer clay daily and polymer clay notes.  happy surfing!