Curly Willow: Book 191

Remember when I posted about ecodyeing paper way back in July?  Shortly after dyeing those sheets of paper I needed to submit a piece of artwork for a juried show.  That week, things came together and I created an art book using the dyed paper, handmade paper, and a curly willow branch.

The curly willow branch was given to me by another artist earlier in the summer.  I had been saving it to use for a "stick binding" where a single signature of pages gets sewn around a stick.  The stick binding didn't seem appropriate for most of the books I had been making this summer, but the ecodyed paper was exactly what I had been waiting for!  I alternated sheets of handmade flax paper (that I made in 2011 during my internship at the Morgan Conservatory) with the ecodyed paper.  The flax paper has a lovely translucent quality that allowed the patterns from the dyed paper to show through.

Some of the pages had gotten torn and developed holes during the dyeing process.  I used earth toned embroidery flosses to sew over the damaged pieces of paper.  This functioned both as a repair and a decorative element.  The cover is a piece of recycled leather someone had been given to me years ago as scrap materials (I believe it was part of a thrift store leather jacket.)  Lastly, I sewed my folded signature and cover around the stick.

The piece was accepted into the show Rags Make Paper at the Morgan Conservatory in Cleveland.  The opening reception was on August 9th, and the show runs until September 14th.