Category Archives: Artist’s Books

Learn­ing about Book Bind­ing from Lisa Beth Robinson

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Ah, my minions... this day finds your concern for my artistic well-being both touching and unnecessary. You see, dear ones, I've been immersing myself in a new form of expression -- Book Making! The Pocosin Arts Craft Center in Columbia, NC hosts a marvelous 4 day event each year - The Cabin Fever Reliever. This year, their eleventh, brought ECU's finest to teach us amazing techniques. No less than Bob Ebendorf taught jewelry making with found objects, and for me, it was all about Books with Lisa Beth Robinson, also of ECU origins as of late. Having never considered or studied bookbinding or any related proclivity, the time spent in the bookbinding area proved informative AND FUN. Lisa Beth's personality, her ebullient character and cheerful demeanor, added much to the workshop. She's such a caring, accepting young woman -- a true joy to behold. ... read more

Artists Books Made From Real Books

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Cur­rently speak­ing, the obses­sion of this Assem­blag­ist is to fold books. Paper­backs, 1950s Reader’s Digests, NC geog­ra­phy text­books from 1930s but of course you already know that if you read my blog. The dif­fi­cult part of the process lies in con­struct­ing the cov­ers for the books. I make the cov­ers from all man­ner of items. The Cen­ter for Book Arts is a good open­ing move for you if you want to see how books are made.

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fluxus artist’s books — a folded ret­ro­spec­tive shake­speare to salinger

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Over 200 books folded and fab­u­lous. Found a copy of Joe McGin­niss “The Sell­ing of the Pres­i­dent” in paper­back — on my shelf from a U of A class in 1973, required read­ing and it MUST BE USED, will begin flux­ing the book today. *This post writ­ten just after Sarah Palin went apeshit over McGin­niss liv­ing next door to her Mozilla Home. The post here talks about fold­ing books also. Con­tinue read­ing →

The TrAV­el­iNG FluX mUSEum Progress Notes

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Inter­na­tional Flux­hi­bi­tion #4 is online and might I say, Cecil Tou­chon has done quite an amaz­ing job. While a for­mal intro­duc­tion (shak­ing of hands and how-are-you?s) does not yet exist between us, the use of “Mr. Tou­chon” seems a bit for­mal here so I shall assume we are now on a first name basis. There’s a new Flux Case project and we Flux­ers have our ephemera all in a wad over it. I’m think­ing some stere­op­ti­can slides, sliced pre­cisely to fit, might have to be part of my offer­ing to the project. I have quite a num­ber of the slides and noth­ing is more flux than blend­ing two pic­tures into one three-​dimensional image — am I right or what!? Con­tinue read­ing →

What to do when you can’t find the right tool for the job

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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.

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Flux­Tubes and match­book artist books

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I’m cur­rently involved in quite the project.

My goal is 200 artist’s books (see pre­vi­ous posts) but rather than enclose the books in some type of box­like con­trap­tion of my own choos­ing, I’m going to give them all away. I have large, heavy card­board tubes (given to me by local freestyle site par­tic­i­pant) that are 2 – 4 feet in length and 3 – 6 inches in diam­e­ter. These flux­tubes will dis­pense the match­book artist books, sim­i­lar to a pub­lic restroom con­dom dis­penser. Gross anal­ogy. Per­haps “sim­i­lar to a tam­pon dis­penser” or … pick your image.

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Artist’s Books

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Have com­pleted 12 artist’s books. My goal is to keep mak­ing them until I run out of mate­ri­als — in other words — for­ever. The books thus far are cre­ated from:
Dante. a Geography/​History text­book 1939. Col­lege trigonom­e­try text­book. Col­lege math­e­mat­ics text­book. 1964 McCall’s mag­a­zine. 1968 1001 Inte­rior Design magazine.

In the early 1970s the artist’s book began to be rec­og­nized as a dis­tinct genre, and with this recog­ni­tion came the begin­nings of crit­i­cal appre­ci­a­tion of and debate on the subject.

I have to do more research. Since I live in a cul­tural vac­uum, with input from inter­net and tv and magazines/​books, it sur­prises when I dis­cover my out­sider art is com­ing indoors. Like the JAB.

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