Ten Good Things

October 11, 2011

I haven’t written one of these lists in ages, which is a shame because there are many things that have happened this year I consider good. Here’s a list of the ten most recent good things in my life:

1. Taking a very short but much needed getaway to Yellow Point Lodge with Boris. I still need to upload the photos to Flickr, but it was a beautiful place to stay.
2. Walking around the city on Sunday, enjoying adventures and sunshine.
3. Enjoying a decadent Thanksgiving meal with friends. I am lucky because everyone I know is an excellent chef.
4. Making paper flower decorations in preparation for Monique’s wedding.
5. Walking along a very quiet Commercial Drive at night in the rain.
6. New art books to inspire me – thanks to a gift certificate from my sister.
7. Keeping up with healthy habits, like 6am yoga and tracking calories with an app.
8. Slowly moving closer to having our apartment organized and decorated.
9. Finding a good balance between a part-time job, and having time for art.
10. Lucking out and finding a beautiful dress in a store I’ve never shopped in before, to wear to an upcoming wedding.

Altered Books: The Less He Spoke The More He Heard

October 5, 2011

When I first began creating altered books I would go to great lengths to come up with these wordy titles. I haven’t really been doing that lately but for this one I decided to go back to my former way of coming up with a title, which is asking google. In this case I looked up “quotes with owls”.

This is a Long-Eared Owl, and though its ear tufts aren’t actually ears I like the idea that it’s a good listener.

The book was very fun to fold and I love the way the bottom and top sections swirl around one another. With all of these owl books I’ve been folding pages a second or third time after the initial sectioning and folding. It can be a tedious process to crease a three hundred page book and this is how I keep things interesting. It also has resulted in more sculptural work.

For the Long-Eared Owl I returned to making leaves using a paper punch and printed paper to create the suggestion of a tree. I also selected very dramatic Asian-inspired black paper with a gold pattern as the end pages.

There is one more owl altered book to unveil, so stay tuned.

Materials used: book, fancy paper, paper punch, paper owl, cardboard, and white glue.

Altered Books: An Uncommon Owl

October 4, 2011

We now return to your irregularly scheduled update about altered books with owls.

I completed this one two weeks ago, at the same time as a book with a Long-Eared Owl which I will share later this week. This is a Barn Owl and she is the most elegant of all the owls I worked with in this series. It’s wonderful how different each bird has been from one another, and it’s ensured they are each pretty unique altered books.

I kept things very simple with the composition of this one. I added fancy end-pages with a leaf design in gold which works well with the elegant figure of the Barn Owl. I stayed away from leaves and trees for this book and decided to add a tangle of red thread around the bird’s feet. I was originally trying to create a thread nest but then realized this type of owl doesn’t make them. Nest or not, the thread stayed because it anchors the bird in the book.

I did yet another new way of folding with this one, a mix of two different kinds. It was intended as a horizontal piece but then I decided it worked better as a vertical, and also to mix things up with these.

The owl series is complete and I will be debuting them all in person at the Eastside Culture Crawl in November.

Materials used: book, fancy paper, red thread, paper owl, cardboard, and white glue.

Drawing with Yarn: The Completed Tree at Foodtree

September 29, 20115 Comments

I completed the yarn tree at the Foodtree office early last week with the addition of fabric leaves tucked into its branches. It is so very lovely with the red leaves, and it brightens up the office.

I am very pleased with my work on this because I had no idea how it would go when I first started putting pins into the wall, and I was winging it all the while. I love it when an experiment in a new process/medium comes together.

My plan is to create one of these on a wall of our apartment and have it as a permanent installation. I’m aiming to have it completed in time for the Eastside Culture Crawl so it can be yet another thing for people to see when they come by.

Materials used: 1.75 balls of sock yarn, 407 pushpins, and artificial leaves (I didn’t count them).

Altered Books: The Dovecote

September 23, 2011

I really loved this one as I worked on it and then when I finished I didn’t like it anymore. Now that I’ve had a few days to step away and look at it again with fresh eyes, I like it again. I think I was struggling with the lack of colour.

With this one completed now there are four of these books with trees/birds/doorways. I keep thinking about these as the “Birdhouse series” because the trees with doorways are homes for birds.

The small white birds are a set of wood buttons I picked up at Button Button last year. I’d forgotten about them until last week when I was looking for something to work with. I have a few more of these that are in flight, and then four black crow buttons as well.

I realized after finishing this one I don’t enjoy working on this series of books as much as I do the owls. The process isn’t as creative because I’m using a lot of the same elements and ways of making them. I think this may be why I stopped working on this series when I first started it last year.

I’m sure I can find a way to make the process more interesting…

Materials used: book, bird buttons, inkjet print of my photo, resistors, rubber stamp and ink, white glue, and gel medium.

Artist in the Window at Bird on a Wire Creations

September 22, 2011

This Saturday I’ll be folding the pages of books into new configurations as the featured artist-in-the-window at Bird on a Wire Creations on Main Street. I’ll be in there working away from 11am to 4pm, so if you haven’t yet had the chance to visit this lovely little shop, now’s your chance.

As with last time, chocolate is always appreciated. 😉

Artist Window
11am to 4pm, September 24th, 2011
Bird on a Wire Creations
2535 Main Street, between Broadway & 10th
Vancouver BC

Altered Books: The Great Wise One

September 20, 2011

Owls are enjoyable subjects to work with because they have more expressive faces than the average bird. The previous owl looked cute and sweet while this Great Horned owl looks slightly bored but also intimidating.

With this book I began with an exploration of a different way of folding the pages rather than deciding on the composition I would work towards. It was challenging to work with three different directions of folds but the end result is a fascinating pattern and shape to the book.

I left Mr. Horned Owl (the Great) attached to his branch and decided he needed to be sitting majestically in a tree. I rolled a few pages to give him something to rest on and suggest the shape of a tree. The leaves were the final touch that I really wasn’t sure was going to turn out as well as it has. These are made with a leaf-shaped paper punch and I’ve used them to add colour but keep the focus on the owl.

I’m going to keep exploring the subject of owls for a few more books, at least until I run out of the birds. To keep things interesting I’ve set myself the challenge of playing with new ways of folding the books as I do them.

Materials used: book, patterned paper, leaf-shaped paper punch, white glue, and gel medium.

A Tree Made of String

September 15, 20112 Comments

Along with the two different series of altered books I’m working on for the Eastside Culture Crawl, last week I began working on an installation in the Foodtree offices. I work there part time and as we’ve just moved into our own office space in Chinatown I’ve been planning ways to make it a visually interesting environment in which to work.

The Foodtree office is nicknamed “the treehouse” so of course I wanted to make a tree. I’d been thinking about making more trees from cardboard, but then came across this tutorial about how to make a tree wall mural from yarn and pushpins.

I bought my supplies of sock yarn from Dressew and pushpins from Yoko Yaya and dove right into making the tree. I’m doing it without having first drawing an outline. It feels like I’m drawing it with the yarn as I go along. It’s been amazing and fascinating to see the tree slowly take shape in the corner of the room.

Once the tree is completed I’m hoping to attach red leaves to the string branches, and then voilà(!) the Treehouse will have a tree.

I’ll share more photos once the tree is complete. I’m considering making one of these at home in our livingroom…

Crows in Silhouette

September 15, 2011

I’m often pleasantly surprised at the images I can capture with the iPhone camera. It’s not exactly speedy but somehow this week I managed to time my picture taking well enough to catch crows in flight.

The above two shots of a juvenile crow were taken one after the other, and they are beautifully crisp images. I snuck up on this little guy because I know crows get antsy about having their photo taken. I was pretending not to notice it as I got the camera app opened up (which sometimes happens so slowly) and then I turned and took a few photos before it flew away. I am pleased I caught it as it jumped from the wire and opened it’s wings.

The photo below was taken yesterday morning on my way to work, again in the same area of Main Street in Chinatown. A large group of crows was flying back and forth over Pender Street between two trees, and I stopped to take a few photos.

I’m so glad to have a camera with me at all times, thanks to the iPhone.

All three photos were taken with the native iPhone camera app and processed using Instagram.

Altered Books: Awaiting the Golden Egg

September 9, 2011

If you haven’t guessed by now the theme for the series I’m working on for the Culture Crawl is “Birds”. The work I shared yesterday is one “style” of altered book I’ll be making, and this book is representative of a second group of books I have planned.

I actually started this series back in March 2010 when I created two niche cut books using imagery of trees and bird-related items. All are made from books that are blank inside and out, because they were publisher mockups for the hardcover version of Harry Potter novels. My friend Siobhan saved them from the bin and gifted them to me for altering.

I’m going to continue to create these using similar elements: a doorway cut into a tree with items related to birds on the inside, and a design printed along the edges of the closed pages. While I really like the use of small twigs incorporated into the previous two books in this series, having them makes it difficult to store/ship the work because they stick out and are delicate.

Materials used: blank book, ink jet print of photo, transparent egg, gesso, book page scraps, wine cork, rubber stamp & ink, and gel medium.

Canvas to the Imagination

Rachael Ashe – Art | Craft | Life