Part 1 of A Collaborative Artist’s Book With My Friend Chelsea Clarke

I live in a very scenic part of the country – not only are we surrounded by ocean, but we also have some very lovely woods, including a 300 acre parcel of land gifted to the town, crisscrossed by wooded paths. A local gallery is having a show commemorating the 40th anniversary of the gifting of the woods, and my friend Chelsea and I were asked to participate!

We put our heads together and came up with a collaborative artist’s book – Chelsea, a talented illustrator as well as print and fiber artist, would create the “innards” of an accordion book, and I would make the covers. This post is the first of a six-part series detailing the assembly of the book! If you want to make sure you catch all the steps, you can subscribe via email, or RSS feed. (or just keep checking back, I’ll have a new step every other day)
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6

Photo 1: I don’t have any photos of Chelsea drawing, but here you can see part of the finished piece – it was too long to fit in one photo! The drawing was about 48 inches long, on lovely thick printmaking paper, and it’s a pen and ink wash of a long stone wall of the kind made by the original settlers in the area, 400 years ago!

Photo 2: Here I’ve folded it accordion style, into 8 panels – Chelsea had marked where the folds would go on the back in light pencil.

Photo 3: Here I’m measuring the book board covers – the finished size for the folded drawing was 6″x9″, so I made the cover 6.25″x7.25″ (1/8″ overhang on all sides). Traditionally accordion books, which originated in Asia from folded scrolls (they store more easily) had covers the same size as the text block, but I find it a little more forgiving when you glue everything together to have overhang.

Photo 4: Of course Meowstro came to see what was up and “helped” me by lying on the cover sheet – thanks cat!

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6