Although I am about one quarter Irish, Saint Patrick’s Day was never a big deal in our household. My father once made green shamrock-shaped pancakes when St. Paddy’s Day fell on a Sunday, but that is the only time I recall anything special being done to mark the occasion. It was celebrated more at school, especially in art class. When I lived in Montréal, I was aware of what a big deal the annual parade was for many people. (There was definitely an air of “everyone’s a little bit Irish” about the occasion.)
For those who would like to make something inspired by the day I have designed a little folded bookmark with a lucky four-leaved shamrock on it.
You can download the pdf here. It comes with a fold pattern and seven copies of the bookmark pattern. Lightweight copier paper is fine for this project since you want a thin paper that takes a crisp fold.
Cut out a bookmark. You need to cut just inside the line at the upper edge and right on the rest of the outline. Lay your strip horizontally, printed side up, and fold the right end over to the left. The tip of the right end should match the upper corner of the left end as shown in the image below.
Open your strip flat and flip it vertically.
Fold both ends down, using the vertical crease of the first fold as a guide.
Flip your paper horizontally.
Fold the shorter ‘leg’ on the left up and across to the right.
Open flat.
Fold the right hand leg up and across to the left.
Open flat.
Fold the left leg across again, and fold the right leg over it.
Fold the tip at the left up so that the point meets the top of your folded square.
Tuck the tip up into the horizontal slit in the middle.
Your bookmark is complete. The slit in the front can be popped open and you could insert a secret message here. (Your recipient might or might not find it!)
To use the bookmark, slide the corner of a page into the upper pocket on the back.
You can make this bookmark from any strip of paper using the fold pattern as a template.
In other book arts news:
The widely used Pantone Colour Matching System was developed in the 1950s by Lawrence Herbert, but he was not the first to try and standardize a way of establishing colour consistency across media.
Before publishing his Atlas in 1915, painter and art teacher Albert Henry Munsell (1858–1918) had spent decades seeking to compress the totality of human color experience into a simple and elegant three-dimensional graphical model. In 1879, after reading physicist Ogden Rood’s Modern Chromatics, he devised a pair of twirling triangular color pyramids joined at the base. In 1898, he painted a child’s globe in subtly shifting shades, only to find that the globe’s perfect symmetry could not sufficiently map the differences in strength — which he called “chroma” — between colors or “hues”. By 1905, in his A Color Notation, Munsell had moved to a tree as model, since its unequal length branches could accommodate different hues, chroma, and “value”, the third axis of his system, which ran vertically from the pure white crown of the tree to its pure black roots.
Read more about Munsell’s system and his 1915 Atlas of the Munsell Color System here.
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Stephen Heller recently spent a week in Rome, and accidentally discovered the work of Italian graphic designer Anita Klinz. You can read his article and see more of her groundbreaking work here.
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From Wikipedia:
A skeuomorph (also spelled skiamorph, /ˈskjuːəˌmɔːrf, ˈskjuːoʊ-/) is a derivative object that retains ornamental design cues (attributes) from structures that were necessary in the original. Skeuomorphs are typically used to make something new feel familiar in an effort to speed understanding and acclimation. They employ elements that, while essential to the original object, serve no pragmatic purpose in the new system. Examples include pottery embellished with imitation rivets reminiscent of similar pots made of metal and a software calendar that imitates the appearance of binding on a paper desk calendar.
Steven Watson’s article Skeuomorphic Magazine Design Turns Print Into Play takes a look at publications that look like things not usually associated with print media. Find the full article here. (Skeuomorphic design will not be a new concept for the book artists among my readers.)
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As some of you are aware, I have been playing with collage recently. I came across this Call for Entries while looking at other people’s work on the web. The full call is repeated below.
OPEN CALL for Submissions
Trashed – Art as Diversion
Canadian artists are asked to submit to a collaborative installation that will collectively be known as ‘Put a Lid on It’ and will be shown as part of a larger show called ‘Trashed – Art as Diversion’.
To put the lid on it, is to put a stop to something. Using metal bottle lids as a substrate, artists are asked to create collages or assemblages that look at putting a stop to waste, consumerism, climate change or any other themes they would like to tackle in which the main idea is to put a stop to something.
The substrate, a metal bottle lid, is an object that most artists should have access to. The lid should be used with the flat top of the lid at the back of the work, and the collage or assemblage should be placed within the edges of the lid. The idea is to hang them using putty to reduce the need for many holes in the gallery wall, however, a metal d-ring or similar should be affixed to the back of the lid to allow buyers to hang them easily. Please ensure all lids are clean and sanitized.
Lids will be sold for $25 each, no matter the size, with the artist receiving $20 for each lid sold. Artists are asked to submit a maximum of 5 lids to allow for more artists to participate. Shipping to the gallery is the responsibility of the artist, and the gallery will return any unsold lids to to the artists within 2 weeks of closing.
Please send .jpg submissions or questions to cutsandpastegallery@gmail.com and further instructions will be given.
Submissions will be accepted no later than April 01, midnight. Invited artists will be notified by April 8th.
In other news:
We have seen a lot of deer this week. Here is a photo David took of two that I spotted from my studio window. (They disappeared shortly after the photo was taken.)
Byopia Press 