Constructing Concertina
Constructing Concertina
Saturday, 21 July 2007
Yesterday I finished my week holiday at City Lit where I took an art class on how to create an artistic book. I know most people either want to go away for a holiday or relax at home, but I wanted a week to focus to really just focus on a different aspect of myself without any kind of pressure to pack, look nice, or produce anything for anyone else - it really was a joy. We had a small class with just 8 students so it meant we had a lot of individual instruction from our two “teachers”, Tracy and Liz.
Tracy is a bookbinder and has done special commissions for artists to create books about their work. She has all the skills of a traditional bookbinder, focusing on precision and form while being creative like an artist by finding the beauty in a found object or something special in a mistake. Liz led us on a walk our first day to Lincoln Square and showed us how to focus on different aspects of the journey by picking of remnants of possessions thrown away or lost and giving us different ideas, like how to capture a sound on paper. And both of them have great hair.
Anyway, the week was great for me. I decided to focus on the theme from Mondays walk and created a “flag concertina” book, with each page representing a specific personal journey I’m currently taking, from the path of applying for the HMPS (Highly Skilled Migrant Programme) visa to our eventual move to our first home purchase here in London. I was quite literal while others in the class were more artistic and abstract, but each person painted a vision particular to their own place in time.
So after reading this if you want to see any of the books, feel free to checkout the Constructing Concertina page I’ve created which has highlights from the week including scenes from the walk on Monday to the construction during the week to the final presentation of our final products on Friday. Overall I learned a little bit more about myself and I’ve created a book which is a snapshot of where I am right now in my life - it’s interesting to think how different it might be if done at another time.