Book du jour - return to the blue distance

It's been a while, getting back to making books. After reading "Why handwriting matters" in the newspaper on Sunday, I started yearning for my blue distance ... and rewrote another copy of "Something is always far away".

Once one side of the tracing paper is written, the writing on the back suddenly brings it into the realm of blueness -

 And when several pages are written on both sides, the blue deepens -

The pen used for this was bought from a limited selection, and is somewhat on the sky-blue side; I prefer a pen that has a bit of an indigo cast to it.

Art I like - Jessica Turrell

Etching and enamel combine in some of jeweller Jessica Turrell's work. "Only words remain" caught my eye

and "Rememberings" are wall pieces in the same vein

consisting of layers of marks referencing handwriting, sometimes commenting on  the desires and motivations of the jewellery wearer - the desire to be noticed, to be admired, or to belong, for example.

Smaller jewellery - a scribble series, a script series, hollow forms, a winter series - can be seen on her website.

Reading Chillida

Eduardo Chillida is one of my favourite sculptors and I was pleased to find this book of his writings in the college library (though it's hard to photograph the printed-acetate cover) - 

One section has facsimiles of manuscript pages, translated -

"Beyond and behind knowledge there is a language", he wrote, and also:

Each work a step between the known and the neglected.

I know the work before I make it, but I do not know what it will be like, nor do I want to. I know its aroma.

The work dies when it is finished because until then it has had a continuous life and has been in a process of transformation.

If you believe you are done, you run the risk of eluding a process.

Almost everything can be resolved by taking away.

   As you do not subtract

   you are finished

   As you do not erase

   you are finished

Handwriting on fabric

Head over to Deborah Boschert's blog for a tutorial on handwriting on fabric. She gives the practicalities (use plain fabric, back it to stiffen it, keep the writing at the same scale, exaggerate certain elements). Her writing isn't meant to be read, just to be another fabric print.

For me the exciting thing was that often she writes about the ideas and themes in the quilt that the fabric is intended for. What a good way to put some "intention" into a quilt, up front! Or what you find yourself writing on the fabric could be a starting point if you've found other fabric you want to use and are fishing around for an idea of how to develop the design. When it's cut up, the handwritten fabric won't reveal your deepest secrets, but doing the writing will free your mind and clarify your purpose.

"Grow Illuminated" (from Deborah's website) shows how she uses handwritten fabric in the background.

Art I like - Annie Vought

Annie Vought's work uses not just handwriting, but papercut handwriting - re-created correspondence, enlarged and then cut out. She says: "Handwritten records are fragments of individual histories. In the penmanship, word choice, and spelling the author is often revealed in spite of him/herself. A letter is physical confirmation of who we were at the moment it was written, or all we have left of a person or a time. ... In these paper cutouts, I focus on the text, structure, and emotion of the letter in an elaborate investigation into the properties of writing and expression. Penmanship, word choice, and spelling all contribute to possible narratives about who that person is and what they are like."

When displayed, the shadows of the letters add physical and metaphysical dimension to the work -

The piece above measures 55" x 59" - about 1.5m square. Much more can be seen on her website (where these images are borrowed from.)

For her solo show in LA last year she presented text messages translated from that ephemeral, instantaneous medium into the painstaking, durable cut-paper format. Translating digital to analog.

Handwriting

Our handwriting changes throughout our life, but how much change is consciously possible? 

Starting with my ordinary writing, I pretended I was back in grade school learning "Macleans Method" of joined-up writing. It was invented (if that's the right word) in Victoria, BC, in 1921 and used right across Canada till at least the sixties.

(What a blast from the past that illustration is! Just look at the spring on the first stroke!) Peggy in my third grade class had beautiful writing with strong down-strokes, but I found that channelling Peggy made my arm ache and was damaging the pen nib, so I tried relaxing into the True Spirit of Macleans - fluidity and boringness - which helped make the line spacing more spacious. But it is simply toooo joined-up for comfort - going back to the beginning of a long word to dot the I is tedious! So much faster to write when judicious breaks are used... and thus our individual handwriting evolves.

Do tall ascenders signify spirituality and lofty ideals in the personality of the writer? Do long descenders signify action and physicality? What about the O with the extra loop - sign of flightyness - or has that been taken over by the [horror of horrors] smiley-face dotting the I?