Hi Gang,

Sorry I didn't get an entry posted yesterday. The day just got away from me - as so many do!

I've been working on my first accordion book. The assignment for our
first Exploratory group was to make something new and I've never
made one of these books before. I also had to do something for my
advanced design class. It was a challenge and had to include the color
brown, a polygon shape, raw edge applique and show the emotion of
sorrow. So I killed two birds with one stone. It was quite a challenge to make something show
sorrow. So I chose to use the subject of slavery and called the piece
"Slavery, the black man's sorrow". It's very dark, with depressing
imagery.


I used collage and book making techniques for the pieces four pages.
Before I started, I perused these two new books we have in the store, for help on technique as well as some good visual inspiration.

Mixed Media Collage, by Holly Harrison is subtitled "An exploration of Contemporary Artists, Methods and Materials. I am most impressed by the artwork shown by artist, Sharon Mc Cartney who uses a mixed media approach with fabric, paper, fibers, stitch, image transfers and acrylic paints. Her work looks like bits of nature. The book features five artists, their work and methodology, along with an amazing gallery.

The second book, Fabric Art Journals by Pam Sussman teaches all the basic book assembling techniques along with some wonderful information on the artistic side of designing and creating books. I never thought I would want to make a book, but the experience so far has been very satisfying and I'm looking forward to doing more of this style of art making.

Until next time,
Happy creating,
Heather