Grand Tour

A couple of weeks ago I took part in the Counter Plymouth Artists' Book Fair.  Needless to say the days leading up to it were a scramble of activity putting together some new books.   In particular I was pleased to finally realise a book I had planned and printed during my MA, but which had turned into a set of prints for the final show.  Having located the leftover printing, and the tickets that were the catalyst, the result is a set of books called Grand Tour - so far France and Germany are complete, England is on the way, and Italy is awaiting a donation of used train tickets from that country....if anyone has some tucked away.

As usual, to achieve a simple yet satisfying end result a lot of calculations were needed on the obligatory scrap of paper.  And the best bit of the whole process?  Getting to use the ex-GPO stamp to number the edition - thanks Jenny!

2 small books

To get making momentum going again I recently completed 2 small books that have been in the back of my mind for a long time.  Both have originated from pre-printed materials.

The first was as a result of receiving some beautiful seed packets - thank you Mr Fowler!  They were so good just as they were I wavered for a long time considering how best to utilise them in a book, but finally their intrinsic packet qualities won out and I decided to keep them in their intended form and play around with words instead.

The finished book is a collection of 4 seed packets tied roughly with garden string.  Each is rubber stamped with the details of a different seed type: Hope, Despair, Change and Success, including when to harvest and what to plant with.

Seeds

Rubber stamp printing onto paper seed packets, bound with garden string 

70 x 100mm

edition of 5

£8

The second book is a follow up to a book I made last year A Series of Small Admissions.  As time has passed I have considered the pile of unused tickets and kept a note of fleeting thoughts and realisations that fitted the criteria for this concept 'A concertina book of tickets, each revealing a small personal admission on the reverse, in proportion with the scale and transient nature of the ticket'.  The hardest thing has been not to include or admit to anything too big!

A Second Series of Small Admissions

Rubber stamp printing onto paper tickets with card end covers 

53 x 34mm

edition of 25

£4

Both of these new titles will be available at Plymouth Artists' Book Fair, or by contacting me (email address on side menu).

Autumn dates

A summer of planning and making and reflecting is leading up to an Autumn programme of artists' book fairs.  Once again I will collaborating on these with Pet Galerie Press.


On Saturday 15th September we will be at the inaugural Plymouth Artist's Book Fair, being held as a part of Plymouth International Book Festival at Plymouth University.

October sees us in Manchester, where Hot Bed Press have expanded the event to cover Fri 12th and Sat 13th, and including a morning of artist-led presentations and discussions.  We are presenting work at this event under the umbrella of LEN, so all my work will have some element of letterpress.

And in November we will once again be attending the Small Publishers Fair at Conway Hall in London with Impact Press.