2015 Hurrah!

I love a New Year, even if a really awful cold has delayed my start a bit.  There is so much to do so many plans…

A quick catch up with the Moon project which has now ended. Many fascinating ideas came along with many frustrations in tow.  I often have to learn things the hard way but it has increased my understanding of monoprinting and its possibilities and I did complete, if not really finish, a few ideas for small books.

I made a prototype embossed concertina book, loosely based on a tactile/Braille solution to depicting the moon’s phases.

 

 

Braille Book

It was very white, and very tricky to make with an awful lot of measuring, hole punching and trials before I got it to work, but I discovered a lovely translucent quality to the compressed paper, how to write the phases of the moon in Braille and that I need more patience.

I made another rough book idea based on the views that Galileo had of the moon through his small telescope. He could only see sections of the moon one at a time which, they say, is why his early moon maps were inaccurate.
The round telescope views reveal a section of the larger moon map piece by piece. ( in this case Cassini’s very beautiful moon map of 1679).

Galileo’s Section

The monoprint series continued and I eventually chose 30 to form a small 36 page, single section, saddle stitched, self ending book called: “29 d 12 h 44 min 2.8016 s  29.530587981” (which is the length of a synodic month. Hence the half page image at the end)

Pagination worked out for printing.

I made a very simple, soft back, slip cover and printed some moon words on the endpapers

 

“29 d 12 h 44 min 2.8016 s  29.530587981” book 6 x 8 inches

This small book illustrates just some of my research avenues.
It was all completely fascinating, absorbing and wonderful. I find myself reluctant to leave the moon, so many more possibilities and half finished and unexplored ideas, but there may be time over the next year to realise a few more.

Meanwhile it’s on with the game.. Growth, Eels and Rivers plus more pigs and bees to come.