Practice Makes Perpetual Motion

      

     I made this journal for one of a very few people I know who keep track. Memory is difficult... 
    I began keeping a daily log of one liners, but it's only a slight hint.
    Anyway, this is a repurposed elementary school "practice book". The book block (above) is coptic bound, and glued to the covers by the end pages at the beginning and end of the block. The covers are joined by more of the repurposed purse leather. The leather is concealed between the back of the front cover and first end page, and comes around the back cover. The spine has a spot to index the book. 

"The instant of petrified violence that sometimes foreruns a summer storm saturated the hushed yard." -T. Capote

for a friend who understands the petrified violences in the yard before the storm, and the other kinds.

Deconstructing Truths

I'm trying to stay current, and it isn't easy.

The era of the love letter gave way to this: a tip not a throw...back
Anticipate the absence of show; a hidden timing that is not private
Turpid and Teflon, the language of intimacy is also a crime without reprehension.

The Dress Maker's Book

   the dress and the form

              the form lends itself

              inanimate in desire

                allows the other

Field Guides to Acquainting with Living Things

     much like the source for their origin, these field guides have room to go in 

their arching concept of what is perception and sequentiality. mostly blank, 

the person who inherits them will have space for personal documentation with 

slight interruption of imagery; return to the scene of the crime of the things I 

left behind, and give them the purpose I didn't have the heart to. 

          

           

in the library of human dynamics

these books house my artist statements for my library of human dynamics, immutable show

If each of us is a book, our pages are perforated and magnetic and could be blank for all their ephemeral accuracy. Though we are sequential beings, our narratives are not linear. Memory is written on holographic stationary, recounting an ambience of history, physics, and expectation. We agree to coalesce by using every day and ordinary expressions, identifying patterns, telling time, and working around the weather. But the blindingly beautiful weight of our potential is hidden in the archives of our library of human dynamics. The truth is immutably infinite, and we function as reflective tricks of this light. I expect to spend my entire life growing acquainted to living things.

in the library of human dynamics

getting acquainted with living things

These books are abandoned homes, once inhabited by memories. They are layered with mirages, text taken away from the original page, menageries left to howl at each other when the covers meet to close. 


Adaptation is a negotiation between two options; a binary decision of nature, leaving us with very little say in the matter.  Herbert Spencer called Charles Darwin's natural selection, survival of the fittest, perhaps prescribes too much meaning to a thing that has only recently acquired the ability to decide. Many people survive, without so desiring. We are struggling... between our realizations of the decisions we arbitrarily make, and being propelled forth by the ones we don't.
Getting Acquainted With Living Things is a system of order for my experience in these matters. The narrative is a tree, and any given interpretation is a branch.
In the book, each chapter starts with a stark page. The transitions may be neither mild, nor clear. For me, distinction is fading. And while we are more valuable through experience, we are no longer young, nor have as much time to experience.  Youth is wasted on the young?  It's not even trite. It's a semblance of a kind of local familiarity repeated over and over again, a little aligned, a little unspecific.
Order is human attribute to what's happening. And narrative and storytelling, which has always been mine, is slipping away.

Using Every Part of the Animal

This is an old photo album I found at the Reninger Extravganza flea
market, and then gutted.

These are the guts from the album, used to frame a few
things around my room.

Rolls of paper for the new album book block

Book block cut and clamped, ready for binding

Binding materials: white corrugated linen thread, curved needle,
beeswax. Binding using coptic stitch

Book block binding complete

Book block ready to be glued into gutted cover, and completed

Completed album with end pages as the finishing touches

Light and Shade: The Sun Shifted and We Are Staid

Dear Geography,

I traversed the places where I have no desire to spend any time

To find that the things I don't want are relics buried in our common ground

Yes, I am avoiding you.

This is a book on which I tried a new idea for binding. I kept the spine of the altered book in tact, along with its first and last pages. I treated the first and last pages as an accordion, and the valleys of the accordions as the spine of the "book blocks". The book blocks are just single pages or pages folded in half, then glued with Yasatomo Nori paste to the valleys of the accordion. The book is supposed to act as a collage/scrap book forum. The problem with the binding is that the accordion doesn't keep tension on the pages and they slide and don't stay in a tight order, the way coptic stitch naturally does. I don't think I will be using the binding method ever again, but I think the mood of the book is pleasant, nostalgic, and leaves room for addition in a positive way.

An Essay to Disguise Giving Up

There are the mistakes we make after trying very hard without success, and the ones we make and attribute to divine intervention, for their favorable outcome. But I am interested in the tangibility of intention- the end we can attribute to ourselves, our perception, our experience, or our next step.

I feel temporary, the impulse of time's momentum relative to my actions, like I'm sifting through peanut butter, my thoughts fall like concrete from my ear to break my foot, the opposite of amnesia.

I recognize myself as an animal, most, in my impulses. And I think trying things over and over to eliminate mistakes is an evolution we can benefit from in our lifetime. So I am in love with momentum, and feel like a caged animal when I come to an unfamiliar point and don't know which way to go. I am learning the graceful way of going back the way I came, or leaving the path altogether. Some may call it quitting. But we are too temporary to attribute meaning to all of our mistakes. Sometimes patience prevails. Sometimes things are plain wrong. I am learning when to stop, abandon ship, give up, or quit in whatever connotation the situation requires. The truth is, leaving is movement.

Here is one thing I decided just won't work, for now.:

It was going to be a comprehensive catalogue of all the techniques I learned in my undergrad.

I was pretty far along in documenting the process, and close to finishing this task.

It's made from an old music techniques book, some of the record books that have pockets in which to hold the records, davey board, and fabric. I planned on finishing the

cover with an image transfer of the altered cover with my name, new title and content in place of the old technique book's title, and content.

I will return to this project, with a strong foundation for format, and a better understanding of durability in construction. I am really interested in categorizing information in the most efficient, usable form. For now, though, I am in Australia, working on a smaller scale, with ideas I can hold in my hands, while my mind takes in everything else.

Before It Is Bound: The Progress and Many Layers of the Baby Book

It started with an image for an invitation, turned into a collage, and an attempt at screen-printing...

The baby shower was fun, but my lack of organization as far as theme and lesson plan didn't turn out any prints.




In the process of learning image transfer methods, I decided to use my research and experiments, (in the vein of science), as the backdrops to the story. I started with one experimental page, and when it worked, went on to do the rest all at once.
I layered in the same manner. One experiment page, then the rest all at once. The transfers were made in the same fashion as the planner post, but there are three layers. All made on fabric, the first layer is an environment, and the transfer is made with gesso. The next two layers, starting with an animal, ending with a plant(hybrid/collage from A Flower Book For the Pocket and flowers from a children's gardening book), both made with Gel Gloss Medium (as pictured in the planner post). And a final layer of gel gloss medium to seal the page.


The final pieces to the book production were the cover and the text. I worked on the cover in and out of making transfers. The shell for the cover comes from a magical book I found a few years ago in Asheville, North Carolina, and held onto. I think I always pictured it for a child, because of its whimsy, but it had to contain a story, and the story had to correlate with the cover, without trying too hard.


The title and spine letters are partly from the insides of the original book and the rest of the letters from a typewriter. The title (Organisms in Their Environments) is inspired by an evolutionist, Richard Lewontin, who Richard Dawkins quotes in his book The God Delusion. In turn, I quote him, coming to many conclusions for myself, and hopefully giving some insight, open to much interpretation, by any individual who comes across it. Broadly, it comes to mean where you are when you read it. In the right place, at the right time, we are receptive to the most magic, with the most meaning.

On the final day, I sat down with the cover and pages, to write the text. The story is for August William Doe, as my advice on existing, inspired by the books I've recently read, and my own experience in being.

meetings as memory and snow flakes

I played games as a child, where I was moving without touching the ground. We drove around in cars made from the tops of gift boxes, and we built bridges from books so that we could cross the hot lava without losing a limb. I don't know how we rationalized what 'counted' as safe ground, and what didn't. I just know that there was always a we, because these games were not fun without one, and you can't decide what really 'counts' without one. The rules seem permanent when there's a consensus.
I have just been thinking about staying in touch, and the impossibility of truly remaining there. People are splinters, aside from the words we use, and the sentimentality we prescribe to every person we make love to, or eat lunch with.
So here is to a good first impression, repeated like pi, or ground hog's day, to time spent reborn as memory, and to our mind's arbitrary reflexes:




"How many of these exquisitely constructed jewels do we heedlessly crush and shatter unconsciously during a brief walk in the snow and how crude and imperfect seem the productions of human minds and hands when compared to those formed by the blind forces of nature."
-Jean M. Thompson

The Compound Umbel Looks Like a Leaky Umbrella

When the stalks all arise at the same level, the inflorescence is an umbel. An umbel is compound when it is repeatedly branched.

This book is coptic bound, and approximately 4x5". It's a blank book, inside, and was altered from less than one cover of a reader's digest book, some packing materials for a multi-tool, tracing paper, plant diagrams, and stamped text. Happy Birthday to Melinda, a bit late.

Adaptations of Birds: On Winged Things and Others in the Sky

I am disappointed in the quality of these, the only photos I have, of this book. I was meeting a deadline of sorts, and sacrificed documentation for detail. Left is before, right is after. The inside pages are collages, paintings, and blank pages paying homage to the beautiful things in the sky. I'm happy that my work is taking direction again. I moved across the country, and for the time before, and a little after the move, I was all over the place. This book took shape in a way that I am familiar with, but found me desiring cohesion apart from the context of the owner. Most of my books are gifts, and some of them turn into a more personal documentation of my relationship with the owner.
The inside pages are mostly new to the book, coptic bound, and glued by end pages to the cover. The folios consist of pages from the original book, tracing paper, gouache paintings of walking patterns of birds, pictures from old books, and so on. The cover is altered by an octagonal recess, covered with green graph paper, with a layer of tracing paper on top. On the underside of the tracing paper are penciled diagrams of war planes, and on the upperside is the stamped text of the title.

"The mind is an open cavity in which the entire village dwells, and the jungle grows"

(from Bonfire of the Vanities, by Tom Wolfe) (A piece from an old laundry bag as the spine; an old book, coptic bound, again)
to: kimo based on the music stand of Evelyn Foust

"Each person is a transitory composite of materials borrowed from the environment." I hope that he will look at this book, and not be disappointed that I cut up some important relics, to create a new one.