Saturday, December 29, 2007

Pillow book III, day n+3

First, a little sidetrack. I found these old sheets of sandpaper when I was cleaning up a couple of days ago. These were used to sand some pastel pieces, a long time ago. I can't remember the piece I used it on. Anyhow, I thought they were really pretty.



Now, the business at hand. Last I left it, I didn't really know what to do next on pillow book III. Then I had this dream...I dreamed that my critique group and I got together (among some other nonsensical bits) and Rachel had a suggestion that I really liked. And when I woke up this morning, it still made sense and I still liked it! It's kind of like debugging your software in your sleep, although those always turned out to be bogus after I woke up.

Anyhow, I tried the dream idea, and I liked the way it looked, except I ran into two technical problems. After trying several different things, I decided to take a different approach. However, the main concept behind the dream idea still works — when I left it yesterday, I was stumped on how to deal with the fact that when more of the tulle pages are stacked together, the image was actually harder to read, not easier — well, sometimes when the same story is told over and over again, parts of the details change in each retelling, and the more you hear the story, the less sure you are of what really happened.

So taking that concept, here's a mock up of pillow book III. I'm keeping it pretty simple. Each 'page' is actually 3 sheets of the tulle sewn together. That gives each page some extra weight, which makes them lie down flat and easier to handle. They're just pinned together on the left:



Here the first page (3 sheets of tulle) has been turned:



And here only the last page (also 3 sheets of tulle) is left unturned:



There's a paper version of the print sewn onto the pillow underneath. The final image is the clearest image.

This format (just a basic 'book' structure resting on a pillow) was actually my very original plan for this series, except that the tulle pages had the tendency to stick together and didn't want to lie flat. Sewing 3 together is a solution for that, but I think I'll still need to finish the edges.

Right now, my plan is to caption each page with a story that changes in details as you turn the pages. Not sure how I'm going to get the text on there yet.

7 comments:

gl. said...

oh, this is going to be cool.

Bridget said...

This is amazing . . . when/where are you showing these?

fingerstothebone said...

gl & bridget -- thank you! They'll be having their first showing in Tennessee in Feb/2008 (at Austin Peay State U). After that, I hope to have them in a couple of shows in Portland, one in 2008 and another in 2009.

gl. said...

do you think you're going to tennessee to see them. i'm very much looking forward to seeing them here!

photobrea said...

Wow, that looks great!

It's been so interesting to follow your progress on this amazing project. Thanks for sharing.

fingerstothebone said...

gl -- no, I won't be going to Tennessee to see them, but Diane Jacobs (one of the 6 people in the show) will be going so we should have photos.

brea -- thanks!

Amanda said...

Wow! The pillows look gorgeous in this post - the dark grey really pulls it all together. Seeing how you prepared the image of the dog for the screen is both surprising and really informative - thanks!