Under a Cold North Sky - a book of snow and ice

 

Long dark winter months, with an absence of the usual diversions.

Trying to keep busy. These have not been easy days for many. A short interlude for Christmas, and then back to very quiet times.

Covid days.

Time to make a book. Always a happy diversion.

This one was created for the Instagram #areyoubookenough challenge on the topic of frozen. The challenge was started in 2017 by the book artist Sarah Maker, and brings together book artists from all around the world.

I have many images of snow and ice, and many happy memories of trips north, so the topic of 'frozen' had instant appeal.

A dive into my hard drive seemed like a good a place to start.

I searched for 'ice' and 'snow'. Up popped many images that are long forgotten.

Images from Iceland, Greenland, Finland, Yukon and Norway.  Some of the places that I am missing the most.




Firstly, a small fragment of ice from Disko Bay. Ice that has made its way down a glacier, and then broken into fragments as it fall into the icy water of Disko Bay; an iceberg graveyard.

Greenlandic ice fragment

Crystals of watery ice from a glacier.

glacial ice formation

Broken ice from a grassy puddle. This from Lofoten, where I was attracted by the texture of the snow crushed grass.

Grassy ice puddle

There are tiny fragments, and wide views. It is the juxtaposition of scale that I enjoyed when making this book.

Lofoten mountains

Initially I  printed out many small images.
I  then experimented with different combinations and juxtapositions.
Some images were rejected, as they didn't work with the others, or were just too ambiguous.

Icy reflections from Disko Bay were tempting to include, but the water was not actually frozen, so these were rejected.

Icy water in Disko Bay

 

 

 

 

 

 

mini prints for layout experiments

 

 

For the start of the book I chose images of snow falling at night, and a lump of ice. The raw elements of icy landscapes.

I remember vividly standing under a lampost in Finland capturing snow falling in the early evening, the snow lit by the artificial light; blowing around wildly in the wind.

falling snow

glacial ice

Then I moved through gradually larger landscapes, trying to find pairings that complemented each other.

Grass and ice.

Black on white, white on black.

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A 'landscape' of ice crystals on snow beside a tree in a field.


The images are printed on bamboo paper 110gsm, made into a concertina. The hard cover is covered with a Lotka polka dot paper in black and white. Lotka paper is Nepalese, and is easy to fold around the cover of a book.

'Under a Cold North Sky' - concertina book

'Under a Cold North Sky' - front cover

I don't know when spontaneous travel will be possible again. My plans to return northwards in February are very likely to be thwarted.

But as soon as I am able, I will be heading in that direction once more.

 

You can see a slideshow of all the images here

learning to write, the Arvon way

'passing poplars' a book made at Arvon

I am a few days back from a writing week in Devon.

Arvon, Totleigh Barton.

Bookmaking and poetry; Rachel Hazell, and Nancy Campbell as tutors with a guest visit by Richard Long, one of my favourite land artists.

A course made for me. All my favourite things, and a chance to get some ideas on how to write more creatively.

I had to beg them to take me. They squeezed me in at the last minute, and so began one of the most creative weeks of my life.

The house is an old manor house, with heavy beams and a garden full of apples and quiet spots for reading or writing.

No wifi, no TV and almost no telephone reception, unless you ran up the hill into the cow field.

Scroll free September became remarkably easy.

views from the cow field

Cows everywhere.

Some sheep too.

A 40 minute walk to Sheepwash, the nearest village.

Luscious dew laden grass all around.

And juicy blackberries in all the hedgerows.

The only thing I could complain about was the mattress on my bed.

We were told to write three words down as soon as we woke up in the morning. Before doing anything else.

This is a shortened version of 'morning pages' that is a regular habit for some writers.

My three words increasingly became about my bed.

uncomfortable
cold              (because I was too lazy to get up in the night and close the open window)
coiled spring
stiff

 but also

authentic
unsettling
fulfilled


We had so many new ideas to deal with. Brain buzzing day and night.  
Book structures , hand-writing with real ink and nibs, creating poems by erasing text on a page of an existing book, learning about local 'lost'words, and choosing a word of our own to 'abandon'.

We tied lost words to the rowan tree outside the kitchen, and watched the words fluttering in the autumn sunshine.

We cooked together, ate wonderfully, and listened to each others' words.

I wrote a concrete poem about toast, using the words of instruction from our first evening on how to deal with safety issues.

We were advised to minotor our toast activity........a phrase that stuck in my head for several days.

toast © caroline fraser 2018

There was plenty of angst about writing and making things in short time frames.

I would normally go for months between the arrival of one poem and the next. I wrote several poems over the five days, most of which were about the process of trying to write under pressure.


Later in the week I found myself writing in pen and ink on Somerset velevet paper.

A new way of expressing myself.
One that  felt absolutely right.

And for a piece on "Lines in the Landscape' I created a concertina book of poplar leaves, sewn in with thread.

It won't last, but again, I felt happy.

Something to share that I felt represented my aesthetic and love of nature.

A far cry from my Camberwell book art days. I think I have finally got them out of my system.

Finally we created an edition of 18 cards ; one for each participant on the course.


In homage to Richard Long  and his 'Line made by Walking'   I made this............

No camera. No computer.

Just a piece of paper and an ink stamp.

Lines made by Livestock © Caroline Fraser 2018

 It doens't do to take life too seriously.

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For more on the tutors follow these links

 Rachel Hazell

Nancy Campbell

Arvon writing courses

'If I only had more time' - in which I make an edition of 42 books in 8 days in collaboration with Nina Rodin

Lac Leman, Vevey, Switzerland

Last week was one of the most intense weeks of my life.....

Back in September 2017 I was artist in residence in Trelex, near Geneva, .

Whilst there I made a little book about being artist in residence, and how there is never enough time to complete a project. It was a small hand sewn, not very well crafted book using materials lying around in the studio.

To my delight, Nina Rodin, founder of the residency invited me back to make a first edition of the book with the aim to raise money for further residencies and for charity. This was an opportunity not to be missed, and I jumped at the chance to collaborate with Nina who is a very exciting artist, a perfectionist, and who has a lot of experience of making books.

The chance to revisit such a peaceful place was also something I could not resist.

fields of grain, Trelex

We worked hard.

Very hard.

From dawn until bedtime in the studio with occasional visits to Vevey to collect materials.

First I made a tiny mock up to work out how the pages would run.

 And then we sent for some enormous rolls of paper and got started.

The shops in Trelex are rarely open, so there was no excuse not to keep working.

I never managed to get inside either of these establishments, and the bakery was closed too, due to 'hand surgery'. No delicious fresh bread for me. Just wonderful juicy cherries, fresh from the tree in the garden.

The book was printed on a very large printer.

The huge sheets were then trimmed into strips for a concertina book.

I trimmed 280 metres with a small pair of scissors. It took 2 days, and was not that exciting. I was very glad when it was done.

Nina made 960 folds for the pages with her creasing device. She, too, was glad when that particular task was complete.

creasing device

When making a 31 page concertina, keeping everything square is critical.

Otherwise you get a 'bad' book, in which the images are not square to the page.

More exciting was a trip to Vevey to the book bindery, to choose materials for the covers.

I was allowed about 3 minutes to choose.

The original book was shocking pink, which would have worked well for rasing money for breast cancer, but there was not enough card in stock, and no cloth.

So no pink.

I wanted it to be cheerful.

The orange buckram cloth just jumped out at me.

It had to be.

I thought about blue, but I keep thinking back to my book art course and how I wasn't allowed to display an orange sleeve with my work when we had an exhibition in the library.

Defiance is a powerful emotion.

I am now free to rebel.

We found a red-orange card for the soft covers that almost matched.

Done.

And then thinking back again to my book art course, and how I would have to write why I chose orange/red and how it works for this specific book I took a stroll in the village to think of all the possible connections to that colour.

This is the art world at its worst; pretending that there was a good reason for the choice, when actually it was because I felt rebellious.

So here are some orangy-red things in the village, which if anyone asks I can pretend were the stimulants behind my choice.

the only way is orange

at the station

world cup fever

geranium orange

village cones

hair and watering can

But looking deep into my subconscious, maybe it is because the fountains were full of orange/red petals last September, which is how my project on water and the local fountains got started.

petals floating in the fountains of Trelex, September 2017

The petals are not there in June.

The flowers have only just started blooming in the baskets above the fountains, and the water is free of debris.

It would have been a very different book if I had visited at this time of year.

Anyway. The job is done, and I think you will agree that the covers match the petals perfectly.

completed books

And for my other half, who prefers foody things to most things, it almost matches the sausages too.