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, April 15, 2011

Day 77 - Poetry in Your Pocket

I had a different book in mind for today. I was going to make another pretty leather journal (which is almost like taking a day off now, since I've made so many of them). But my friend Rachel kindly mentioned that, as part of National Poetry Month, today was Poetry in Your Pocket Day. So clearly, I had to do something with poetry, small enough to slip into a pocket.

And so today's book is a lot more about content than structure. I chose the simple one-page folded structure because it fit the content so well. I considered a few different poems and poets--Pablo Neruda, Maya Angelou, Elizabeth Barrett Browning--but finally decided on an all-time favorite, the 13th-century Persian Sufi mystic poet, Rumi. After reading through more than a dozen of his poems, I chose an old favorite, one that particularly seems to speak to me at this point in my life.

I laid the short poem out in PageMaker publishing program with a beautiful sunrise background and printed it onto the white side of a sheet of printed decorative paper, folded it, cut it and folded it again, gluing the two folded over center pages together. Then I added a front page image.

This is the poem that is printed on the pages:

It is your turn now.
You waited, you were patient.
The time has come
for Us to polish you.
We will transform your inner pearl
into a house of fire.
You're a gold mine.
Did you know that,
hidden in the dirt of the earth?
It is your turn now
to be placed in fire.
Let Us create your impurities.

Making this book was pure Joy.




5 comments:

  1. Beautiful!! I love it, and I love the poem too. You were asking for suggestions the other day. Have you considered fabric books? Like pieces of fabric glued onto cardstock, either for the pages or for the covers? I have an extensive fabric stash, so I tend to think in that direction.

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  2. Thank you my friend for a lovely poem in a lovely book. Pure joy to see and read.

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  3. Donna, I LOVE this book! It's beautiful. I love Rumi too and cannot believe how contemporary he is. It's incredible.

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  4. I'm glad you loved the poem. It is hard to believe this man's poetry was written about 800 years ago!

    Thanks, too, for the suggestions. I have thought about using fabric, both for covers and for pages. Need to go through my stash.

    Keep the ideas coming! I still have a long way to go.

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