Lots of Folding

I spent a lot of this week folding paper. I folded squares for the piece I am working on for the decade-themed exhibition.

There are 120 squares in the box. Not all of them will be used in the finished piece, but it’s easier to cut enough paper to make extra parts at the beginning than to try to reset the cutter to exactly the same size several weeks later after you have wrecked a couple of parts!

As a reminder, the piece will be built like this:

Each square is made by folding the points of a larger square in to meet in the middle. I didn’t want to fold the squares crosswise to establish that midpoint, so I made a template.

I scanned some textiles and will print pages of them to create colour and pattern on central panels and joining units.

Worn denim:

Embroidered repair:

The embroidery was done in the 1960s and I never had the heart to throw out the hours of work. For a while it was framed and hanging on our wall. Perhaps after this re-use I can let it go!

Silk neckerchief (David’s) from the 1960s:

I also downloaded an image of my favourite painting —La Tour Eiffel by Marc Chagall— in The National Gallery of Canada. (When I was an art student in Ottawa I used to visit it regularly. No on-screen image can do it justice.)

Selected parts of the painting will also be printed out and used in the piece.

I folded the main page parts for the zinnia book: 24 squares with corners folded into middle, 24 rectangles folded into squares. (Four spares of each type.) I will leave these with Monique Martin for silk-screening while I am away in England for a month.

Don’t panic: I have already scheduled Friday Night Flicks for the time I am away and, in case I don’t get to post on Sundays, there will be four little book projects for you to make while I am visiting museums or walking up mountains. Stay tuned!  ; ]

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In other book arts news:

If you haven’t already heard about The Art of the Fold (release date October 2018) you must have been in a coma or living on a desert island. In case you did somehow manage to  miss the news of Hedi Kyle’s book (co-authored by her daughter Ulla Warchol), you can find purchasing information here.

You can read Alisa Golden’s review of the book —and see models of some of the new structures included— here.

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There’s an article on Letterform Archive’s blog which may be of interest to those of you with a passion for lettering and unusual typography.

I particularly liked the work of Oliver Jeffers and Sam Winston in A Child of Books. The children are escaping down a rope made from a line from Rapunzel from a monster made from quotations from Dracula and Frankenstein.

You can read the full article here.

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In garden news:

It was carrot harvesting week. When I went into the kitchen for a drink of water on Friday morning, I found that David had left me a seasonally appropriate valentine.