Sunday 8 November 2009

Manchester Artist Book Fair 2009.

So yesterday I decided to take the day off work to go to the annual Manchester artists book fair. The fair held stalls showcasing the book art work of around 40 independent artists. It was a really inspiring trip as I am interested in experimenting in this area of work. Some of the pieces were abit dissapointing and some very expensive!! I bought a couple of things my favourite being a beak book made by Sarah Morpeth, A paper cut artist....
 
Sarah's Business card

The book was encased in this little pouch. It caught my eye as I like things that you have to pick up and 'play' with. I think this maybe useful for my silence work as I am exploring the idea of hiding thoughts when silent. So if I created a book and thought of ways to encase them like a secret.

The front cover of the beak book...

Exploring the beak book...


The work sarah had produced was absolutly beautiful. I could have bought it all although some of the books were a little over my budget and went up to £250! I found Sarah's stall really helfpul and I got lots of new ideas on how to set myself up as a 'respectable' artist and designer. Everything on her stall was well thought out. She had work which ranged in price from £1.50. She didnt leave any stone unturned by creating postcards, business cards, bookmarks and even christmas decorations. One of the books which I loved was called buterfly and she had sewed onto the bookcovering material to give it something extra. unfortunatly I cant find an image to show you!

Mary Lundquist was another artists work which I loved. Her drawings were gorgeous and had a little something extra. She had created books which were fully illustrated but had also made lovely notebooks. I thought this was a great idea as it still got her work out there by being on the cover, but it also meant you could take it away with you. I think that this can be a problem with artist books. They are beautiful to look at, but what do you do with them when you finnished looking, Mary solved this! Something which I might think about when I start to create work for sale. Mary, as well as creating cute little notebooks had printed her own canvas bags with her designs on the front. Her work was really useable and visually nice too look at, her are a few of her amazing drawings..


Mike Frodshams work also stood out to me and I bought one of his beak books because I thought his drawings were lovely. I wanted to buy a book he had made which was called birds and had lots of illustrations of birds, but it was over my budget! 

Front cover of the beak book.


The lovely drawings in the book

All of this talk of book making got me thinking about a book that Sue showed us last year which was created by Lucy-May Schofield. I decided to have a ganders on her website and I thought it was beautiful. Heres one of her interesting books, and I think her website is well worth a look...
www.lucymayschofield.co.uk


1 comment:

  1. Thank you for the compliments and for coming to the fair. You have a lovely blog and I'm so happy that I found it. Good luck with your dissertation, it sounds like you've got something really good going!

    -Mary Lundquist

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