Art of the Book 2018

I entered "the Staircase" an artist book into Art of the Book 2018 and it will be travelling to different exhibitions across Canada for two years. Art of the Book is a juried exhibition of the Canadian Bookbinders and Book Artists Guild members' work. The exhibition includes many different categories, calligraphy work, artists books and also fine bindings. In total sixty-seven works from eight different countries were chosen to be a part of the travelling exhibition.

The first exhibit will be at the Audain Gallery, in the Visual Arts building of University of Victoria. They will be holding a private opening, by invitation only, on the 10th August from 7:00pm to 9:00pm. Keith Valentine will be giving an opening tour of the exhibition at 11:00am 11th August, which is free and open to the public. The public hours for the exhibition is 10:00am to 4:00pm from 11th until 26th of August 2018.

The second exhibition venue will be at the library of University of the Fraser Valley which will be on from 10th of September until 7th of December 2018. The books will be moving across the country to end up at St. John's in Newfoundland at the end of 2020. It was only because my cousin who lives in Ontario told me that she will only be able to see the exhibition in two years that I realised how long the book will be away! For more details of the different locations for the exhibition please visit Art of the Book 2018.

This is the first juried exhibit that I entered with an artist book. In college I loved to make books that spoke my reality, like some aspect of my personal experience or an emotion that I wanted to express. I haven't been able to make anything that spoke my reality for a while, so the choice of entering an artist book was to help me open up my creativity and also to try to encourage myself to find a style and a voice. This book is about my encounters with a homeless man that lives on the staircase above my studio. I incorporated my paper cutting skills to make a carousel book that has 6 panels, each panel has an element cutting that is different to the next. It starts off with a cutting with words about how I ended up in my studio and then the 4 panels in between are of 4 interactions that I had with the man and the last panel is of a cutting of the staircase and with him as a shadow figure.

There are elements that I would like to improve upon if I were to do this book again. I think the narrative isn't strong enough with just the visuals, there needs to be a bit more text. I think a possible way of doing it would be to blind tool it on to keep to the simplicity and the contrast between the different whites of the different papers. I'm very grateful that this book has been chosen to be a part of the two year traveling exhibit! Please do go to see the exhibits if you are close by, there are many other interesting books and it could possibly change your view on what is considered a book.