Wooden book, 220 x 150 x 20 mm

Overview

A story about misunderstanding the people you live with, presented as a wooden book with the text printed by cyanotype.

Background

Cyanotypes are quite a cool process - treat a surface with the chemicals, put some kind of mask over them and then expose it to sunlight. Where light is blocked, you get a pure white tone and where the sunlight reasches you get a rich blue. It’s an old process, used to reproduce drawings when accuracy and fidelity to the original was more important than the aesthetic. It’s where the term ‘blueprint’ comes from. I had made some cyanotypes before using the sun paper kits you can get, but had always wanted to try the chemicals on wood. When Upright Gallery posted an open call for artists books on the theme of water, it seemed like a good reason to implement some of those ideas.

I was on a short timeframe, so used a short story I had written as a basis for a simple book. The story was very short - less than a thousand words - and I typeset it on the computer before printing the layouts onto acetate. I then cut some pieces of plywood I had knocking around to the right size, treated them with the chemicals and exposed each of the sides to sunlight while covering them with the transparent masks I had made. Each side needs to be fixed with water, otherwise it’ll carry on reacting to light and eventually turn completely blue. Having to wait for each piece of wood to dry before applying the chemicals and exposing the other side is what made this such a tight race to deadline. That all worked out reasonably well and the exposures were OK. What turned out to be more difficult was applying my limited carpentry skills to cutting and sanding the boards to the right side. For some reason I got it in my head that the covers had to be thicker than the pages and, let me tell you, that thicker plywood was a bugger to cut. Also, I was using the wrong saw, so it was quite a wonky line. Also, I hadn’t drilled the holes for the binding before exposure, so everything was a bit off. Once I put it together, I could see that things were a bit wrong and did what I could to fix it, but my attempted fixes were just making things worse and I had to walk away and accept it as done, imperfect though it was.

I was glad to have finished it within a deadline and pleasantly surprised when it was accepted by Upright Gallery into their exhibition, which runs 2-23rd December 2023.
Making Waves at Upright Gallery, 3 Barclay Terrace, Edinburgh, EH10 4HP.