Spirits Under Glass ©2012, 10.75 x 8.25 x 1.25 inches. Davey board, Arches cover, acrylics, brass with heat patinas, beveled glass, 23 photos printed with archival inks, varnished. Bound with brass screw posts that have decorative brass heads soldered on. Book created to hold the
photos taken with the handmade
Zymo 127 pinhole camera in the Zymoglyphic Museum. The camera takes 127 format film, cut down from 120.
On the left: The entrance to the Underworld. Right: A Creature made entirely of bones.
In 2006, during a family "art camp," I started taking photos with
matchbox pinhole cameras. This eventually led to making
my own cameras, taking photos with them, and making books to contain the photos. Early on, while I was playing with the matchbox pinhole cameras, considering them a motivating "hobby" rather than an art project, I took some photos in one of Jim's
Zymoglyphic Museum dioramas.
These photos were so atmospheric I started trying to get Jim to make pinhole cameras and take photos. He did try some black and white film photos during one of our family "art camps." But he didn't enjoy the process. Later when I started making cameras and began to consider them as serious projects, I set up small scenes on my work table to photograph. Finally I decided to make my own Zymo cam and take the photos I thought needed to be taken in Jim's museum. That is this project, which may actually be almost completed.
Wave©2012, 3.25 x 3.75 x .75 inches Brass, copper, fabricated, rolling mill textures, heat and chemical patinas. Brass and copper book made from scraps left over from other projects. Some of these scraps have been around for 15 years or more. The binding is a series of square knots in waxed linen cord going through tube rivets. I did create three stars for this book, everything else is found. Chemical patina and heat patinas were added where needed. All parts were waxed as the book was assembled.
While making Spirits Under Glass I began to admire all the left over pieces of brass that piled up on my bench. I even had some rectangular pieces of brass that could be used as pages.
Making a book with things riveted to the pages can be tricky. The rivets show through on the other side of the page. One solution is to make the pages individually, as I did in Seeing Fish. The stars on the corners of the pages hold two pieces of formica back to back. Another solution is to try to arrange things on one page to be back-to-back with things on the next page, which of course limits compositional possibilities. In Wave I decided to just wing it. I tried to color the rivets so they wouldn't be too apparent, but the hammering that forms the rivet head makes the metal hard, shiny, and hard to disguise.
The rivets holding the parts to the pages were made with ear posts, darkened with a torch before assembling the page. I also made tube rivets for the three binding stations. I prefer to make my own rivets, rather than buying things that have to be assembled with some kind of device. For larger rivets I just use 18 gauge brass or copper wire, forming the heads as needed.
There are larger images and two more interior views here. A previous post shows the parts I still have after making wave.
This was my Dad's. At this point I don't know how much information in here is useful, but it's been an inspiration for my artist's books for years. You can see by the white paint splatters on the cover that it has been lying around on my work table a lot.
Isn't it amazing what casual exposure from our childhoods can do? I love the dials and interactive quality of this little book.
You can see more pages in my flickr set, 