Speak for themselves

I'm amazed that I was on two massive trips, both for work, this summer, and still managed to produce a smidgen of work. Last week I got to see Stefan for an in-person shoot, which is always the best way to go (though NYC summer was fairly unbearable, weather-wise, this time around).

This dress was YEARS in the making. I had started folding these price tags around 2001, maybe earlier. I sewed them to paper thread at Haystack in 2008. One of those things that has followed me around to many different homes and studios until now.

Finally! I had been wanting to make this edition for well over a year. There are three things going on, an homage to instructional dressmaking manuals, another homage to commonplace books, and then the usual narrative that I write woven in between.

I have a particular way of taking notes of everything I read, and have been doing that since grad school about 15 years ago. They come in handy for all kinds of things, like having good quotes on hand (with the bibliographic citation in full) when you have to write a book, for inspiration, and for when you are finally making the artists' book you've wanted to make but wasn't ready until now.

Of course this is a favorite spread. This is partly why the edition is limited to ten copies.

And the tip-ins are all different, so of course it had to be a variable edition (the hanji pages also vary as I had to cull from different batches. Learned a lot about which hanji wants to go into the printer and which DOES NOT). Doing the former makes printing easy and pleasurable and nearly instantaneous. The latter makes life awful.

This is the first time, maybe ever, that I've felt 100% great about a book that I've made. It's because I have the right tools (experience, technical skills, confidence) in the right combination.

All of those failed prints turned into new dresses.

Photos:
Artists' books,
Hanji dresses,
Hanji ducks.

Meanwhile, finally back home for a bit and back to nesting. I was a little cranky at first, but did a bunch of housecleaning and laundry today, enjoying the NOT humid summer here, and glad to have the big driving of the year done.