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.

Saturday, September 10, 2011

Book 216 - A Pamphlet Book of the Flores Mine - Chloride, Arizona

This little pamphlet book with a historical photo of the old Flores Mine here in Chloride, Arizona, came about as a last minute necessity. Earlier tonight I was putting together five gift basket raffle prizes for the Chamber of Commerce for a Sunday event. All the items in the basket are "Chloride" in some way. The basket was nice but it just seemed to need that one more item to make it feel abundant. Allen asked if there wasn't something I could make for it.

Well... what do I make? I make books. Lots of books. So I thought a few minutes and came up with a book idea that would say Chloride, would be cheap to make, would be fast to make, and would look nice. We have quite a nice collection of old photos from Chloride (which is, by the way, the oldest continuously inhabited mining town in Arizona). The picture of a bunch of miners arranged outside the entrance to the Flores mine is my favorite.

I sized the photo and printed it out on beige cardstock. I folded nine sheets of text paper in half, then had to trim about  1/4" off the fore edge so the book block would not be wider than the cover. I nested the pages inside the cover, poked three holes in the whole bunch, stitched them together with a pamphlet stitch with brown hemp cord. I tied off at the top with a tail long enough to tie on a dangling flintstone arrowhead.

Done.

It took me about 10 minutes to find the photo, size it, tweak the contrast and sepia color, and print out six copies. It took about another 30-40 minutes to fold, trim and stitch all six copies and tie on the arrowheads. I ended up with five books for the gift baskets and one more for today's book here.

So I really made six books today, but I'm only counting one (which means I still have a few to make up).





4 comments:

  1. Sweet! Love the photo of the miners. How unique for Chloride! I bet they love them. :)

    These are like the pamphlet style "bookcards" I make to write letters for the past couple years. I assembly-line construct them, too, but use printed scrapbook papers for covers. Fun and fast! :)

    ReplyDelete
  2. Great idea, Rita. It did occur to me while I was making these that I can make a bunch of them to put out for sale in our store. Maybe several different ones since we have lots of these old photos of town.

    Hmmmm.... another project for all my hours of free time (NOT).

    ReplyDelete
  3. What a great idea, and great for the last minute. Perhaps you can get someone, like a Girl Scout troop, to come and assemble the Chloride sketchbooks, learn a little book art, and, well, something like that.

    I have not been standing you up. I was away on retreat last weekend and am so far behind on the computer. Especially since various kinds of school have now resumed. But I am going to go and catch up with your recent production. I am glad that one of us is hanging in there. BTW, will you post a photo of the wonder workbench?

    ReplyDelete