Hand Made Shadows

"What shadows doth hide in the souls of human kind?"

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Well a last year I bought a Dell Laser Colour printer. When it arrived it was so  heavy it came on a wooden pallette. It took two of us to loft it out of my ute and it sits in the middle of our home office, a black monolith the size of an old fashioned poof. And we all know how big an old fashioned poof is, don't we?

Well, I kept the pallett cause it was kind of interesting, and I knew that in the next one hundred and fifty years it would come in handy for something or other. And so, the other day, when I had finally finished the last kilometre of my folding book I was making for the show that opens next Saturday, I realised it need a box.

And not just any box. It had to be old and patinated and gothic and bashed around (a lot like me bar the gothic). And so I realised that it would be a great irony if I made a box from the pallette that had supported the printer that I had printed the pages for my book from. And so the idea for this box was born.

The box is kind of handy actually. The book sits in it and the pages fold out of it. Kinda weird, but it adds presence to the procedings of the reading. And it was fun making the covers cause I didn't have a clue what I was doing. And I ended up making packers to sit around the pages to stop the book innards sliding around and breaking when the book is in the box.

Accordion books are great fun because the folding structure can go anyway you like. It can go sideways, or up or down, and y ou can stick pages in the middle of the accordion structure as if they are pages of an ordinary book. And you can have big spreads  of three or four pages that all go to make one big image. That's  if you are inclined.

That image above on the left, well that's the witch in the story, the one that get's burnt in the oven. Well you pull the red thing and she pops out of the burning oven. Heh.

There's also a few pages of writing in the front of the book as an introduction. That's there to make you think I am smart :) I am not sure if that ruse woked though... (see pic below)

And did I tell you I made a Blurb book as well?. So I have made an Artist's Limited Edition of 100 and they will be on exhibition at the gallery. I had some critique on this one that was extremely valuable - so thank you to those artists for their advice - you know who you are!

And lastly I made this book cover for a book which will be feautured at the show called Cape Grimm by Carmel Bird. You'll probably recognise it from a few posts ago.

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Thank you for looking. I'll be visiting tomorrow :) Watch out! Heh.

Jack in The Box for President!! (Artificial)

Please note: What follows is not my opinion about blogging, bloggers, or blog land. The opinions expressed here are soley those held by the characters of the story. The characters are actually artificial and fictional. My personal feelings are, on the whole, at the opposite extreme.

 

Once upon a time in the Land Of Blog, lived a Jack in the Box named 'Jack'.

Now Jack, by his nature, had a few problems.

Not only did he have both Short Man's Syndrome and No Legs Syndrome, he also suffered from that peculiar and rare disease called Nothing at All below the Hips Syndrome.

Consequently Jack on springing up out of his box first thing in the morning always felt slightly inadequate.

So one Saturday night, while under the influence of nicotiana tabacum , he decided to do something about it.

He decided he was going to be President of All of The Land of Blog.

This fact he confided to his wind-up friend Union Jack the next morning. At the time Union was painting his face with Woad and getting ready not to go to church.  He was named Union Jack because he had two glass eyes imprinted with the English Flag.

"But why?" asked Union Jack. "There's nothing here in The Land of Blog, just a lot of bloggers. It's all, umm, artificial."

Jack in the Box looked down into his friends red and white eyes. "Well why not?" .
"What good would it do you?" asked Union Jack.

"I'd feel,... I'd feel good."

"But it would be an 'artificial' feel good."

"Let me ask you a question then," said Jack in the Box.

Union Jack stuck out his chest. "Fire away."

"What do you want to do when you grow up?"
"Hmmph," said  Union Jack. He pointed at the spring in Jack's box. "It's all about you not having anything, you know, down there."

"Oh, it is not!" said Jack in the Box and crossed his arms.

But his friend Union Jack knew differently.