Book Binding Workshop

Today was a session in the print making room on book binding. As I have already explored making books in my book binding elective I wanted to build on this experience and progress some ideas that developed from this. For example, the idea of creating a book from art, rather than filling a book with art was something discussed in this elective. Therefore, I decided to use this time to build on the new set of work I was exploring of signage, inspired by the chosen artist of my essay Bob and Roberta Smith, and create a series of lino prints of signs to the bind into a book. 

I created a lino print using the phrase from my artist manifest: 'Care about change not about credit'. I wanted to create a lino print to be able to create multiple prints of the message, to emphasize it's importance that it is a message that is worth repeating and a message that is important enough to fill an entire book. I printed on A4 newsprint, one print on each side, so that once folded to create a book there would be a print on each page. I explored the combination of the primary colours with these prints, and like how no one print is identical due to the irregularities that occur from hand printing with lino.

After printing on both sides of 12 A4 sheets of newsprint and allowing them to dry, I used my book binding knowledge to bind the books using a pamphlet stitch. However, unlike the pamphlet we learnt to make in book binding I decided not to create a cover, but simply leave the pages as the entity, to imply that the message inside is the most important part of the book. I found this process very interesting in connection to the first session of art and text where we explored destroying and defacing books, whereas here I was creating a book.