Serendipitously a very special group of eight formed. By coincidence also another artist happened to be travelling from Australia to the UK at this time and was able to attend – it’s great when schedules work out like that! And I had the most wonderful opportunity to meet with yet another fellow book artist who flew over specifically from Germany and whose book art work I was already familiar with through the internet. So, a wonderful group of creatives from various fields – book artists, designers, even a poet, gathered to spend an intensive, bookish day in Cambridge.

I was going to give more of an account on how the day went, but one of the participants, Lizzie, wrote such a brilliant description of the whole day that I’m really left with nothing to add. In fact, it may be much nicer for people to read the words of a course participant anyway. Therefore, I highly recommend that you sit comfortably and head over to read Lizzie’s great blog post about our day.

I started teaching bookbinding in 1998 and over the years have met many wonderful people and had many great experiences. Myself I have learned that, as with all teachers in any field, however much I’d prepare for a course and however much I’d personally aim to do to deliver a successful workshop, I can only do my share – I can lay out a table full of “creative foods”, but I cannot force anyone to eat – I can only offer my help and expertise to the extent that each participant is willing to receive it, in essence to offer me their trust, trusting me enough to let me lead them in the flow of the day. This is particularly so when I teach the more creative aspects about artist’s books. Facilitating such workshops involves each individual diving into their own creative well to make their own individual discoveries – which is nowhere near as ‘clear cut’ a process as teaching the formal, technical aspects of bookbinding. What has made the fully creative workshops so enjoyable for me to teach has been specifically that level of trust, coupled with the clear dedication of the participants. I am ever so grateful to those who have attended my workshops and gifted me with their trust. It is the degree of openness that people have brought with them that has allowed me to help entice the best out of each one. It is also, of course, different to teach groups in which participants have an enormous amount of motivation and have seeked me out for a specific reason, instead of attending for the sole reason of collecting study credits.

So I want to extend my warmest thanks to all the participants on the Artist’s Book course on the 9th of June – thank you for coming and being amazing – Amanda, Astrid, Gwen, Hilary, Lizzie, Rachel, Roz and Sue. It was indeed a fantastic day that was clearly reflected in the quality of books created in just one single intensive burst. Wishing you all the very best!

I am now ‘officially’ taking a break from bookbinding and client commissions. Most likely I won’t be returning to sculptural artist’s books in the near future either, as I will be dedicating my time to other creative endeavours. Although I believe that whatever I do, it will always have a certain bookishness to it. Just sometimes one has to clear the mind for a clean break so as not to disperse one’s energy too far and wide.

This also means I won’t be making further updates to this website. From the communications I receive via email, the visual archives of my work here may provide a good resource for many, so I will keep the galleries online for reference.

Consequently also, I’m selling some equipment and tools such as my large cast iron nipping press. It has served me well, and the amount of use has only added to its antique charm. It has travelled back and forth between continents, a friendly black beast. So, if you are in need of a big cast iron vertical press, let me know, you can buy mine. You can also ask for a list of other available tools & equipment.

And there we are. After some further creative flux, cocooning and morphing, I will be emerging elsewhere… On to new adventures!

You can see more, as well as purchase the above on: SpiritCarrier’s Etsy Store

The concept of various people around the globe dipping their individual white cloths into a myriad of rivers, and those cloths to be eventually joined as one large river curtain, is vastly symbolic. It resonates with me as an act of caring for our Gaia and creating unity amongst its people. I wanted to respond to that symbolism in some way with my contribution. Each of the contributed cloths will have their own personal story, some have been large community projects, some more private, but all flowing in from their various origins to unite together as one harmonious stream.

I chose a piece of white raw silk. It is in fact, the only white fabric I have in my art studio, but it fitted perfectly for my purpose. It is white raw silk that I bought a lot of while living in Dubai. I now use it often for book projects, especially wedding related ones. I adore this particular white raw silk. My own wedding dress was made of the same fabric. It’s wonderfully versatile too, works even as rather stylish living room curtains! And because I found it so difficult to adjust back to the British weather after the Middle Eastern sunshine, it seemed perfect to introduce the wintery British river to this sunny white cloth that came with me from Dubai. Since me and our daughter have been missing the sand dunes most, I thought it would be lovely to take her along to dip the white cloth with me. I also wanted to wait for one specific day for this special ritual… our one year ‘anniversary’ of leaving the desert sun behind. Maybe it is time to finally accept the grey, dreary chill of the north.

The most natural spot for the dipping was where we cross the River Cam every day. The day was suitably grey, with no sun in sight, but it also was incredibly windy which made everything somewhat more problematic. It was necessary to tie a long string to the corner of the cloth so we could keep hold of it. The white cloth did not want to co-operate in the strong gusts, and the drop from the river bank to the surface of the water was a couple of feet. Maybe the silk didn’t want to swim in the chilly dark river either, certainly looked like it. I never managed to get the cloth to spread open on the river’s surface, instead it curled and folded in protest, didn’t want to fly nor float. Rather it seemed to want to escape.

In the end, the piece of white raw silk from Dubai took two plunges in the chilly River Cam. First time around it curled into what I thought looked like a shape of a boat, maybe hoping for  a chance to sail away… And on the second swim, it had seemingly settled into its folded-in-the-wind fate, shivering amongst the swans who had rushed over from the other side of the river hoping there would be some food involved.

And as I write this, the piece of white raw silk is on its way to Lee Tracy, taking its sunny and chilly stories along, to be whispered amongst the group of all the other white cloths that will be flowing together as one very soon.

As the waters of the world continue to suffer, it is crucial to have those, like Lee Tracy, who work to raise awareness of these environmental issues that impact so many around the globe. I’m honoured to have been part of this worthwhile project.

One particularly delightful discovery for me on Etsy has been the “Treasuries”. They’re collections of 16 images on any theme one decides to curate on, pulling together various makers on Etsy to present a coherent, inspiring visual mood board. It’s an interesting exercise to curate such collections. Whether they are colour-coordinated shopping guides or something else… Myself, I’m particularly fascinated by expressing a thematic tale with a collection of images. Each artist’s work contributes to the whole and layers of meaning can be read from the combination of selected imagery. There’s something very similar in that process as in creating an artist book… The beauty of course being that you’re also connecting with and promoting some top notch creative makers in the process. I can see this type of curating exercise would be excellent for art students too – as compiling an image collection like this brings together many different skills in visual literacy.

There is a long list of continuously changing treasuries you can browse on Etsy. Some of them appeal to my personal visual sensibilities more than others, and some curators seem to consistently find magical content for their treasuries which have kept me in awe and inspired for days!

To share my recent discoveries of what Etsy has on offer, I’ll show you here some of the Treasuries I’ve curated so far. I recommend you click through to the site and explore all these artists’ creations more closely.

I’ve also opened an Etsy shop for the talismanic crystal jewellery that I make nowadays, so feel free to have a peek of this link too:
http://www.etsy.com/shop/SpiritCarrier

I have shed many “shoulds” and “should nots” from my making, which is incredibly liberating. In many ways I have also returned to the beginning, to re-discover  why I used to like making books in the first place. Yet it’s an ongoing spiral upwards, now combined with some purposeful research and development. I’m currently playing with macrame bindings, where the knotting is integral to the book’s structure, as well as carrying on with more jewellery work. I’m fascinated by this direction. I sense this time is full of transitions and new beginnings, and I’m quite excited to see where it all ends up.

Covered in reindeer leather, blind-tooled, with Sichuan Quartz (Tibetan ‘Herkimer’ Diamond) and African Turquoise (a type of Jasper).

Made in the style of medieval girdle books, but obviously worn as a pendant rather than attaching to one’s belt. Covered in reindeer leather, with antique metal filigree buttons and a brass chain.

Combining reindeer leather, blind-tooling and semi-precious beads with macrame knotting.

This is an artist book with a short hand-written text and accompanying abstract imagery made with ink. One may detect people in these “ink blotches” that relate to the text in one way or another. The whole book is very light in weight. It’s a tied accordion structure which makes for turnable pages rather than opening out into a long concertina. The page size is approximately 22×22cm, and the book is from July 2011.

‘Escapes’ is an artist book quite unlike I normally make, it is the exception to the rule as it were. It is one of those challenges I gave myself, mainly about a time limit. Since I usually labour over all my books meticulously for days on end, I started wondering if I would be at all able to make something in, say five hours flat. No more.

It was clear the book would need to be something visually minimal as opposed to my usual ‘maximalist’ style. I would also need to not get too fussy about details as it would stretch the making time well beyond the five hours I had given myself. I wasn’t allowed to explore all the possible details, wasn’t to obsess about the measurements too much, settling with a very simple structure, etc. I needed to make all decisions very quickly.

At the time of making this book, I had been thrown into following another person’s life story quite closely, so this was something that naturally presented a theme to explore, or rather, it was the closest one to grab, I did not start to mull over possible themes or select too specifically, I needed to go with the flow to keep in time… Therefore, a quick decision.

As I had set out to challenge myself with time to begin with, I thought to add another aspect that would deviate from what type of work I usually make. I decided to explore a sequence as in a normal, standard book content – so not my usual sculptural, symbolic piece, but rather a straightforward “content story”, because this also would simplify the project and allow me to complete it within my time limit. The total time I completed the book in, was about five and a half hours in the end.

An interesting experiment, different from the more “involved” work I normally do. I did notice how the time limit pushed me away from the meditative approach I like to take with my books. I wasn’t completely comfortable with it, after all, it has taken me years to develop a certain way of working. But it’s always useful to step out of one’s comfort zone and see where one ends up. Some books don’t need to be any more serious than that.

In public collection:
Bank Street Arts Centre
Sheffield, UK

A full leather fine binding in dark brown goat skin, with sewn silk headbands, solid-gilt edges and gold tooling across the covers, both in 24 carat gold leaf. Endpapers and doublures are marbled paper. The back cover also includes the book owner’s initials, made to blend in with the style of the rest of the design.

Bound in 2011.

In private collection