2015 Hurrah!

I love a New Year, even if a really awful cold has delayed my start a bit.  There is so much to do so many plans…

A quick catch up with the Moon project which has now ended.
Many fascinating ideas came along with many frustrations in tow.  I often have to learn things the hard way but it has increased my understanding of monoprinting and its possibilities and I did complete, if not really finish, a few ideas for small books.
I made a prototype embossed concertina book, loosely based on a tactile/Braille solution to depicting the moon’s phases.

braille book 2    backlight    braille 1    braille 2

braille 2_2    braille 3

Braille Book

It was very white, and very tricky to make with an awful lot of measuring, hole punching and trials before I got it to work, but I discovered a lovely translucent quality to the compressed paper, how to write the phases of the moon in Braille and that I need more patience.
I made another rough book idea based on the views that Galileo had of the moon through his small telescope. He could only see sections of the moon one at a time which, they say, is why his early moon maps were inaccurate.
The round telescope views reveal a section of the larger moon map piece by piece. ( in this case Cassini’s very beautiful moon map of 1679).

Galileos section

Galileo’s Section

The monoprint series continued and I eventually chose 30 to form a small 36 page, single section, saddle stitched, self ending book called: “29 d 12 h 44 min 2.8016 s  29.530587981” (which is the length of a synodic month. Hence the half page image at the end)

pages

Pagination worked out for printing.

I made a very simple, soft back, slip cover and printed some moon words on the endpapers

Cover     spread 1   spread 2   spread 3

end page

“29 d 12 h 44 min 2.8016 s  29.530587981” book 6 x 8 inches T

his small book illustrates just some of my research avenues.
It was all completely fascinating, absorbing and wonderful.

I find myself reluctant to leave the moon, so many more possibilities and half finished and unexplored ideas, but there may be time over the next year to realise a few more.
Meanwhile it’s on with the game.. Growth, Eels and Rivers plus more pigs and bees to come.

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2 Comments

  1. Your moon book looks worthy of an exhibition, in its own right!

  2. Hi Diana ,, you are very kind! I was thinking about you a few weeks ago because I had hoped to get another Grafham mythical creature done this winter..It may still happen! 🙂

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