The objective of the summer was to create as many books as possible with what was available in the studio.
Book 1 - Fallout, did just that by using pieces of 30 year old gingham fabric I was going to make a quilt out of but instead, played around with inkjet transfers. The book lists each above ground nuclear test done in southern Nevada, how many future cancers were predicted, how many individuals involved in each test. These are followed by personal photographs and comments related to the tests.
Book 2 - There Goes the Neighborhood used up left over cover stock in its incubation and proofing stage but will break the rule when it comes to the edition. It is a simple approach to the pop-up book with a house on every spread.
A sound bite by Jaques Chirac started the juices flowing for There Goes the Neighborhood: “Our house is burning down and we’re blind to it . . . the earth and human kind are in danger and we are all responsible. “ The resulting book presents six neighborhoods examining the decline of biodiversity, the environment and the quality of our lives as we know it. Image and word bites illuminate the problems of population growth, ocean acidity and overfishing, deforestation, species extinction, disease, and climate change. Copyright free 19th century engravings have been worked together in Photoshop to tell today’s stories and in a way, connect today’s problems with many of the same ones faced by those living when these engravings were originally created. Accompanying the neighborhoods are mini treatises adding specifics to the “greater than a thousand word images”. The titles are patterned after 19th century book titling practices.
A commentary on the decline of bird populations through domestic and feral cats, deforestation, and the trauma of glass and windmills.
So what vaccine am I getting this year? H1N1? H5N1? Swine flue? Bird flu? Ebola? Malaria?
More later.
EVE
