Friday Inspiration: Vintage Penguins

Artists' Book Cornucopia VII

I'm thrilled to have my book "Child of the Moon" selected to be included in the exhibition Artists' Book Cornucopia VII.

The seventh in an annual series of international juried exhibitions of contemporary artists' bookworks, Artists' Book Cornucopia VII includes work by 40 artists from the United States, Canada and Argentina. The series highlights a broad spectrum of works created under the artists book work umbrella, with unique sculptural works exhibited alongside more traditionally bound and printed works.

This year's selections were made by Margery N. Sly, Director of Special Collections and Kimberly Tully, Rare Book Curator, Samuel L. Paley Library, Temple University, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

The exhibition runs from September 16 through October 29, 2016.


Abecedarian Gallery 
910 Santa Fe Drive, #101
Denver, Colorado
http://www.abecedariangallery.com/

Child of the Moon (take 2)

{Sketchbook page of the final page layout}

It started with last year's submission to the Sketchbook Project. That book felt like a rough draft of something bigger. I wanted to combine sketches, images of the moon, lyrics from the 1968 Rolling Stones song "Child of the Moon," and prints into a process book of sorts for the series of circle woodblocks I have been working on for the last few years.

This summer I changed the format to a square and sourced some new images of the moon from a NASA publication, but the book was still lacking something. So I put the project aside for a while.

{pages 4-5} a vellum overlay of a horizon diagram from Bruno Munari's "The Circle" (1964)

{pages 6-7} A spread with one of the cropped pages featured original prints, and images from a 1970 NASA publication.

When I began working on it again, I decided to use the mechanical wire binding to my advantage. I included vellum overlays with scientific and philosophical diagrams, I inserted cropped pages to reveal and obscure content, and I decided to include more original prints. The result was much more dynamic than the first two "drafts" and felt like an authentic process book that reflected the ideas I was interested in.

{pages 10-11} a vellum overlay of a late 16th century astronomical diagram

Child of the Moon
photocopies, ephemera, woodblock prints
22 pages, mechanically wirebound with linen hardcover
14.5 x 7.25" opened
unique edition
(copyright K. Castelli 2015)