Our move from the old apartment to the new one has been pretty time consuming over the last few weeks but as of today I am settling into my new studio space. I always find it hard to get back on track with creative projects after a move but I had to recover quickly this time because of an artist call deadline yesterday. There is a book show in the UK I wanted to take part in and it meant creating new work to fit the theme of their show and getting it done by Sunday evening.

This old book wasn’t great to work with because the spine was a bit broken and the pages are yellowed and brittle. I went with it anyway because it was the perfect size for what I wanted to do and don’t have a lot of other small books on hand at the moment. I ended up redoing a lot of work on this book, like folding and unfolding all of the pages because it didn’t work with what I wanted to do. I also had the whole thing complete with arms attached when I decided it needed “something more” and pulled it all apart again to add the cover image.

At first I could not get my head around how to cut an arched niche into the open book pages because I usually do this when the book is closed and flat. It worked out rather well though and is just the right detail to house the apple. I chose to do this as a three dimensional standing piece to try something different. I also wanted the arms to be on the outside of the book and didn’t think their placement would work well in a hanging piece.

The vine “tattoo” on the wooden arms was added by very carefully using a rubber stamp. It’s not easy trying to print a design on a rounded surface without mucking up the design, but I did it. The red thread was the final detail I added because I again felt it needed ‘something more” to tie the whole composition together.

Materials used: book, inkjet print of photo, gel medium, plastic apple, wooden puppet arms, red thread, rubber stamp and ink, and pins.