Design Stages....

The Book of Life continues to develop in its design stages and other works are in the pipe. To raise funds for the creation of The Book of Life, I have unearthed and am revamping printing blocks that never came to fruition. Baren Forum had an exchange years ago that had the theme of Surimono. I regrettably had to drop out because of an imbalance. The discrepancy was that my carving skills developed faster than my printing ability. I carved several blocks but printing them proved disastrous. In frustration, I had to drop out of the exchange and abandon the blocks to the far corner of my studio. It's probably been four years since then and I pulled them all out this past sunday. I saw right away that my early concept of the kento was flawed. I re-carved 6 kentos on sunday and I have 2 more to do tomorrow and then can hopefully pull a proof to see where I am at. At any rate, the title of the piece was going to be Alternate Realities. One side of the diptych image had a black row of gasoline pumps and the other side had a similar silhouette but instead was in brilliant color. The colored shapes were those of the various alternate energy resources that are available and should be employed further. These include hydro turbines, wind turbines, geothermal pumps, and solar cells. I hope to have some nice results tomorrow.
About the picture, I would like to work fairs and festivals in the summer and perhaps put these letterpresses to work on jobs they were meant for. I have another Etsy store called DistinctMink that has been stale for quite some time and I was contemplating destroying it were it not for a nice lady who bought some of my stationery and encouraged me to keep producing. I want to create a correspondence set that features flora native to Nelson County. I set out with my digital camera as we've had some lovely roadside burgeoning on my driveway. This photo is of a Tulip Poplar blossom. Normally, they would be blooming high in the air but a specimen rooted in a spring was nice enough to sweep her boughs low so I could see them. We also have plenty Blackberry, Choke Cherry, and Wild Rose blossoming as well. Smells nice at my house!
Chocolate Book Update: Hands down! The soft cover chocolate books are so much easier to print and bind. I have completed 10 of those already and am STILL working on the design stages of the hard bound. I bound one this afternoon and I can't stand the ribbon I put on it so I'll have to perform minor surgery tomorrow, ugh. I ordered packaging materials this morning for them so hopefully they'll be on Etsy soon. Impact Images, my packaging supplier of choice (www.clearbags.com) has biodegradable bags I can put them in!!!! Yay!!!! I still have to use the old plastics for prints though as the degradable bags are not acid free :( Progress will catch up with that I'm sure :)