I'm adding the second and third of my Library Book series which I finished in January 2016.
Here are some views of #2.
I luckily was able to obtain an old dictionary which I cannibalized for the cover and can use in my next series. The shelves this time were made by a kind fellow at Haystack who whipped it up for me in the Wood Studio.
And here is #3, finally! The first three images are of the maquette I made to plan out the final product. This piece was fun because I found I was moved to make a kind of pop-up to convey what I wanted. To me it is an book in honor of the branch library in Cleveland where I spent time as a young child. It was small and friendly. The librarian was relatively kind - that is not judgmental - as I felt most adults were at that time.
As you can see it came out fairly close to what I had planned, for which I'm thankful.
This whole project took about three years to complete. I was making the small books in early 2013 and finally finished the final book in January of 2016. It was a process of making hundreds of small books without a clear idea of how I would use them. I did have a tray for holding type that I wanted to use as it made me think of book shelves. But otherwise I was just in love, obsessed, whatever you call it, with making the small books.
Then I was lucky enough to be part of the first Open Studio Residency at Haystack Mountain School of Craft which gave me the confidence to hang on to my blurry vision of incorporating the miniature books into a series of larger books that honored libraries.
