Grain Direction

This week was busy, especially in my mind, (or should I say on the phone)!

I had an incredible amount of difficulty ordering a box of Moab Lasal Photo by Legion; I wanted to make sure I received the correct paper size and grain. As you know if you are folding paper, then it has to be in the correct grain direction or it’s a mess.

The book’s finished size will be 8.5 x 5.5”. With folds, I need 8.5 x 11” grain short paper for printing with a bleed or 11 x 17” with grain short with lots of white space. Larger size sheets have waste, but I could fold the paper with no breakage. On 13 x 19” with grain long I had the possibility of printing 2 up. The order appeared straightforward, once I figured how to use each size sheet depending on inventory.

I placed my order with a friendly customer service representative. Five days later, the package arrived with incorrect grain direction.

A phone call to IT Supplies elicited a fast apology and a re-order with my instructions on grain direction.

After another five days, the package arrived and my hopes faded when I realized the same paper was shipped. Back on the phone, I find out they had no grain long paper in stock!

I took matters into my own hands and called Moab papers. Seventy-six boxes of grain long were available at the New Jersey warehouse, I was told. Direct shipping from Moab adds $8 to $10 more. No thanks, I will try IT Supplies again!

I tried to explain my dilemma going back and forth with customer service. I need small-sized papers in grain short and larger sheets in grain long. But the smaller sheets were available in grain long and the large sheets were now being cut with grain short! Are you hearing the Twilight Zone theme song yet?

While I spoke with three other distributors, I heard the strangest ideas on how to go about getting the paper I needed. One guy even suggested I purchase several boxes in the hope that one of the packages shipped MIGHT BE with correct grain. Is the paper returnable, I asked. “Yes for a 10% restocking fee.” WHAT! No one in their right mind would do something so stupid. I hoped he never suggested such a solution to another customer!

I searched the internet for different possibilities in the Moab Lasal Photo paper. I discovered that Legion cuts 12 x 13” sheets, not a special order--I hoped. “What grain direction would you like this paper?” was the next interaction. I explained the process of producing books, paper, folding and grain direction.

Another 5 days.

Alleluia! I received my paper, it’s 12 x 13” GRAIN LONG!! Bookmakers know in the situation outlined above that the grain direction does not matter since I can print from either side. ^%$&%$#^%$!

© 2017 Louise Levergneux

ITSupplies dropped the shipping charges for my troubles (living in hope!). Innocence is bliss, I get what that means. I can start my book now.

Farewell Equinox

I studied the responses of emails to my inquiry about a donation to Special Collection Libraries. I finally made a decision and I’m delighted to announce that I found the perfect home for Equinox. Equinox will be part of the other 65,000 books housed in the Golda Meir Library. The library is part of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Libraries, in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

After speaking with Max Yela, the Head of Special Collections, I relinquished all of my stress. I can now breath easy and able to let go of my project. The UWM Book Arts Collection endeavors to document and show the use of the book form as an art medium and has a world-wide reputation. With its active exhibitions, the Golda Meir Library will bring Equinox to the public and make them aware of my work.

The Golda Meir Library already holds 3 of my artists’ books: City Shields, Outside the Studio (AIR.10, copy #4), and 26NOV2006. 

The most important criteria on my list were that Equinox would find a home in a Canadian Collection. When that turned out negative because of budget restraints my thoughts went to other important criteria, the library receiving Equinox as a gift had 

1. acquired my artists’ books in the past, and

2. understood my work.

© 2007 Louise Levergneux, Equinox 2006-2007

© 2006 Louise Levergneux, Equinox 2005-2006

© 2005 Louise Levergneux, Equinox 2004-2005

© 2004 Louise Levergneux, Equinox 2003-2004

© 2003 Louise Levergneux, Equinox 2002-2003

© 2002 Louise Levergneux, Equinox 2001-2002

© 2001 Louise Levergneux, Equinox 2000-2001

© 2000 Louise Levergneux, Equinox 1999-2000

© 1999 Louise Levergneux, Equinox 1998-1999

Finding A Good Home

While I wait for my Lasal Paper to arrive. I squeezed onto my studio floor my project Equinox, a nine-year project comprising 9 books filled with daily memories and activities. It felt necessary last October to find a good home for Equinox. After exhibiting Equinox a few times and with many moves since 2007, I felt the books would be better in a controlled environment. 

There is a limited time our artists’ books should stay on the shelves of our studios. What's your opinion on this subject? 

© 2017 Louise Levergneux, preparing and verifying all the books of my project Equinox for packing and shipping to their new home

In 1998, while mourning my father’s passing, time became important and archiving seconds an obsession. As I archived the seconds of my life, I realized that these seconds would change, they would get distorted and disappear. It takes another major event for our mind's eye to bring back a memory of a particular moment in our lives but as stated, that second will be forever changed by the days, months, and years. 

While illustrating this photographic archive, I transformed the mundane into a visual history by juxtaposing photographic evidence of my individuality. 

The first book, 1998-1999, I archived my journey with a self-portrait, the time of day I photographed myself, and people I interacted with during each day. 

For 1999 to 2000, I represented my life with a self-portrait and a list of daily activities, a meteorological report, and a receipt (proof of my existence) from an item purchased. 

In the new millennium (2000-2001), I celebrated with a self-portrait, paper dolls—my daily muse, and a list of what my five senses gleaned on each day. 

© 2001 Louise Levergneux, Equinox 2000-2001 page for January 8th.

During 2001-2002, I remembered my father with flowers received, picked or visualized, my self-portrait, and the time of day I received insight. 

© 2003 Louise Levergneux, Equinox 2001-2002 page for January 8th.

A celebration was in the air in 2002-2003 with a new Sheltie puppy, and a quote from the Book of Psalms accompanied my portrait. 

© 2003 Louise Levergneux, Equinox 2002-2003 page for January 8th.

Locations frequented during 2003 accompanied by a self-portrait, an emotive description, not of my own feelings of the day. 

My daily TV viewing next to my self-portrait throughout 2004-2005, credits a friend who sees life through the media. 

© 2005 Louise Levergneux, Equinox 2004-2005 page for January 8th.

I celebrated the birthdays of family, friends, Co-workers, and associates by writing their names next to my portrait as I give a hand to those listed in 2005-2006. 

© 2006 Louise Levergneux, Equinox 2005-2006 page for January 8th.

The last year of Equinox came to fruition by saluting the four cardinal directions throughout the year 2006-2007. 

© 2007 Louise Levergneux, Equinox 2006-2007 page for January 8th.

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I enjoyed working on Equinox, now it is time to make new memories and new moments in my life. The studio is very busy with preparations for my show at Ming Studios in February-March. I'm working in Photoshop, printing and cutting more manhole covers. I'm cleaning old files, this month is all about new beginnings.

New Year, New beginnings!

Celebrating one year of blogging! It’s been a pleasure getting to know all of you through my posts. Thank you for the support.

Major changes are in the air for my 1/2 Measure Studio this year. The reasoning behind my books is on my mind these days. I’m questioning the trajectory of my work. Changing paths is a big moment and one I want to see bring forward movement to my work. 

For now, confusion! Why do this? Why do that? Why be an artist? 

Do you have questions that haunt you as an artist? 

In the last month, I have been working on a new artists’ book—a sequel to my book entitled Beside Me. Beside Me was a wonderful book on teams published in 2005.

How do your books come to life?

Mine usually start with a trip, a thought, an experience... This one started with an emotion.

Completely filled with emotion, my mind started to think of how to create this book and in what format. Thoughts raced through my mind.

Think, re-think, plan, images, dream, re-think, write, view it in my mind’s eye, dream of it, camera in hand, photograph, template, re-think, write, play in Photoshop, design pages, dream, cover? Binding! Think! Choose fonts, discussion, re-think, compose photographs, relate to book Beside Me, write, edit, paper size, size of book, re-design, Edit...

Ideas have gelled, cover and binding chosen. The real work starts and frustrations follow!

I had difficulties in ordering paper with the proper grain direction needed for printing the pages of my book. Was everyone in the companies I called asleep at the switch? After many phone calls, I’m hoping to receive the correct paper. 

Particular companies understand book publishing and grain directions. One of those companies is Moab papers by Legion. They are always happy to talk about the needs of their customers.

What type of difficulties do you run into with paper? Size, grain direction, thickness, durability...

This waiting period is giving me time to conceive the cover and how the new book will flow with the first book Beside Me.

© 2016 Louise Levergneux, cover of Standing Alone

I continue working on my files of manhole covers to create eleven new volumes of different cities across the Canadian provinces.

©2016 Louise Levergneux, Saskatchewan manhole covers in Bridge ready to action in Photoshop

© 2013 Louise Leverghneux, Hotel Aloft, Minneapolis, MN, April 30, 2013

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I hope happiness and prosperity comes your way in 2017!

Have A Great Holiday Season!

It’s the season of lights and snow. Last year, I took my camera outside the studio and photographed ice crystals on this very day. Only a few inches of snow but wonderful to see.

© 2015 Louise Levergneux

This holiday season in Boise, the temperature brings me back home to Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. It's nippy outside! We have the most snow, I’ve seen since 2007, my last Christmas in Canada.

Are we still in the West? These cows answer my question!

© 2016 Louise Levergneux

This video shows Ottawa celebrating 2016, with lights.

I wish everyone a happy holiday season! See you next year!

Records, Databases and Obsessions!

Still searching for a handmade gift for Christmas?

These decorative boxes are a great gift idea for keeping a thumb drive full of memories. They are also a great gift for anyone who loves to store small items, special trinkets, keepsakes, or jewelry.

To buy a handmade box, visit my website or email me at louiselevergneux(at)gmail(dot)com

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The closer it gets to the New Year the more I examine simplicity, minimalism, and time spent on different activities as an artist.

How do artists keep records of contacts, invoices, detailed information on artists’ books/artwork and inventory? 

FileMaker Pro has been my software of choice for years and years. I store important information in four files that cross over depending on the information needed for an invoice or inventory. 

© 2016 Louise Levergneux, layout of my contact database

The future has come. I will need to upgrade my computer’s OS soon or buy a new Mac Book Pro. In the long run, some software will become useless unless I upgrade. A new system and new upgrades mean more expenses. Cash is low!

Keeping in mind; I don’t want to spend too much time learning new software which defeats the purpose, ARRRGH! 

After emailing the Book Arts ListServ to see what other artists are doing, I recognized the cost for the upgrade would be less when considering the time spent exporting or recreating. It might be better to continue working with FileMaker Pro by simplifying my layouts and the number of fields. 

© 2016 Louise Levergneux, metadata of my book Finding Home. Each book created has a record with this information.

A huge amount of data requires many hours to recreate a database. It is unthinkable to lose any details on my artists’ books even with a back-up system like Time Machine”. This data was compiled following the digital repository of the Artists' Books Online in which I participated. 

ABsOnline is an online repository project of facsimiles, metadata, and criticism founded in 2004 under the direction of Johanna Drucker hosted at the University of Virginia.

Artists' Books Online was designed to promote critical engagement with artists’ books and to provide access to a digital repository of metadata, scans, and commentary. The project serves several communities: artists, scholars and critics, librarians and curators, and interested readers.

After a visit to the Apple store and all the comments and suggestions received. I’m going towards the Apple’s suggestion of a split hard drive/dual operating system on a new computer. This decision is, of course, depending on a grant for new equipment. I find having two computers is not a good fit for me and I’m very concerned with security on my old OS!

© 2016 Louise Levergneux, a sample record of the information I keep on my artists' books, this record is of copy 5 of Traverse.

• What software do you use to keep track of your artists’ books?

• How do you keep your inventory in order?

• Do you find keeping a database of contacts a never ending job?

• Do you have an assistant helping you with this administrative activity? Nice!

• How do you cope with time spent on databases?

• Does this side of business keep you in control, do you need the control?

• Why do we spend so much time tracking?

I know inventory is important, send me your thoughts on the subject. 

Finally, 

• Is inventory and tracking an obsessive action?

• Once an edition is sold, do you still keep track of all the metadata? 

• Should a published book live its own life once out of the studio?

• Should we even be tracking each copy and where it is sold?

• How do you continue the business side of your creations and still keep your sanity as an artist?

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It’s time for me to get moving on my project City Shields, February will come soon enough.

© 2012 Louise Levergneux, manhole cover documented at Church St & 4th Ave N in Nashville, Tenessee, on September 9, 2012

Have a Merry Christmas and an auspicious new year.

To The Dogs!

My friend Dales’ little Sheltie, Kenzie, is here for a visit, once again a warm, furry body helps with artistic juices in the studio.

© 2016, Louise Levergneux, Kenzie

I present two other artists with artwork that continues the theme of muses—our canine companions. 

Rebecca Wild  is a Pacific North-West artist and calligrapher from the Olympic Peninsula of Washington. Her work pairs a love of letterforms with the luminous characteristics of drawing materials and paint. She uses text as a tool for both conveying a message and creating abstraction.

© 2012, Rebecca Wild, Giving Your Heart is an archival pigment print with charcoal, pastels, graphite, and acrylics that expresses the loss of a beloved companion

Rebecca explains her piece Giving Your Heart:

Several years before the commission of this piece, (by the owner of a Scottish terrier), I discovered the poem, The Power of the Dog by Rudyard Kipling. I had recently lost an elderly canine companion and found comfort and humor in Kipling's words. Although it is one stanza of the poem, it still addresses that inexplicable bond between man and dog. Through simple gesture and form, I hope to pay homage to this unique connection. As he stands at the foot of his master, gaze upward, the dog's devotion is clear.

In the next piece, Rebecca portrays her own loss in Time Undone.

© Rebecca Wild, Time Undone is an archival pigment print with charcoal, pastels, graphite, and acrylics, (4.5w x 11h inches)

How does one put into words the loss of a beloved pet?

I was raw with grief from the unexpected and untimely death of my dog. Although we were not Ruthie’s first home, her 8th to be exact. Ruthie, worked her way into our hearts and home. With a bond so strong, her passing still stings all these years later. She was an unforgettable character of the first degree.

Several weeks after she died, my calligraphy student, Eliza Lindsay, wrote this poem after parting with her dog companion of 16 years, Rosa.  She lettered the poem for a class assignment. When I read it I knew I had found words that allowed me to put closure on my loss. The image at the top is my husband beside Ruthie, her head cocked, looking for the next adventure.

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Deborah Williams is a nationally recognised visual artist living in Melbourne, Australia. Deborah struggles to have her subject “the dog” worthy of consideration as true culture or high art. Deborah also has a completly different aproach to her subject.

2016 © Deborah Williams, Almost human? Exactly dog 2014, etching, engraving, aquatint and roulette intaglio, 58.5 x 87.5 cm, edition 20

Deborah talks about her recent work:

Images and writings about dogs and puppies often seen as clichéd, kitsch and saccharine in the society we live in. The dismissive attitude to the representation of domestic animals makes it not deserving of scholarly discourse or considered as a subject of serious art making. 

The dismissive attitude to the representation of domestic animals may in part be because in the society in which we live, images and writings about dogs and puppies are often seen as clichéd, kitsch and saccharine, not deserving of scholarly discourse or considered as a subject of serious art making.

I seek to avoid the stigma of sentimentality in my images of dogs by relating and depicting the dog outside of the boundaries of the typical pet/owner, dominant/submissive association. Integral to the work and the avoidance of the sentimental is the treatment of the pictorial space within the image. More often than not, the image of the dog inhabits a space devoid of distraction. Where something that has possibly been perceived as ordinary, the dog now becomes emblematic and somewhat sculptural. As the dog is removed from a world of detail so the dog itself can lack detail and display a certain degree of abstraction: we see less, so we imagine more. The non-specific space the dogs inhabit confers ambiguity whilst at the same time, their very presence, whether in silhouette or hint of a dog, is certain. In the works where the dogs are black silhouettes, both the pictorial space is a void and the dog is a void, both present and absent.

© 2016, Deborah Williams, The seeing other, etching and roulette intaglio, 50.5 x 57.5 cm, edition of 20

The society in which I live generally holds its dogs near and dear. I see dogs that are adored and adorned. We often dress them as people, address them as infants, companion them as life partners, interpreting them solely as part of our human experience, affection, need, and jurisdiction. Their virtues are lauded as service and watchdogs, members of the family and yet we are strangely disconcerted when they disobey our commands, opting instead to display the innate characteristics of their canine selves.

When I look at dogs in and around me, I question whether dogs are seen for what they are, as separate beings. I observe that while we do not objectify our dogs per se our feelings are frequently filtered through human perspectives; these dogs are, therefore, anthropomorphized brought unwittingly into our worlds.

© 2016, Deborah Williams, Held its form, soft ground etching and roulette intaglio, 29.5 x 19.5 cm, edition of 20

I strive to challenge the anthropomorphizing of dogs even though I acknowledge that my work, in common with historical and contemporary contexts of the representation of dogs, is none the less filtered through my own perspectives and brought into our world.

For a dog, it must surely be a complex relationship, enduring and interdependent, loving and loyal, yet simply ‘other’. It is the ‘other’ that I endeavour to depict.

It is this latter context, which I focus on. I aim to depict the dog not as a breed above, apart or beyond, but of its own. Captured in a moment.

I am endeavoring to recognize an animal’s sentience including agency and resistance by avoiding the traditional perspectives of anthropomorphism and domination. Incorporating actions that are initiated by the animal, I aim to acknowledge the animal as subject rather than object, shifting from representation of the animal as a symbol to representing the animal’s presence.

In my work, I now seek to overcome conventional depictions of the animal. I seek to depict the dog as dog and invite the viewer to do the same.

© 2016, Deborah Williams, Survey, etching, engraving, roulette and drypoint intaglio, 56.5 x 55 cm, edition of 20

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It’s lunch time and Kenzie needs attention. Later, more administration to solve before I get back into City Shields, The Incessant Journey.

Walkies Anyone!

My studio is silent and empty. 

During these quiet times, art administration and searching the internet are my only diversion. I must admit, the record keeping in a database is boring!

So I brought my attention to artists who have created artwork with their muse in mind. In my bookmarked pages, I found two artists’ books that are worth mentioning. 

Andrew Huot who works under the imprint Big River Bindery published A Walk with Rosie. In his artists' book, Andrew uses simple graphics to bring us a daily routine with his canine companion. Genius! 

Andrew’s book chronicles two weeks of daily walks with his dog in his Philadelphia neighborhood, marking the routes and occurrences on the way. The city is reduced to a line, a shape, and color, and transparent papers reveal the echoes of yesterday and an allusion to tomorrow. A Walk with Rosie printed with relief blocks, pochoir, and handset type on sekishu paper is an edition of 20, bound in cloth and paper. 

Don’t you wish you would have thought of this one first? 

© 2009 Andrew Huot, A Walk with Rosie

© 2009 Andrew Huot, A Walk with Rosie

© 2009 Andrew Huot, A Walk with Rosie

© 2009 Andrew Huot, A Walk with Rosie

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I also re-discovered Gaëlle Pelachaud’s book, New York. I remember searching a particular book structure back in 2013 when Gaëlle’s book surfaced on my screen. 

Gaëlle’s goal for this book was to photograph people walking with their dog. During a four-day journey in New York City, Gaëlle also observed the architecture. The cut-outs in each fold of the book represent the buildings in the environment.

For each of my books, I research the structure, the architecture of the page. For my work New York, the construction and the cuts are the connection to the images—the dog walkers. There is a formal game between image, form, and colour. My book gives rhythm to the theme of a visual walk. 

© 2012 Gaëlle Pelachaud, Éditions Rafaël Andréa, New York

© 2012 Gaëlle Pelachaud, Éditions Rafaël Andréa, New York, livre animé sculpture de papier

© 2012 Gaëlle Pelachaud, Éditions Rafaël Andréa, New York

What have you created with your muse in mind?