Changing Mores

I have been going through my stamp collection. I've even, God help me, been adding to it. Aside from admiring them and making a few cards for friends with them, I haven't a clue what I'm going to do with all these stamps. But I do so like them.

This Darwin commemorative arrived the other day from someone in Scotland. By coincidence, not days before, my husband had been sharing with me some passages from Darwin's Voyage of the Beagle. They were rather startling. Darwin, great man of science, gleefully writes in his diary how he pulled the tail of a Galapagos lizard and teased it just for fun, like a naughty school boy.

He also described the dining habits of those traveling on Her Majesty's ship Beagle as they passed through the Galapagos Archipelago in 1835: "While staying in this upper region, we lived entirely upon tortoise-meat: the breast-plate roasted (as the Gauchos do carne con cuero), with the flesh on it, is very good; and the young tortoises make excellent soup; but otherwise the meat to my taste is indifferent."

Oh dear.

Pro Re Nata (I Was Warned)

Pro Re Nata (I Was Warned)
Originally uploaded by Zebra Crossing Picture Factory

I've posted links to other people's books on Flickr. Today I thought I'd add something of my own. I don't have many photos of my book and other non-cut paper work on the web. Some things I need to photograph, but others I've simply parted with before making a record of them. At the moment I've been feeling desperate to get back into the studio to do some work, but I've been so unwell and exhausted that it's almost impossible for me to do anything. It's frustrating.

I've made books for many years, largely in the background to other things, mostly to be given as gifts. I'd always thought of them as not my "real work," whatever that is. But then I began making books and objects as, partly, a way of dealing with the frustrations of living with chronic health issues. It was a way, sometimes, of making laughter out of pain. Book art just seemed like a perfect medium, for me, for such explorations.

This is my tribute to my medications and to the words of wisdom printed graphically on the sides of the bottles. Be warned.

Almost a Book Artist Before I Knew It

I find it interesting that badges (or buttons, where I come from) are seen by many as having a kindred relationship to book art. For instance, there is a research project going on at the Centre for Fine Print Research at the University of the West of England, What will be the Canon for the Artists' Book in the 21st Century? They "aim to extend and sustain critical debate of what constitutes an artist's book in the 21st Century." To go along with this, there is a genealogical-type tree diagram available at the web site. Here, an attempt is made to illustrate how the book arts and related art forms are linked to each other. People who want to participate in the research project are encouraged to download the diagram and, if so desired, rearrange or rewrite parts of it to suit their own understandings of how these things fit together. As currently assembled, badges, postcards, cards, posters, and bookmarks are considered sibling offshoots to artists' books. These are all things I've been involved with for many years.

The badges, though, almost make me giggle. I was the weird girl at my small high school on the Central Coast of California. I mean, the really weird girl. Come to think of it, in Jr. High as well. I remember giving speeches in 8th grade English class on topics such as "the Joy of Nonconformity" and "How to Make People Stare at You." To give you an idea what life was like there, one of the great moments of pride for my alma mater was when our Future Farmers of America cattle judging team won a big trophy at a competition in the Midwest. This was the early 80s. Needless to say, I did not judge cattle. Nor did I fit in.

As part of my campaign of nonconformity and goading the locals, I saved up and bought something special for myself by mail order. I didn't know anyone else at the time who had one of these miraculous gizmos. It was....a button machine. Oh, did I have fun.

I just came across some of my old buttons, now mostly rusted. If I'd only known then what I know now. When they looked at me askance, I could've told them I was a book artist practicing my craft.