During a recent trip to our local antique mall, a pair of vintage ladie's gloves accompanied me to the check out. Although they were much too small for my large hands, I knew at once they would find a place on the cover of a book. The soft white leather was worn in distinctive creases as a woman's hands were protected decades ago. These gloves had been well used and I wondered about the person who had carried them in her pocket and slipped them on casually over and over again. The gloves now hold a book for an artist to use. Pages are made of thick papers for mixed media or watercolor and the book should be a delight to fill.
The gloves are stitched directly to the covers of an antique book with white waxed linen. The spine of the book has been replaced with reinforced vintage cloth and pages are attached with harlequin binding. There are 4 signatures of 10 pages hand torn from artist quality papers.
October arrives bringing the inevitability of autumn. Seeds ripen, fall to the Earth, and begin the long sleep of hope. The wheel of the year turns as the harvest moon rises again.
Sometimes I get really attached to a book I have been working on. That's the case with this one.
The brown leather spine is made from a recycled leather coat. I really hate to buy new leather when there is so much out there to 'harvest'. One less item for the land fill, and I can get quite a few nice spines from one coat. Of course the deconstruction and cutting creates a great mess on the studio floor, but it's all part of the experience.
A good creative exercise is to create backgrounds and papers for future use. Here I have used photoshop brushes and 'found images' to intuitively paint and stamp a background. These can be printed and used as art papers or saved as digital images.
During a recent trip to our local antique mall, a pair of vintage ladie's gloves accompanied me to the check out. Although they were much too small for my large hands, I knew at once they would find a place on the cover of a book. The soft white leather was worn in distinctive creases as a woman's hands were protected decades ago. These gloves had been well used and I wondered about the person who had carried them in her pocket and slipped them on casually over and over again. The gloves now hold a book for an artist to use. Pages are made of thick papers for mixed media or watercolor and the book should be a delight to fill.