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.

Thursday, June 23, 2011

Book 146 - Seeing Past Myself - Eyeglass Accordion Book - Hand-Made

If you haven't read the previous post, the Special Treat post, go do that now. Just scroll down to the next post down the page. I'll be here when you get back up....

Well! Feeling a little weird today about this challenge. Seeing my sister's amazing sculpture/book took a little of the wind out of my sails, I think. How can I ever do THAT?

Still, I'm committed, so here's an eyeglass book. Once again, I got this idea in the store. I often find myself wandering around the store between customers looking for book ideas. Today, I realized we had quite a collection of eyeglasses, mostly sunglasses, that people have left behind. Since most of our customers are tourists just passing through, there is no way to give them back and little chance they will come back for them. They are probably more than half way to the Grand Canyon before they even realize they don't have them.

Good for me, because now I've got a book out of one of those lost pairs of sunglasses.

I printed out a few lines from a poem, "Seeing Past Myself," by Don Iannone, and folded the printed strips into a pair of small accordion fold "signatures" exactly the size and shape of the lenses. I glued the first page of each one to a lens. For eyes, I printed a pair of lovely owl eyes and glued them to the fronts of the closed accordions.

Since I wanted them to stay closed until opened, I needed a way to hold the folds up in place. So I took some wire, bent and curled it into the shape of the glasses bridge, then wired it on with finer, 26 gauge wire.  The little curls at each end stick out enough that the folded accordions can tuck under them to stay put but still be easily pulled out to open. Looks a little like a wire mustache, doesn't it?

I think I still need to  make some sort of base for these to set on when they are not being worn.

The lines of the poem read:
Sometimes I have trouble seeing past myself,
Blindsided by who I think I am...





4 comments:

  1. OMGosh! An amazing combination of poem and glasses. You are so creative! See, now I would never think of something like this. Proves that creativity just runs rampant in your family. :)

    ReplyDelete
  2. Oh, those are grand. AND, I thought it was about your eyes popping out over your sister's book.

    Do you keep the spare sunglasses in a *help yourself* bin for those who lost theirs on the way to your place?

    ReplyDelete
  3. Rachel - the "help yourself" bin is a great idea. We'll have to do that. Thanks for the nice comments, ladies.

    ReplyDelete