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February 09, 2007

Fine Art Books

The Next Generation show is coming to a close. Tomorrow is the last day that our works and words will hang. Monday morning Robbi's wall painting will be painted over. It grieves me.

The end of the show means that the time has come to fulfil the various orders. Which means that we have a lot of fine art books to make. 10 to be exact. We sold one full set of all seven books to one generous collector, two copies of Facial Features of French Explorers (to two different people), and one copy of My Henderson Robot to our good friend Sarah Myers.

See Sarah smiling, just after being told that her book was in the works.

We had originally told Sarah that we would make her copy of My Henderson Robot weeks ago, but in typical fashion, got lazy and did nothing instead.

Eventually, though, the time came to start making the fine art books. The books we send out to subscribers on a monthly basis are printed on high-end copy paper and are printed on a Xerox solid ink printer. This method is fast and produces a relatively durable product. In printing the fine art books, we used the Epson printer, which produces a much more nuanced image that looks uncannily like the original. We print the fine art books on an expensive, textured stock that helps suggest the texture of the original and which holds color beautifully.

The Xerox is very fast. The Epson is very slow. It takes about 4 hours to print out one copy of our longest book, A Bully Named Chuck, on the Epson.

After printing out each book. I cut book board (really thick cardboard) to serve as the front and back cover and spine.

Then I use the table-mounted drill press to drill holes along the spine end.

Once the holes are in place, I use dental floss to sew the whole thing together.

After the book guts are bound and the boards cut, I cut pieces of binding cloth to wrap around the covers and spine.

Piles of book cloth cut to size.

The boards and cloth for Sarah's copy of My Henderson Robot.

A shot that shows my enormous right hand. Dramatic.

Next I went over to the unfinished side of the barn, used primarily as the Florabana warehouse. Here is where I use the ultra-adhesive spray mount to get the book cloth good and sticky.

Then I place the front cover on the book cloth and wrap the extra cloth over the edge, using the bone folder to smooth the cloth.

See the preposterous working environment? Space is at a premium, and I must be content with what I can get, I'm afraid. The glue vapors are toxic, so it helps to use a room with high ceilings (or go outside).

Next I placed the three pieces that make up the spine on a small piece of book cloth that will form the spine and will serve to attach the covers to the spine.

One cover is then attached.

And then the other.

And eventually the whole thing comes together.

I returned to our side of the barn and smoothed out the book cloth on the cover.

Next comes the Elmer's. Good old Elmer's.

At which point it was time to insert the guts. Behold the guts.

In go the guts.

Then we clamped the book to apply pressure while the glue set.

Voila!

The book had to sit overnight to allow the Elmer's time to do it's magic.

In our house, this is where books sit while waiting to grow up.

In other news, Mom and Dean are visiting from Boston. They came to see us and to see the show.

We used the visit as an excuse to go out to dinner. We chose Ford's, the restaurant attached to the place where we go to get bushels of steamed crabs from time to time.

The place is steeped in local color. Our waitress, Heather, was the high-voltage sort. She was exceedingly attentive and incredibly familiar in her choice of nicknames for the clientele. During the 90 some odd minutes we spent dining at Ford's, she referred to me and the others at our table as: darling, sweetie, honey, sugar, hon, sweetie pie, and sweeties. There may have been others. It was an extraordinary thing.

Here is Heather. I was so moved by the force of her that I requested a photo be taken.

Ford's was out of everything we tried to order. If I had had my way, I would have eaten ribs, a caesar salad, and rice pudding. Instead I ate king crab legs, calamari, and bread pudding. In retrospect, I'm glad that they were out of the things I thought I wanted. Because the food I got was fantastic. The king crab legs, in particular, were delicious.

If somewhat dangerous.

Posted by bogenamp at February 9, 2007 11:26 PM

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