Flashback Friday: "Cortona Clothesline" concertina

This week's Flashback Friday is a book that involves two different printmaking techniques, applique, embroidery, and, of course, bookbinding. As the title "Cortona Clothesline" suggests, the inspiration for this book came from my summer spent in Cortona, Italy. I began to love the daily sight of hanging laundry on lines strung from Tuscan mountainside homes. When I returned stateside, I channeled the imagery into my artwork.





These photos were taken in the courtyard behind the historic building where I lived in Cortona. After hand-washing our clothes, we would hang them here to blow in the breeze until dry. Can you imagine a more beautiful setting for laundry? When in Italy, even something as mundane as laundry day can create inspiration for years to come.



On both sides of the cotton rag paper that I used for the pages, I layered ink using the monoprint technique to create an expressive blend of rich blues and greens, inspired by the Italian countryside. I then transferred my drawings of women's garments to a woodblock to be carved. The woodblock was coated with a transparent blue ink and printed atop the monoprint background. Next came the hand sewing of yellow embroidery thread to represent the clothesline.



The book is bound in the concertina, or accordion, style. To create the covers, I cut out the shape of a dress from blue fabric and appliqued it onto green fabric. I hand-stitched clothespins and the line on the cover as well. This book is one in an edition of eight books. Each is unique, using different colors of ink and thread.



This copy of "Cortona Clothesline" is currently for sale in my Etsy shop.

Flashback Friday: Italian newspaper book

On July 9, 2006, Italy won the World Cup and I was there for it. And by there, I mean that I watched the game on a large outdoor screen in a jam-packed piazza in Cortona, Italy. When Italy won, hundreds of people paraded through the streets, car horns honked all night long, and red wine literally rained on the crowd. The next day, I bought several newspapers to commemorate the event.

One of these newspapers was used to make a set of two books, one for me to keep and one as a gift for Tony. We're newspaper people. Always have been, always will be. We were both editors of our high school paper, as our relationship was just beginning. And now, ten years later, we once again work for the same newspaper. Tony is the city editor of The News Virginian, and I work as the production manager.



These books aren't archival and they're not perfect, but they're intended to be unique souvenirs from a summer spent binding books and watching "football." This gift sparked an interest in collecting international newspapers for Tony, and he's since had friends bring him papers from places like France, Brazil, Canada, and Jamaica.



The book itself is fairly simple. All of the newspaper pages were torn down to size by hand, which allowed for the rough edges of the pages. The covers were essentially a collage of different photos, headlines, and graphics that I found especially intriguing. The books were bound in the Coptic style.



Since I work at a newspaper and constantly have stacks of outdated newspapers at my disposal, I've been considering making more books similar to these. I'm planning to sell my books a few craft fairs in town throughout the upcoming year, and I thought some books made from the local newspaper could be pretty popular. I even saved all of the newspapers from our record-breaking snowstorms this winter for future bookmaking purposes.

Flashback Friday: Collaborative Clue Book

Ok, I admit it. I've missed a few Fridays lately with this Flashback Friday series. Custom orders, an upcoming craft fair, and restocking my Etsy shop have been keeping me busy lately. And I've been blogging about all sorts of other things, from artists features to haircuts. But the flashbacks are back with a collaborative book from 2008, which seems particularly relevant because I'm currently participating in a collaboration with members of BEST.

As our final project for a relief printmaking course at the University of Georgia, the entire class collaborated to make a series of limited edition, perfect-bound books. The theme was "Clue," and the inspiration could come from the board game, the movie, or just a general feeling of mystery.

The pages I made for the book are shown above. I carved an image of the board game pieces into a sheet of linoleum, and then printed it onto rag paper with black ink. For this particular print, I added green paper to the edges of the pages, as well as to Mr. Green's shirt. But each print was different, using the corresponding colors for Mrs. Peacock, Professor Plum, Mr. Green, Miss Scarlet, Colonel Mustard, and Mrs. White (from left to right).



The image above was made by my classmate, Patrick Triggs. His page was one of my favorites in the book. Rather than referring directly to the board game, his image is actually a self portrait partially covered by a larger-than-life thumbprint.



Maggie Smith created a series of tarot cards featuring the Clue characters. Instead of serving as a page in the book, they fit into two pockets inside of the book.



The cover, shown above, was made by our instructor Jennifer Manzella.

Participants: Kathryn Byrne, Matthew Cremeens, Bess Gaby, Katie Graham, Alexis Gruczkowski, Sophie Howell, Timothy McLeod, Morgan Roberts, Emily Rossell, Maggie Smith, Danielle Tobin, Colin Tom, Patrick Triggs, and myself

Flashback Friday: Book with handmade paper cover

As part of the book arts class I took in Italy, my instructor, Eileen Wallace, also taught the basics of papermaking. I made the rust-colored paper used for the cover of this book. The guards wrapping the signatures of paper are also sheets of my handmade paper, only thinner than the piece used for the cover. The brown paper used for the pages came from a little shop in Cortona and has a subtle striped pattern. I bound this book using the Italian Long Stitch, which is the same binding style used for my more recent leather book. I love how two books with the same structure can have such a different aesthetic based purely on the cover materials.

Flashback Friday: Cortona scrapbook

I made this album during my summer in Cortona, Italy and it was intended to be a scrapbook. I never ended up adding any of my photos or travel mementos to the book, probably because the book didn't turn out exactly as intended. However, I learned a lot about Japanese stab binding while making this book. For example, the sewing needle should be significantly longer than the book is thick. Seems obvious, I know, but a little foresight on this book would have saved me some headaches and frustration. And I wouldn't have needed pliers to pull the needle through while sewing.

There are a few things I do really like about this book, though. I really enjoy the natural two-tone bookcloth and I wish I would have brought some back from Italy with me. I also like the rough edges of the pages and the torn strips of brown paper that wrap around the cover. The image on the cover is part of a postcard showing one of Cortona's churches at sunset (I believe it is the Church of Santa Maria).

I decided to share this album as my Flashback Friday post for the week because I am about to be making a new series of albums. A co-worker recently asked me to make her an album for her upcoming beach vacation, and I will also be adding some albums to my Etsy shop soon.

Flashback Friday: My First Coptic

This is the first book that I bound in the Coptic style while learning the art of bookmaking in Italy. It soon became one of my favorite binding styles, and one I've focused on lately. This one is almost four years old now, but my newest Coptic books should be up on my Etsy by the end of the weekend.

Coptic binding allows for pages to lay flat when opened, and the chain stitch connecting the pages is lovely and functional. I first learned to sew Coptics with one curved needle, and later learned to sew them with multiple needles, but my current style is most similar to how I first learned. This is the most enjoyable way to bind books, I'd say.

The decorative paper used for the covers and the guards (the paper wrapped around the sections of pages) is my favorite part of this particular book. I purchased the paper at a little shop in Cortona, Italy and it well represents the style of paper found throughout the country. Although I'm usually not fond of floral prints, this one struck me. I love the bright hues mixed with the delicate gold details and the intricate patterns. Seeing prints like these makes me nostalgic for my summer in Cortona.

Flashback Friday: Modigliani concertina

Less than a month before my trip to Italy was the first time I'd ever heard of the Italian artist Amedeo Clemente Modigliani. With her usual sense of adventure at Blockbuster, my mom rented a little-known movie on a whim, and this movie introduced us both to someone who is now one of my favorite artists. And as it turned out, there was an exhibit of Modigliani's paintings on display in Rome while I was in the city. Seeing the vivid portraits in person, especially the haunting absent eyes, solidified his work in my ranking of favorites. I soaked in the experience, and was one of the last in our group to leave the gallery.

And as if this Modigliani coincidence wasn't enough, there's more to the story. Several weeks later, I was wandering through a flea market in Perugia, a city in Umbria known for its chocolate, when I found a lovely vintage book filled with images of Modigliani's work.

I was taking a book arts and papermaking class in Cortona that summer, and decided to reconstruct the book into several creations of my own. I ended up using four of the color images from my flea market find to make this double concertina book, with several smaller black and white images serving both structural and decorative purposes. The covers were made using some informative pages from the book, and a cutout of Modigliani's signature serves as the title.

This is one of my favorite books that I made during my time in Italy, for both aesthetic and sentimental reasons. It was displayed in La Mostra, an art exhibition in Cortona, as well as a show at the University of Georgia once I returned to the States.

While in Italy, I also made another Modigliani book, which I will include in a future Flashback Friday post. I still have the original covers and some of the pages from the original antique book, and perhaps I will use them to make a third book in the future.

The "flashback" series

Last weekend Tony and I traveled to South Carolina to visit my family and celebrate my grandfather's 95th birthday. I used the opportunity to photograph many of my handmade books that are still at my parents' house. I have decided to start a series called "Flashback Fridays" where I feature various books that I created years ago, many of which when I was first learning how to bind books in Cortona, Italy. Here's a sampling of a few of the books I'll showcase. Stay tuned for my first flashback post this Friday.