...with food has me stuffing my recipe box (and face) with wonderful possibilities, and ho-humming the fact that I have to actually make the meals to enjoy them. After some sixty years of the so-called 'culinary arts', I am no fan of cooking at all. You do realize that is somewhere in the neighbourhood of 15-20,000 dinners alone? So I cleaned out my recipe box the other day, discarding a huge pile of 'what was I thinking' recipes - some tried, some failed, some of no interest at all. And you know when an artist working in paper gets rid of paper, it never really disappears.
 |
'Meals I Have Murdered' © Win Dinn
8 1/4" x 4 1/2" x 1" 2021 |
It all started with a trio of paper bags that somehow came home with bottles of wine during the last pandemic-filled months. Cutting off the sealed end, I folded the bags in half and folded each half again to create an accordion. I cut a slit in the top of the two centre folds, creating two pockets in top that would contain tags.
Being a relative newbie at creating artist books, it didn't occur to me that the flimsy wine bags would be unlikely to stand up to what I had in mind. By the time I'd added the tags to the centre pockets and additions to each of the end pockets, the bags were
screaming with the strain of over-indulgence.
Stitching the bags together with a pamphlet stitch did NOT do the trick. I glued the fractious package to the spine of the cover and proceeded carefully with fingers crossed.
That was still insufficient to stabilize things and I added washi tape in the hopes that would encourage it to cuddle up securely.
By then it was such a toxic mess that I tore into it all with oil pastels to add to the grungy look.
Now you know how oil pastels feel on paper, right? There's a definite yuck quality which is why I use them so seldom.
Given that it was all such a hot mess anyway I added some quickly sketched drawings with the pastels,
and some succinct notes
before calling it a day. Well, two days actually, because when an artist decides to make a mess,
it can take a good long while. I was praying that the book would hold together at least long enough to take some photos - now that's done it can go onto a top shelf and slowly disintegrate into the woodwork. 😵
All is not lost, as I still have stacks of discarded recipes waiting for a home and no doubt the Universe will provide some much stronger tubular paper bags.
Here's what I learned:
- Make sure your substrate can take your abuse...strong, paintable, and sewable.
- If it's not working, keep playing...you'll learn something and the freedom of knowing the end product is not important is liberating to the max.
