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, May 20, 2011

Book 113 - Spiral Staircase "Book"

I've been thinking about this one for a while. It's really just a prototype. I want to make one that's bigger and more elaborate sometime after I get home to my own sudio.

This one is going to be extremely tricky to get home in a suitcase! On an airplane!

The book is basically a single strip of paper, folded into a spiral. For this one, I cut a base and top from mat board and covered them with red paper, inserted a stick made from three very thin bamboo sticks (from a placemat I cut apart) glued together. I inserted the ends of the stick into the two mat board pieces, glued one end of spiral to one of the boards, twined it around the stick and glued the other end to the other board.

I think it looks way cool!




3 comments:

  1. Very Cool....love your books...Irene

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  2. This one fascinates me! I don't know how to fold a strip of paper into a spiral, for one thing. But I'm also wondering if the spiral can't be "closed." I'm imagining you'd have shown that in a picture if it WERE possible; but if NOT possible, then why not (since there's glue only at either end of the spiral). So couldn't the two ends / "boards" be pushed together along the bamboo?

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  3. Peg - This spiral could be closed if I had not glued the ends to the stick. If the mat board piece at the top, for instance, was free to slide down the stick, then yes, the spiral "book" could close. I hadn't thought of it, but it's a cool idea I'd like to explore!

    The fold is not too difficult, just a little picky. Cut a straight strip and make a series of vertical folds, all of them mountain folds, the whole length of the strip. You end up with a bunch of small rectangles. In each rectangle, make a valley fold that goes diagonally from one corner of the rectangle to the other. I think you can probably see the folds most clearly from the third photo.

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