GRACIA + LOUISE

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 series of books in small editions, all those who have printed them, from Phil Beattie at Hart Printing (offset printing) through to Bernie Rackham at Redwood Prints (lithographic offset), have chuckled at the size of the printing run… “You need only five? Only ten copies? Only fifteen sheets of Magnani paper to work with? You don’t need 1,500 copies? Are you sure?”

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), Dr. Carlos Lemos at the Portuguese Consulate, and many, many others, not least of all, 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 thirteen artists’ books to each of 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.

{Images below, Not in my Music Room, by Gracia (featuring an image entitled Brahms' Music-Room in Vienna... a page NOT torn from the SLV collection), and a lone seal pup on a rock.}