Leijonstedt » Creative Inspirations

The reality of it

Mia — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 21:25:53 +0000

I thought to illustrate here the battle with time I often have. It is about needing to get some own work done amidst all the family and other work commitments that compete for my time. Being an artist with children at 5 and 1 years of age is not always easy. Luckily my bookbinding studio adjoins our home. It is the only way I can hope to get any creative work done. If I waited for long stretches of undisturbed personal time to spend in the studio, I’d never get any own work done – because I’d never make it into the studio in the first place. I currently need to be content with snatching ten minutes here, a half an hour there, and only occasionally getting a luxurious few hours at a time. But the need to create is so deeply engrained, growing so fervent at times that a few minutes here and there is better than none at all. I always thought I wouldn’t be able to concentrate on anything in such broken bits. It’s amazing what necessity facilitates. I have learned to switch in a fraction of a second into deep concentration that seamlessly carries on from the last such moment. And the miracle of it is… several ten minute moments do eventually build up, and a little by little a personal project completes, ends up a finished piece. Which wouldn’t exist if I waited for those several undisturbed studio hours at a time.

This is the first and only time I have ever recorded to the very minute a project takes. Writing down all the start and end times, this is how one of my recent projects got completed in just over 40 hours:

Day 1
9.30-10.05 | 10.35-11.50 | 15.30-17.40 | 23.15-00.15

Day 2
8.55-9.10 | 10.00-11.00 | 11.15-12.30 | 13.00-16.20 | 17.05-18.00

Day 3
11.55-12.40

Day 4
13.35-14.00 | 18.35-19.15 | 19.45-20.00

Day 5
11.20-12.20 | 20.40-20.50

Day 6
18.30-18.50

Day 7
8.40-12.00 | 13.30-14.45 | 15.10-18.00 | 20.55-23.15

Day 8
9.00-10.00 | 10.50-12.30 | 16.00-17.00 | 17.50-18.50

Day 9
8.20-9.45 | 10.10-12.50 | 13.30-17.20 | 18.30-19.40 | 22.00-23.45

Day 10
21.40-21.55

~
Artist book: a scroll triptych
‘Mother, Daughter and the Holy Spirit’
acrylic & ink on stitched canvas, 2010

Piles of stones

Mia — Sun, 25 Jul 2010 12:10:37 +0000

Making books got more difficult when we moved here. I cannot just walk into a store to replenish my stock of millboard, archival PVA or other specialist materials I used to have easy access to. It is costly and a headache, especially in case of liquids, to organise delivery from Europe when needed. And this year I ran out of some essentials a few weeks before holidaying in the vicinity of bookbinding supply stores again. I’ve always liked the idea of using what’s readily available in any local environment so I have been fervently thinking how I might possibly start to use more of what I can easily get my hands on here. Although I haven’t (yet) been inspired to make anything out of sand, seashells and stacks of colourful fabrics. However, being currently more obsessed about stones than I am about books, I have found the perfect summer break from the bookbinding studio in learning more about semi-precious stones. Making many fascinating discoveries on this different creative path, some of which may indeed end up taking a book form eventually but a lot of them won’t. And I’m quite happy about that.

After posting this blog entry, I had a Twitter conversation with architect and author Anthony Lawlor, whose wonderful comment I want to quote here:

“Stones are books. So much can be read in the shape, color, texture and sound of stones.”

Gold, the fourth primary colour

Mia — Wed, 16 Jun 2010 12:04:16 +0000

Before we moved to Dubai, I had never been here. The first thing that struck me at the airport where we landed, was the amount of golden shiny details everywhere. Historically, gold-tooling has been a large part of traditional bookbinding, in the skills of which I’ve had my due initiation as well. However I have always had some sort of aversion to using gold in my work, whether tooling or otherwise. It has felt a bit over the top, certainly not quite “me”. But as usual, I like to give myself the challenge to see how I might make peace with anything gold…
As there’s something golden everywhere I turn here, I have become practically desensitised to it now. In my visual thinking, gold has taken on the role of just another colour. I see details in all the colours of the wheel, just combined and mixed with gold here and there. As I have come to see it, where I live, gold is the fouth primary colour. Mixing it with different colours produces shine and shimmer of all possible tones. There’s red gold, green gold, yellow gold, purple gold, blue shimmer, orange shimmer, brassy shimmer, sparkly light tones and darker glows. Thinking of gold as one colour among the others, makes it more palatable for me, an additional tool to my palette which I’m just getting to grips with. Another artistic journey.

While watching the glue dry…

Mia — Mon, 31 May 2010 08:52:38 +0000

I rarely work on more than one book at a time. This is because each is unique and requires my full focus and concentration. Not as much from technical perspective, but from the creative viewpoint, the thematic and symbological. I tend to hold a dialogue with the book in the making, and like with people, I’d have difficulty concentrating on two intense conversations simultaneously without one or the other suffering. While making a book, several stages require waiting. It would be sensible to use the time well and be working on another book while one is in the press, drying. So I’m entertaining myself by making something entirely different in the meanwhile. Like… I might relax and enjoy myself by making a set of runes or a Tibetan style mala. These are also much more instant gratification than my books that take hours and hours to complete. Works well, keeping the creative stream flowing.

Untitled intention of no meaning

Mia — Tue, 13 Apr 2010 17:20:02 +0000

How would it affect your viewing of this image, if this was called “Untitled”?

Or would you view it differently, if it was called “Lady and Feather”?

And would you see this image below differently if it was titled “Untitled” or if it was called “Soldier”?

When I was studying art, I kept noticing in exhibitions how many artworks were given the title “Untitled”. There were so many around it felt to me almost like it was in fashion. Or that if you called your artwork “Untitled” it meant you were a really cool and serious artist. The notion seemed to be that an artist should give space for the viewer’s imagination and not restrict the viewer’s associations about the artwork in any way. Of course, there’s nothing wrong if someone wants to release their artwork into the freely associating mind of the viewer, maybe it is very generous, maybe it has become expected. But why?

Giving any kind of descriptive title to a work no doubt affects the way the viewer looks at it – and it leads them to see the way the artist did while making the work. Why would it be a good thing to discourage that? If I want a free reign for my imagination to create meanings out of unintention, I can look at clouds or anything else in my environment, I don’t need to see an art exhibition for that. In artworks, I look for intention. So all this untitledness always bothered me in some indescribable way. Having seen countless of “Untitled” artworks, I can remember about three which really, truly carried off that title – works that actually could not have and should not have been titled anything else.

Very often, of course, viewers see the work without even knowing what the title might be. In fact, I have recently posted some of my latest artist books on my Facebook page purposefully without any titles. In that context they are momentarily “untitled” as I do also believe that an artwork needs to stand on its own visual merits without a need to be explained in words, titles or otherwise. However, having mulled over photographer Ian Talbot’s writings about the ownership of artwork and intention, I have come to realise what my untitled unease was about all those years ago. It is easy to call the work “Untitled”. When it comes to titling artwork, it is easy to give up, offer the ownership to the viewer. To me the title is one detail of the artwork just like any other element. I own it, I consider it, and just like I wouldn’t let my child into the world without a name and let everyone call her what they please, it is natural for me to want to title my works as appropriately as I have intended the artwork itself. The title points the viewer to the direction of my intention, gives a clue as to why I made the work in the first place. It is about my intention and communicating that intention to those who might be interested in it.

Here’s a series of images. I believe my intention could make them art, should I choose that act of intention. And I believe they are not art, unless I intend them to be. Giving these images a title would constitute intention (even if the title was “Untitled”.) If I intended these to be art, I might call them “Departures I, II & III”.

But I didn’t set out to make these images, and I didn’t make exactly them. I merely discovered them, even though it is ink from my brush. Of course, one aspect of art is discovering. Seeing something differently. I was dyeing paper for an artist book when I started to look closer. And like one sees shapes in clouds, I started to see meaning in these random blotches of ink. These images were an off-piste trail for me, a sudden tangent, after which I returned to the artist book I intended to make. The 36 long pieces of paper I dyed (of which four are photographed below) are material to me, not art. Framing and naming parts of them was entertaining, yet not quite art for me, as I’m still not intending them to be so. But the resulting book I intended, I indeed mean to call art.

Thinking vs. Doing

Mia — Fri, 02 Apr 2010 20:31:06 +0000

When I studied art and bookbinding, I got very interested in the philosophy of craft. I liked to analyse the process of making, to write about it, and to ponder it. I also wrote my degree dissertation about the learning process in craft. Then there came a point when the pondering and writing started to feel very far removed from the actual making. What I experienced while in the state of creating didn’t match any combination of words I could think of. Words have served an important purpose for me while learning the specifics of my craft, and clarified many issues in my mind that indeed have affected the way I approach actual studio work.
The fact that I again agree to think with the means of words and sentences in addition to the interplay of materials, colours and textures, has been inspired by the incredible group of artists of all disciplines discussing their process on Twitter, and particularly by reading the Objectively Speaking :: Blog of fine art photographer Ian Talbot. His in-depth, straight-talking analysis of his own works have been real revelations to me. They have also spurred me to raise many questions about my own work, and to realise I might need to dig out some answers.

As I’m not a writer or a poet, there will always be an unbridgable gap between words and my visual work. I also feel that whatever I might hope to transmit to the viewer deals with the end product, not the process – that is, I don’t aim to communicate anything about my process to the viewer, the only thing that matters in the end is what the final book in its final form might be saying, if anything. And I shall ponder that somewhat more from now on…

The hidden dimensions

Mia — Sun, 21 Mar 2010 17:20:52 +0000

I keep seeing things, fleeting visual snapshots in non-moments along the process of making. I have always thought that abstract artists are very brave. And if I was as brave, I would make abstract artworks. Now I make covertly abstract works, hidden within the understandable shape of a book. For no particular reason other than simple visual delight, I enjoy the play and combination of elements, lines, shapes, textures and colours arranged into representing nothing. There may be a book in the making, but in another dimension, the elements are living independently, offering themselves as individual absract works complete in themselves. A kaleidoscope of images that cease to exist as soon as the making process takes another step toward the recognisable form of a book.

Working out ideas

Mia — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 15:09:40 +0000

Sometimes it’s good to take one step away from books and look at the familiar materials arefresh. The kind of books I make always take a long time. In fact, even if I decided to quickly make one for checking out some thoughts and ideas, I still end up taking the book more seriously than a test piece and devoting more energy to it than I originally intended. A book for me is always a full process – I cannot seem to let one leave my hands as a test piece. So I feel much more free when working out some ideas away from books. At the moment also too many ideas and inspirations are fighting for attention in my mind and for my time in the studio. Not all ideas are worth spending time on and not all books fully formed as thoughts are worth bringing into physical form. While I’m working out idea priorities, I’m relaxing by stringing some materials together – into necklaces instead of books. And enjoying myself immensely!

Remains of a project

Mia — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 08:59:54 +0000

After finishing a bookbinding, it’s the final tidy up time. There are always bits and pieces left and it feels almost difficult to throw them away as they have been an important part of the process I’ve delved in for weeks. For a while now, I’ve been saving a few offcuts of materials from each book I’ve made – they are a great physical record of the creative work gone into each. And the only thing left for me once the book has been sent to its owner. A somewhat backwards way of keeping a sketchbook, but it also serves a function – it ensures I don’t need to throw out test pieces and templates that might come in handy as memory aids in future projects. These are from a very special recent commission I completed, which is now shown in the gallery section together with a full case study – see the engagement book.

Arabian influence

Mia — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 19:46:37 +0000

Beginning a new project yet again, I put words to what I have been pondering recently. I thought there would be some sort of change in the visual language of my art after living a while in Dubai. I tend to welcome the influence and inspiration of my surroundings, wherever I am. But what I now see is that my work is becoming just more of what it already was going to be. My works of today may be interpreted as having acquired some Middle Eastern tones, yet when I compare them to some of my works from 15 years ago, the roots are already there. I’m quite surprised. Maybe that’s why I feel such an affinity with the visuality of this place. It resonates with something I have already been exploring for quite a while… And I will carry on. What an adventure.