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.

Friday, March 18, 2011

Day 49 - Chili Peppers - A "Telephone" Book

This is yesterday's book, but I didn't have time to photograph and post it. Yesterday was one of those awful "working on store taxes" days. Can you spell h-a-t-e-f-u-l?  So I needed to do a book that was basically "quick-and-dirty" simple. And this was. But it also turned out to be more fun than I thought. And it's one of those ideas that stretches the idea of "what is a book?"

Remember when you were a kid and used to make a "telephone" out of a couple of paper cups or tin cans and a string? And then you put one can to your ear and listened fascinated as your friend talked into the can on the other end and the sound actually traveled down the string? Well, this is a "telephone" book.

I took two empty Rotel Diced Tomatoes and Green Chiles cans--great chili fixin's--and a piece of good nylon cord. Drilled holes in the can and tied the cord through on one end. I printed out a great chili quotation from the novelist Margaret Cousins. I punched the words out with a tag punch, cut out a few chile pepper shapes from red and green paper and threaded them all onto the cord then tied on the other can. And now it's a book.

The quotation reads, "Chili is not so much food as a state of mind. Addictions to it are formed early in life and the victims never recover. On blue days in October, I get this passionate yearning for a bowl of chili, and I nearly lose my mind."  ~Margaret Cousins



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