Making Artists’ Books with Polymer Clay – A New Class at Palo Alto Art Center

Posted on June 20, 2011 | 4 comments

I’ve been fascinated by the possible uses of polymer clay in artists books since I first used it for the jesters hat on my artists’ book King George.

My next use of polymer clay was as candy piece covers for my artists’ book Love/Chocolate:

Now, in preparation for teaching a class through Palo Alto Art Center, I’ve made sample books with polymer clay covers, decorative medallions and entire books made only from polymer clay. I’ve found it to be a flexible and interesting medium and one that allows me to create almost anything I can imagine for artists’ books.

The first book, Tropical Dreams, has a polymer clay medallion mounted on the cover of an accordion book. The clay medallion was made using a series of fondant (like for cake icing) molds and then glazed with a satin glaze after baking.

The second book, Lace Journal, was made by debossing the lace pattern into the clay using a pasta press and then emphasizing the pattern with fluid chalks. The polymer clay panels are then glued onto a pamphlet stitched book made of Rives BFK.

The last book, Tea at Grandmother’s,  is made entirely of polymer clay panels. After marbling two colors of purple with some green clay, I cut out 6 panels and baked them. I stamped the black images onto the clay using Staz-On ink and baked the panels again. To make the images part of the panels I painted them with liquid clay, which turned translucent after a third baking. Finally, I cut black panels the same size as the original marbled panels and embedded, between the sets of panels, two black ribbons the length of the book. The black ribbon acts as hinges for the finished accordion and went through the final baking process just fine.

There are so many more techniques to play with, I can hardly wait! I think a 5 week class is going to fly by and leave us wanting more time to play with the clay. If you’re interested, the 5-week class runs on Wednesdays from July 6th to August 3rd, you can sign up for the class through Palo Alto Art Center by going to their website: http://enjoyonline.cityofpaloalto.org/Activities/ActivitiesDetails.asp?ProcessWait=N&aid=16471 or by calling 650-463-4900.

~Ginger

www.gingerburrell.com

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One Second of Time – A New Artists’ Book by Ginger Burrell

Posted on June 15, 2011 | Leave a comment

I am obsessed with earthquakes, or at least if you hear my husband tell it you would think so. I prefer to think of it as a healthy caution concerning a seemingly random natural event. Some of my earliest memories are of earthquakes – which makes sense since I’ve lived in California most of my life and, through some twist of fate, I’ve often been close to the epicenter.

When I am in a big warehouse store – Costco, Lowes, Home Depot – you know the kind with the miles of stock stacked above your head? – I think about earthquakes. When I walk across a parking structure – the kind that pancaked during the Northridge quake – I think about earthquakes. When I am on vacation – away from California – I think about earthquakes. Okay, perhaps I am a bit obsessed.

This book began as an expression of my hyperawareness. I created monoprints with jagged edges and a sense of motion and then combined them in Photoshop with found, public domain, images of earthquake damage. I then wrote poems to express my thoughts about earthquakes. 

One Second of Time, an accordion book, is irregularly folded so that from above it alludes to the seismogram. The poetry is also written and presented in seismograph form. The book is printed on Rives BFK with archival inkjet printing. The font is Chiller. The cover paper, meant to evoke layers of sedimentary earth, is Pirouette Marbled Paper in black, gold and silver. One Second of Time is an edition of 10.

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The title, One Second of Time, comes from a quote by Charles Darwin in 1839. “A bad earthquake at once destroys the oldest associations: the world, the very emblem of all that is solid, has moved beneath our feet like a crust over a fluid; one second of time has conveyed to the mind a strange idea of insecurity, which hours of reflection would never have created.”

If you would like to look at larger versions of the photographs in the slideshow, you can click on these images, here:

Your comments are appreciated.

~Ginger

www.gingerburrell.com

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Chutes and Ladders Re-Imagined

Posted on June 13, 2011 | 1 comment

One of my frequent  concerns as an artist (and one I hear from many of my fellow artists) is the sheer amount of materials I go through. Papers, boards, adhesives – so many raw materials go into book making. Each time I order a box full of Rives BFK or Davey Board I feel a twinge of regret for the trees that will suffer a beheading to support my pursuit of art.

To challenge myself and use up those scraps of Rives, Davey Board and the vintage books and games I can’t resist at yard sales, I’ve decided to teach a class using only recycled and found materials. The class isn’t until September, but the Palo Alto Art Center needed photos to layout the catalog now. So this morning I went to my studio and started sifting through stacks of goodies I can’t seem to part with – the result is the book in the photo above – a re-imagined Chutes and Ladders.

The book is made with an old Chutes and Ladders game, scraps of Rives BFK, scraps of embroidery floss and scraps of black paper. So far so good – I’ve kept to my goal of not buying any materials for this class.

First, to really show off the game board, I decided to used pieces of the board not only as a cover, but also as section dividers. In order to show them off to best effect I made them graduated in height from 4 1/2 to 7 3/4″.  I covered the exposed board edges with thin pieces of black paper wrapped around them like bias tape. Next, to use those cute little game pieces, I decided to use them as “tabs” for my dividers. I glued them using straight PVA.

For the pages I cut three pieces of Rives BFK to the same height as the section dividers and twice as wide. I folded them in half and then used a pamphlet stitch to attach them into an accordion fold spine – so each section has 12 pages. I attached the section dividers and the covers using Terrifically Tacky double-sided tape and there it is, my first entirely recycled book.

I’m happy with the way the design allows the game to remain the focus and it was very fun to make a single book with materials on hand. It was a different exercise in creativity to design around materials I already had rather than design around an idea rattling around in my head. Instead of worrying about getting enough materials for an edition, I could focus on celebrating the materials I had in a single book. I’m looking forward to teaching this class in the fall!

~Ginger

www.gingerburrell.com

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