waiting for the nail polish to dry

 

 

 

 

 

 
form is the first instruction,
*of course it never trumps content*

titles are the second instruction
so the adage about whether or not you can tell a book by its cover *if it’s lucky enough to have one* is not altogether true

& of course the book is the story of the story so
the best pieces are the ones which demand conversation with them along the way *call it serendipity, erroneously carried out action, magic, editing, or the unintended consequence*

cross-purposes.

crux, content, fix

grid

crux

context

fix

making way

step two: collating and finishing pages in preparation for step three: binding (making tabs and gluing as an accordion) and finally step four: sewing the book into a folio

two books collated, could be six, but if there are two for him and two for me that might be it, but it doesn’t need to all be done today

the trouble with talking about art:

1. early influences on my work

not that you are in relation to me now as I am to you so
no fair dredging it up as though
at our age the degrees of separation are relatively fewer
but, talking about the ‘early influences on my work’
it’s hard to miss I’m engaged
in conversations with you I don’t remember us having
and sure I never did say I’m sorry
it can’t go without saying now,

I’m sorry
it took so long to understand
how I knew you
is at the core of what I do

so more than I’m sorry, thank you is what I mean to say and
I loved you and miss you and though of course I don’t
I know you better now

2. permissions

when he read the love poem he wrote about his ex-wife beside him onstage waiting her turn to read her new husband in the audience, for all to witness and bear, it was poignant reminder poetry is not polite but the pinnings of heart and
so saying

3. if not you who

empaneled as a book artist to talk about all things book except as it turned out, what is a book, perhaps just now the most telling question, the discussion was
moot

✳︎❀❡

underway

past dithering now, a complexity of decisions turning into a book, the process always offers a window into how the doing is not the same as the imagining, I’ve printed most of the pages and made several of the drawings and come to see the inconvenient error I  nearly made in the imagining

that is why one makes mock-ups otherwise known as dummies though if I’m going to be technical it should be pointed out the terms mock-up and dummy are not exactly the same

 

❧