The book completed!

With silhouettes cut from all of the pages it was time to make the book stand.

This proved to be a bit of a challenge. I had drilled dowels into the base thinking I could simply attach chipboard to the dowels and glue the spine of the book to the chipboard. It seemed like a good idea at the time. I applied the glue and held the book in place........and I held the book in place........and I held the book in place........well anyway, I held it a long time, but it didn't matter, the book had gotten too fragile and the spine was disintegrating. The glue held it to the chipboard at the bottom, but not at the top, so the book slumped.

Yikes! The figure couldn't sit on the book if it was slumping. Heck, the silhouettes couldn't even fan out! Time was running out, I needed to get the piece finished in time for the show and I couldn't sculpt the figure until I had the book standing so I could see how its legs would sit on the book. After a few minutes of panicking I decided I might be able to drill a couple of holes through the book, then wire it to the dowels. If you are ever going to drill through a book I recommend doing it while the book is laying down, it will be much easier I'm sure. It wasn't easy, but it worked!!

I had the head and torso and hands of the figure sculpted, now I was able to sculpt the legs and arms in the position I had in mind.

The piece made it to Still Life in G Gallery in the Village of the Arts in Bradenton, Florida in time for the show. I wasn't completely happy with it when I finished, but I ran out of time and I had to stop working on it. It's the base I'm not happy with. I asked people to give me the names of characters they remember from books they've read and I wrote the names, along with the quote on the base, but it's all too pale I think. There's no contrast. Deb McKeever, the owner of the gallery is going to invite visitors to the show to add names to the base. If I'm still unhappy with it when it comes home I can always work on it some more!

Cutting, Cutting, Cutting (the book continues)

I looked for faces with interesting profiles everywhere. Cutting the silhouettes took three weeks. I went through almost 100 #11 x-acto knife blades. The pages that were cut away left wonderful negative spaces giving me a great collection of reverse silhouettes (a future project?).

No matter how often I changed the blade I ended up with some fuzzy edges. I realized that it didn't matter because while we do remember the people from the books we read when we are young, the memories fade and the edges become fuzzy. So the piece will read: The people in the books we read, especially when we are young, become a part of us. The memories may fade and the edges become soft, but they are with us forever.

The book continues

Wow, it's been a long time since I've written! Time has been flying, I must be having fun.

The sculptural book piece is finished; I'll share it in a later post. It took a lot longer to finish it than I had anticipated, as things often do. While I had the book standing up on end it looked like it wanted a figure to sit on top, that would look down into the pages. I still wanted to do some kind of faces ....SO....I decided to cut silhouettes from the pages of the book.

At this point the question was whether to cut many different silhouettes, or do one silhouette 1200 times (there are 1200 pages in the book). As I was pondering this I thought how many of the characters from the books I read when I was young had stayed with me, I still think of them, some had helped to shape me. I decided to cut many different faces in the book. All 1200 pages. It took a long time. A very long time.