I am stymied in my 200 artist book man­u­fac­ture. The first 35 went quickly into pro­duc­tion and I uti­lized E6000 glue to cre­ate the spine. E6000 will secure a live chicken to the bumper of a Volvo. But now the book cov­ers will be com­prised of match­book cov­ers and I need small, ever so tiny, sta­ples to secure the spines. Sta­pled Spines. Sounds like a punk rock group, doesn’t it? Or like my per­sonal spine, lumbar-​fused with pedi­cle screws. For me, find­ing the right tool for the job requires more than sim­ply secur­ing the appro­pri­ate mechan­i­cal device. Severe degen­er­a­tive arthri­tis of the osteo vari­ety, lim­its my mobil­ity, espe­cially in the hands. I have no grip, no thumb strength and, to make mat­ters worse, I can’t push down on any­thing — torn rota­tor cuffs.

It takes some cre­ative restruc­tur­ing of devices to achieve per­fec­tion. This is why I have such a love of all things “glue”. (yes, I know, I began this con­ver­sa­tion with the need of a sta­pler, but that is a quick fix, a mere series of annoy­ing events since it involves 1. shower 2. dress­ing 3. secur­ing dogs 4. trip to Office Depot) The truth is, Epoxy rules my fix­a­tion attempts these days. Then, I glue (yes, not nail or screw) a faux attach­ment pedicle-​like appendage. Mean­ing — I pop the rusted heads off nails and screws and glue them onto the piece, thus achiev­ing a faux-​hardware look. This is what arthri­tis does, it forces me to find new meth­ods for art. How to work my way around tra­di­tional meth­ods while all the while seem­ing to employ tra­di­tional meth­ods. The faux of faux, the folly of faux.

There is a lovely 2 lb. cof­fee can filled with rusted hard­ware on my back porch.

Oh wait, back to the con­cept of sta­ples, 210 artist’s books, the meat of this post.

I have de-​fused dozens of large match­book cov­ers and then inserted lined paper to be sta­pled where the sul­phurous masses once existed. If I owned a gallery or could dis­play my work freely to you, the viewer online at this moment, you would behold a clear plas­tic bag filled with matches, not cov­ered, naked rows of flame good­ness… I digress. The point is, these artists book cov­ers are cre­ated with vin­tage match­books, the pre­vi­ous books sported indi­vid­ual cov­ers cre­ated from a vari­ety of sources such as cereal boxes, fly­leaves from old books, cat­a­log cov­ers and more. Can you fol­low my train of thought? Do you get my drip? What’s it all about, Mr. Nat­ural? Well, it’s about this long. And it’s about this wide. And it’s about this land we’re talk­ing about. *points for rec­og­niz­ing that one.
Books uti­lized thus far in the artist’s book cre­ation process, as in, sin­gle pages folded and cut to form 8 pages:

1982 Epis­co­pal hym­nal
1930 Third Grade math book
1919 Lit­er­ary Digest mag­a­zine
Ikea cat­a­log
Dante’s Divine Com­edy
Mac­Beth
1950s-​era geog­ra­phy book (6^th grade)
1964 Ladies Home Jour­nal mag­a­zines
Reader’s Digest com­pendium of national parks guide­book
Note­book writ­ten by Eve­lyn — for her book­club circa 1960s
Inte­rior design mag­a­zines circa 1950-​60s
The Water­gate Tapes paper­back of Nixon excess (com­bines well with Dante)
Trigonom­e­try and Alge­bra books from Barnes & Nobles press

Wow! That’s not all. I truly have been busy. Per­haps obsessed? Ya’ think?

Time to pre­pare for a quick foray out into the com­mer­cial world of the Lesser Ass of the Great Dis­mal Swamp.

c