Wednesday, May 3, 2017

Work in progress

A little under the weather, but the past few days I've been working on creating images for my handmade Kyoto book. It hasn't helped that my printer appears to be dying rather quickly and a new one may be in the offing.

The book will consist of a lot of antique Japanese papers as well as papers I've created -- stained, painted, folded, spindled, mutilated. Each page will be a collage of sorts, incorporating a photograph that I've stained with tea, coffee, ink, paint, etc.

This is an example of what I have in mind, sort of, for the photographs. But until I can print out the pictures, I'm kind of at a standstill.

The pages will be horizontal, about 6" high, 15" wide, made of a variety of paper types, bound together on the left. One side (the front) of each page will be a collage with photo; the reverse side also a collage, but a very simple one.

For this digital photomontage, I used a photo I took of a maiko (geisha) in Kyoto, heavily stained rice papers, ledger papers, etc. When I print the final version, onto rice paper, I will print it much lighter and then will hand-stain it with a sepia-toned ink.

My goal is a book that looks very old, very soft, weathered, stained and mysterious. As with most of the things I've been making lately, it's designed to be held, touched, very tactile in nature. Although this is a book, it's not meant to be a pristine portfolio of images, rather the photos will simply become a small part of the whole.

If I can just get the damned printer to work!

©Carol Leigh
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