A Book a Day? What's Up With That?


Hi, and welcome to this year-long project. So what's this all about and how did it happen, you might ask. In mid 2007, artist Noah Scalin decided to make a skull out of anything he could find, every day for a year. It stretched him in ways he never imagined, as an artist, a writer and a person. His experience turned into a blog that went viral, and then a book.

Others have picked up on the idea: 365 Hearts, 365 Masks, 365 Bears drawn on a cellphone, 365 paper napkin mustaches.
I wanted to play, too, and I chose books. I love books, I know a bit about making books (thanks to my talented book-maker sister, Marilyn Worrix), and they're broad enough in definition to give me a lot of creative leeway.

The whole point is not really the books. The idea is to stretch myself in many ways as an artist and a person, to set up a discipline, stick with it and see what that teaches me.

I hope you'll join with me and follow along on the journey chronicled here, and let me know what you think.

Tuesday, January 25, 2011

Day 1, January 24th - Rosarita, The Beanie Book

Well, the adventure has  begun. One day in, one book done. Today, I set myself the challenge to make a book (or at least part of one) out of something free that I encountered in the first 15 minutes of my work day. I came into the store (we own a grocery store/convenience store/tourist shop) and saw that Allen (my partner) had just opened a case of Rosarita Refried Beans to put on the grocery shelves. The empty tagboard box they'd been in was sitting on the counter and I began to break it down for the trash.

And there it was... Book One, a simple Japanese stab-bound book made out of a Rosarita carton. I cut the ends off the box and used them as is. I cut the "Nutrition Facts" box off the back for the hinge pieces. I lined all the tagboard pieces with cardstock for extra body and used some decorative Japanese masking tape for the hinges. I tore 8 sheets of mottled text paper to make the pages and stitched the stab binding with red cotton embroidery floss.




Rosarita the Beanie book is basically identical front and back except for the tassel. She is 5 3/4" tall x 3 1/2" wide, a nice purse size. Below, you can see her open to page one. There are 24 text pages inside.


The whole book took about 40 minutes. It got me thinking that photographing, uploading, sizing and tweaking pix, writing blog posts, previewing, editing and posting them will take a lot more time that making the books themselves. But this blog is an important part of the process. Hopefully, it will gain a bit of an audience--you--and I really need you all to hold me accountable. So please do!

2 comments:

  1. I took a bookbinding class at my local community college and really enjoyed it. Having the self discipline to do this every day in addition to your "regular" life will be the real challenge. I look forward to following your books this year, and wish you the best of luck.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thanks, Vanessa. Yes, the discipline is the hard part. That's partly why I decided to do it. Discipline has never been big on my list of personality traits! And some days it's really hard. But most of the time, I'm loving the challenge of coming up with new ideas.

    Glad to have you along for the ride!

    ReplyDelete