A medieval Show and Tell session

Sandie Gent's colourful, tattoo-inspired 'What's your Story?'

Sarah Jarrett-Kerr's exquisitely bound girdle book 'Sammy the Seal goes to the Library'

Kate Bernstein's informative screenprinted book 'Love and Toothache, 2017'

Linda Parr used an intriguing folded structure for her book 'Pilgrim Passport'

A really fun Show and Tell session for the 'Redesigning the Medieval Book' exhibition at UWE Bower Ashton last Saturday. Twelve participating book artists came along to talk about the inspiration and production processes behind their book. It was also an opportunity to see the books up close and to handle them – always a treat. Still amazed by the diversity of responses to the same brief, and it was so interesting to meet other artists who have been inspired by the same subject matter. Many thanks to everyone who came along, especially Professor Daniel Wakelin who came over from Oxford to join us. Photos by Sarah Bodman, who also helped to organise the session… I'm very grateful to her and the library at Bower Ashton for offering the opportunity for this exhibition to take shape.

BOOK ISH NESS

World Book Night is here again (23 April) and this year's collaborative project organised by Sarah Bodman at UWE is all about the Loch Ness Monster. A field trip in March and contributions from artists all over the world has resulted in a wonderful publication produced by Sarah called BOOKISHNESS. It contains photos of 'sightings' of the monster and some wonderful book covers designed on this theme. A copy of the publication was sent to each contributor, the remaining 40 copies are available to purchase at £5 each including postage, email Sarah for details at: Sarah.Bodman@uwe.ac.uk. As always, it was really fun to be involved, and I'm thrilled to see my photo-bombing Nessie in print!

Belated BABE wrap up

I had a quick dash round before opening on the Sunday and bought a small stash of bookish treasures.

The Bristol Artist's Book Event (BABE) at the Arnolfini in Bristol on 1/2 April was an amazing weekend. Beautiful sunny weather certainly brought the crowds out, and there was barely a quiet moment for the whole two days. It was fantastic to meet so many people interested in artists' books and to spend a blissful weekend talking about books and printmaking (instead of Trump and other depressing political nonsense). I'd almost lost my voice by the saturday evening… talking that much is unusual for a hermit like me. Lots of sales and positive feedback, and a strengthened resolve to continue making more books. Just two years to prepare for the next one...

Forest

The first set of 'Forest' double concertina books have sold like hot cakes, so I've made up a new batch. Available now in the shop...

Forest

Trial and error with stencils and stamps

Small-scale mock-up to work out pagination when setting up the artwork 

A re-working of a one-off book of rubber stamp stencil illustrations I made a couple of years ago. I deconstructed the original book and scanned each page before enlarging the layout and getting it digitally printed as flat A2 sheets (by the excellent printed.com). I created new stamp-stencil artwork for the title bellyband. The format is a double concertina, which took a bit of head scratching to get the pagination correct. But it’s a very pleasing, solid structure once assembled. Scalpel at the ready to cut down and make up the first ten...

Leaf Labels

Leaves printed in yellow and blue neon ink, labels printed in midnight blue

Work in progress

Endpapers printed with photopolymer stamp made from a hand drawn leaf pattern

Five finished copies 

A new book – cataloguing of the names of different leaf shapes. I used the rubber stamps I carved for my first book ‘Autumn Leaves – A Pocket Guide’ but printed them with my new neon inks. Printing the blue on top of the yellow makes a good bold green, with the added bonus of extra colours when slightly mis-registered. The colour prints well on the heavy Somerset velvet paper. The labels are photopolymer stamps I made, and printed in midnight blue. Endpapers are also a photopolymer stamp I created from hand drawn leaf pattern. The neon yellow ink prints really well on bright blue paper… makes your eyes jump. Cloth covered boards for the cover with a book cloth label and pamphlet stitching. To be added to the shop very soon...