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WHY BOOKS?

We make artists' books collaboratively as a team and have been doing so since 1999. Place the apostrophe before the 's' or after the 's', we don’t mind, we just like to make books. Artists' books with drawings, with elements of collage, hand coloured with pencil or stamped, even cut out and altered ever so slightly. Every step, every part of the process, every learning curve, holds us besotted.

We fell into the making of these artists’ books seemingly by accident, without even realising, much like our collaboration. A turn here, a turn there, and here we are. From working in various journals, scrap books, visual diaries and sketch books, and often side-by-side in the studio, it seemed only natural to continue this further and commence making a series of limited edition artists’ books.

The medium of the artists' book seemed, to us, to be free of rules and regulations, of do's and don'ts. It also presented many new things to consider, from page layout and sequence, various typographical decisions, which paper stock to use and just how to get the most out of a sheet of paper when printing a financially costly, small edition. From the outset we knew next to nothing of the logistics of binding. Could a love of books as reader and a limited knowledge of the history of artists' books, coupled with a stint in Switzerland to studying experimental binding techniques under Daniel E. Kelm, be enough to guide us along the way?

Through working on this loose series of books in small editions, all those who have printed them, from Phil Beattie at Hart Printing through to Bernie Rackham at Redwood Prints, have chuckled at the small size of our printing run. Yes, along the way we have been fortunate, very fortunate, to receive assistance and inspiration from bookbinders, offset printers, opticians, hobby supply shop stockists based in Wantirna (for the brass wire and rods required in book spines and saddle sections), Dr. Carlos Lemos at the Portuguese Consulate, and many many others, not least, our friends and family. Who could have foreseen long ago, as we spent many a quiet afternoon happily ensconced in the Chess Reading Room at the State Library of Victoria, looking at a wonderful collection of rare books shown to us by Des Cowley, that we would end up with a small army of artists’ books to our names? Turning the pages of old Atlases complete with sea monsters and ghouls, each in a pair of white gloves, to now… it's proving a long and amusing journey.

We plunged in knowing little and are unlikely to ever end our affair with the artists' book and all the possibilities the medium holds.


Gracia Haby
All were in their place.
2008
collage
featured in Small Collection zine


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