Yabbers and workshop

I am teaching a basic papermaking workshop this coming Saturday at Bundoora Park in the stables at Coopers Settlement. If you would like to attend please either call me on 0424333136 or email info@gailstiffe.info.

At our last two sessions of Yabbers we have worked on doing suicide prints, I collected some pieces of mdf from Reverse Art Truck in Ringwood and we used these for our plates after cutting them into four. For my design I used a floral design from Dover.

These two images were made with the suicide plate.

 I used the other three pieces to carve the same design for printing the three colours on a plate each. I need to remove more from the backgrounds and in all my registration leaves a lot to be desired. But there are some areas I really like. When I get some time I'm going to have another go after I remove some of the excess background and I'll use the final plate of the suicide series to finish off this one.

I spent this weekend at workshops, on Saturday I learned Carolingian Binding from Elke Ahokas through Victorian Bookbinders Guild, here you can see the class books.






On Sunday I did the first session of a drawing class, we did still life and at one stage in the afternoon the sun came streaming in the window and made wonderful shadows, they changed too quickly to draw but they were stunning, especially the empty wine bottle (no we didn't drink it before we started!)

 

Beginners Papermaking Workshops

I have a couple of papermaking workshops coming the first is two days at Meeniyan Art Gallery on Thursday and Friday 12 and 13 April and will cover recycled and plant fibre papers. The second will be held at Bundoora Park, Victoria on May 26 and will be an introduction to hand papermaking. Leave me a comment or email if you'd like to book for either workshop.

My newest book, made for the Box Hill Community Arts Centre's Exhibition Discarded and featuring photos of many discarded televisions and other items.

Obsolete mixed plant fibre tunnel book

The papers made by students at Clunes Primary School as part of a Bug Blitz project, now pressed and awaiting postage to Clunes for the students to work on and send back to me to bind.

Books2Eat

I am a member of a group of textile artists who meet monthly to share their experiences and since I was hosting this month's meeting and it coincided with the International Edible Books Festival I threw out the challenge to the group. Here are the results.

The Turning by Tim Winton

Gail Stiffe: besan flour pikelets with beetroot chutney and ham

Gluten Free Muffin

Gail Stiffe: gluten free muffins and icing

There's a Hippopotamus on my Roof Eating Cake by Hazel Edwards

Ruth Hotchin: Chocolate pastry and cake

Dyeing to Eat

Jan Horner: mountain bread with food dyes, and celery (bound with celery string)

Green Asps and Ham with apologies to Dr Seuss

Gail Stiffe: asparagus and ham, piano hinge binding

Give us this Day

Lin Hughes: bread, salmon, asparagus, mayonaise, currants, bound with chives

Ribbons

Sue Bishop: bread and fillings

Ye Olde Herbal

Denise Leslie: Mountain bread, cheese, ham, gherkins, bound with chives

Quinces

Di Warwick: savoury biscuits, quince paste, cheese, spinach, teabags and kitchen string

Sculptural Books Workshop, shaped book and cover

I am teaching a workshop in making sculptural books next week and thought that participants might be interested in making and coving a book with shaped pages. I also decided to set up the pages for sketching by pre treating with some coffee and dilute acrylic paint. I cut the pages from 130gsm cartridge paper, here they are laid out ready for painting.

I dipped some cotton thread in the paints to get a different effect on some of the pages and I used the threads to bind the book.

Here are the pages drying.

And the covers, covered with some scraper paper (another example for the class).

I made pockets inside the covers for bibs and bobs (and leftover scraps of decorated paper)

Then sewed with double needle Coptic stitch using the acrylic coloured threads that I waxed by pulling through a slab of beeswax.

Bugs and Books

This coming Tuesday I am heading to Clunes for a Bug Blitz Day. The whole of Clunes Primary School will be participating in various nature activities like biodiversity assessment, honey tasting, bird watching, aboriginal knowledge and papermaking. Since the theme is bugs I decided to make some new buggy stencils for pulp painting, I hope they're not too freaked out by centipedes and spiders!!!

Last week I picked up some papers for recycling and discovered lots of envelopes and matching paper for cards and since I'm right out of cards I decided it was time to get a few made. I already had lots of cast squares that I'd decorated in different ways (workshop samples from a couple of years ago!), so I combined then with some squares of hanji and here are a few.

Box Hill Community Arts Centre has its annual discarded exhibition starting in a week or two and since the sub theme this year is Paper Cuts I felt I should participate. I traipsed around the suburbs taking photos of hard and garden rubbish noticing just how many televisions were on nature strips so I decided to make a tunnel book, I made the paper from mixed plant fibre (garden waste!) and printed the photos and text on. Here are a few pics. I called the book 'Obsolete'.