Books! Printed, Collated and Bound!

I’ve always been a sucker for paper, pens, letterpress … all the delightful things that keep reading and writing an immediate and tactile experience. I’m a bit of a Luddite or a throwback I guess, but there is something utterly irreplaceable and so very delicious about hand writing a letter with a fountain pen … holding and reading a real book, and smelling the fresh ink-and-paper smell when it’s opened for the first time.

So really, it should be no surprise at all for me to discover that I adore bookbinding.

I have had the honour and pleasure to collaborate with poet Catherine Owen for several years now (her blog is here – and well worth a read!); this latest incarnation of our work together is a chapbook, revolving around – you guessed it – nests. Catherine has written some beautiful nest poems over the last year; her wondrous words and my images (based on the nest forms she used in the poems) come together here.

This little volume with be available for purchase October 18th, at the Opening Reception of NEST, my Residency exhibition at Harcourt House. I was going to wait a bit to show the world  – but I’m really pleased and excited by the results, so it’s Preview Time!

Some images of  the chapbook, NEST {types} :

I’m happy with the way the entire project turned out – and looking forward to doing more in this vein over the coming years.

This particular project has been both a fitting close and an opening out: I am a little less than a month away from the exhibition of NEST and the end of that year-long process. That reality also marks  an entry into the next phase in the project (nope it’s not over yet!!), in which I will develop more visual work, but also turn my attention to writing, and to working with Catherine further to see what evolves in this body of work.

Looking forward, always, to the adventure …