This
is my first time participating in ALaW, and am so glad that I came
across this great project in time to join in before the year had gotten
too far along. It has been so much fun visiting the ALaW blog to see
everyone's ideas taking root and beginning to evolve.
It's
typical for me to spend quite a lot of time turning ideas over in my
mind before beginning, so I haven't made much progress yet, but this
week I have finally made it to the drawing board. And now that I have a
few images to share, it seemed like a good chance to introduce myself.
I
am an American artist and writer living in Florence, Italy. A research
trip for a book about Florence's piazzas brought me here for what was
supposed to be four months, but I think somehow I knew that I wouldn't
be leaving that soon (it's now been 7+ years!). My degree is in Architecture, but I
prefer working on small scale projects that I can not only design
myself, but also execute myself. I love the book as a medium, and have been exploring artists' books again after a long
period devoted to writing + creating the maps for the 'piazza' book.
Although it seems like many of you are off and running with the
letter-a-week challenge, I thought I would document my considerably slower beginning in
case there are others who are also still in the 'incubation' phase. One
reason it has taken a while to figure out how to begin my first
alphabet is because I wanted to have an idea of what shape the letters
would ultimately assume as a group. (I'm pretty sure that at least one
set will come together in book form.) Another reason it's been hard to get started is because I can't seem to
decide which media to choose―watercolor, collage, beads
& wire, photo-based, computer-generated?
The first thing that came to mind when I envisioned my alphabet
was letters in different shades of brightly colored Canson Mi-Teintes ...one
color for the overlayed letter, and then another for the background. In
preparation for this, I photographed various sheets
of the brightly colored papers juxtaposed with one another [some examples are
shown on the 'pinboard' at right]. The process of arranging /
photographing made me wonder about creating more 'complex' designs, i.e.
using several colors for each letter. I like the geometry of the
triangles formed by the arrangements, and this may also end up being
incorporated into the design. I also gathered bits of Florentine marbled
paper left over from other projects [lower right on the pinboard]. I
love the classic Italian pattern of 'spots/blobs' colliding &
overlapping, and am considering them for the
dotty-themed letters.
Another
possibility would be to base one of the alphabets on a
Florence-inspired abecedary that I made a couple of years ago...I had
originally envisioned each letter being original/different and somehow
relating to the concept I had chosen for that letter. But since there
wasn't time to hand-create each letter individually, I instead ended up
using Arno Pro as the font throughout. [The abecedary can be seen in the
two photos on the pinboard, in which the 'U' & the 'B' are visible. The
upper right photo shows a small plate of quaresimali,
a type of biscuit piped out in the shape of letters; these appear in
Italian bakeries each year during Lent. There's more info about them HERE, where I
also discuss
making the abecedary.]
As
I prepared to experiment with the letters today, I assembled various
things from around the studio: tubes of
watercolor/gouache paints (which I've been wanting to try for ages);
narrow strips of paper left over from
past projects (to fold into little books); a piece of bubble wrap to
either lay over other papers or use as a 'stamp' (an interesting effect that I may explore further).
Further rummaging turned up a little mockup booklet in different shades
of Canson; the pages turned out to be exactly seven centimeters square,
so it seemed a perfect place to experiment with the letter forms at the
correct scale.
I
like the idea of offering hints of the letters, as opposed to showing
their full shapes, so I began painting parts of them on each
seven-by-seven square; next I may try each letter somehow linked to the
adjacent ones as well, and ultimately they may end up being more
'calligraphic'/decorative. We've been lucky to have long strings of ideal winter days in
Florence―cold but blue-skied (my sympathies to all of you enduring the
wet summer in Australia)―and it was such a pleasure to see the gold
gouache shimmering in the sunlight as it flowed from the brush...I wish I
knew how to capture things like this with my camera. Anyway, I had a
lovely time painting several preliminary letters, and it feels good to
have made a start, no matter how small. We'll see where it leads...
Thank
you for all of the inspiration you've given me; I am thrilled to be part of the group
(and next time I hope to have more images to show and fewer meandering
thoughts/unresolved issues).
