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.

Monday, June 13, 2011

Book 136 - Kokopelli Coasters - Stab-bound Soft Book/Journal/Guest Book

Another "found in the store" book today. Wandering through our store this afternoon thinking "What on earth am I going to make for a book today?" my eye landed on these screen-printed canvas coasters. They're very popular and inexpensive, and we sell a lot of them.

The character of Kokopelli on these is a ubiquitous symbol here in the southwest US. He goes back more than a thousand years and has been found in rock art all over this region. This hump-backed flute player was a fertility symbol/god, a prankster and a good luck symbol. Today, you'll find him in jewelry, on T-shirts, caps, tote bags, magnets, mugs posters, greeting cards, table runners, rugs, blankets.....   and on coasters.

I cut four colors of text paper in earth tones to fit the size of the coasters. As an experiment, I glued the spine edge of the pages with padding compound, as if I were making a perfect binding, in the hopes it would make punching the holes easier by keeping the pages together. And it did. The Japanese stab binding is sewn with doubled red thread in a herringbone pattern.

I think this would make a nice little guest book sitting on a hall table in a southwest style home.




2 comments:

  1. Kokopelli is probably so popular because it seems like such a joyful character. Made a cute book, too. :)

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  2. Nothing boring or predictable about that, great use of found material. Maybe you want to revisit the stash from the Gem & Mineral Show?

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