“Into the Unknown” book project

It all started with a wooden spool that held Christmas twine. I was standing in TJ Maxx one fall and checking out the holiday wrapping goodies and came across twine wound on wooden spools. It was the year that all the wrapping paper was brown with faded out red, green, or black print so the twines were a perfect match. I bought three of them: red, red and natural tan in a twist!, and natural tan.

I bought them knowing I was going to use those sticks for…SOMETHING. Because those spools just scream to be reused for something good. It took literal years for one of the twines to run out. Years. Could I have wound off the twine onto something else and harvested the stick for my purposes? Yes. Yes, I could have but half the fun was the anticipation of using the twine year after year during the holidays and reminding myself that I could have the spool once the twine ran out.

The second beginning

So when it finally ran out this past December, I sat it on my desk so I could figure out what to do with it. I mean, I knew it was going to be a book project because all roads lead to making books if you are me. It just had to incubate for a while.

During the month of June I did a massive overhaul of my space. When I did my big paper re-sort, I put aside things that I wanted to work with. The papers for this book came directly out of that new stash. The cover was a piece that was trimmed off of one of the pieces for my first show. It felt good to use it here and for it to finally have a home.

Since the spool already had one hole in it from a tag, I only had to drill one more. That’s good because I’m not always great with power tools. I know just enough to get myself into trouble usually. So far, no blood has been shed in the making of this project.

I originally wanted the book to be attached to the stick with wire so it could have a big curly wire bit out the back side. With maybe some beads on it. In my mind, it was super ornate and extra. I threaded some wire through the stick and the spine and quickly realized that it wasn’t feasible to be able to work in the book with a giant metal sculpture out the back. So I reworked it with just regular bookbinding thread. If I want to at the end of the project, I might go back in with some wire. We’ll see…but until I make a decision there, I just gave it a giant green tassel.

Inside the book

If you are a regular reader here on my blog, you may have seen some of these pictures over the past few weeks. I photographed to book in it’s current state before I move on to the next part of this process. Here’s some shots of the inside.

Somewhere in the middle of the unknown

In the course of working on this project, I was talking to my friend Elaine and she asked me a few fantastic questions. I’ve been pondering the answer to the first one off and on ever since I started making books. How do I get people to see my books? A single copy of a book is hard to disseminate. And so she asked me what if I artistically videoed the work and let that be the finished project. Maybe add some music too?

That really got me going because my nephew Sam is a music composition student. I had a meeting with Sam in July and I gave him some ideas to ponder. I’ve sent him these photos so he can start thinking about his part of the project. So the plan is to have a short film of this book scored by Sam. He and I are not sure if the video will come first or if the music will. Things to learn together. In other news, he is maybe getting school credit for this project, which HOW GREAT IS THAT?!!!?

Another question Elaine posed was what if this book was a autobiography of sorts? I’ve thought about that question over the course of the last few weeks as well. I don’t know if this book is a comprehensive autobiography but it’s certainly a snapshot of me right now. I am working slower and making fewer things. Also I’m looking to collaborate more and so this work is a way to start inviting that in. It’s also providing me a way to face a hard-to-do thing because…

The unknown next

When I go to the beach at Thanksgiving I plan to take this book and soak it in the ocean. At least for a day and maybe longer. And then let it dry in the sun. I’ll do some filming of it in the water and then of course film it after it dries out.

Why am I doing this?

Years and years ago I saw an artist on Instagram (UPDATE: a kind reader just pointed out that this artist was likely Orly Avineri and indeed if you go to her site, there’s a video of her doing these very things I describe!) bury one of her journals in the ground and then dig it up after a few months. It was covered in dirt and damp. The pages were stuck together and dirty. She also put her books in the sea. Wet and dripping, she would drag them across the sand and rocks. I remember thinking at the time, I could never do that. Just immediate full resistance to the idea. My stuff is too *precious.* <makes grabby hands and snarfle noises à la gollum>

When I go to the beach at Thanksgiving I always take projects to work on. It’s work I do at the beach but it’s not centered on the beach itself. As I was thinking about this project and how much I love our trip every year, I initially thought I’d just do some of the filming at the beach. Sam will be there and we can collaborate a bit. Then I thought about sticking this book in the water at our favorite beach and doing a collaboration with the ocean as well. And the resistance was once again immediate.

And when there’s that much resistance, I pretty much have to do it because resistance isn’t the boss of me!

So having the ocean I’ve been visiting for over thirty years help me finish this piece has gradually started feeling really right to me. I’m surrendering control of the outcome of this piece. It might be a wreck after a week of water and sun exposure. But it might cause the book to feel more like it should feel. I don’t know. It will be what it will be. And I will actively practice letting go of outcomes.

Into the unknown

Some of the pages inside this book I made in a workshop studying the works of my favorite, Cy Twombly. Across the bottom of one of those pages I wrote “help me to journey beyond the familiar & into the unknown.” I don’t remember if was from something I saw of Cy Twombly’s in the workshop or something the teacher said or just something I wrote down to have words on my page. You can see it very faintly at the bottom of these two pages:

I was calling this project “book onna stick” for a while. Sometimes things need in-progress titles before the real thing comes forward. After I had the conversation with Elaine about this project, I was flipping through it, saw this line, and thought “into the unknown” was a better working title. And now with the additional parts of this project coming together, it’s perfect. Just the absolute most exact thing I could imagine. It was there all along, waiting to be called on.

And frankly, the idea of “journeying into the unknown” is a defining part of my work. My work is often about reaching into myself and the materials I have and seeing what is there and what I can cobble together and build meaning from. So this project has become more of an autobiography than I ever expected.

What project is your autobiography? I’d love to hear about it! Email me or start a conversation by leaving a comment on this post! If you’d like to keep up with what I’m working on, I’d love to have you as a newsletter subscriber. I include blog posts from here, cool things I find online, and pictures of my dogs. Sign up here.