Childhood Bookcase

I cleaned up a small blue bookcase in preparation for displaying my books for my final piece for this project. It used to be in my room when I was young, but has since been stored away in the garage for a good few years. It had however stood the test of time well, having only a few scratches and the odd fleck of paint. But I gave it a good clean and it looks pretty decent.

In my opinion it's height is extremely well suited to my purpose because it's about 'bar' height. By which I means its a good table/surface for someone standing up i.e. you can place an open book on the top and it's at a very suitable height to read/view the book quite comfortably.

 

Like I said, there is is odd scratch or crack in the paint work but there is not much else I can do about this apart from repainting it completely which I don't really think I need to do. I want it to be as original as possible. Plus I love the colour.

The one thing I was a little worried about was these chipped corners on the back of the bookcase. But you can't really seeing them when viewing it from the front, and it will be up against a wall. You also have to get down really low, like I did for these photos, to see the flaws in their entirety so they shouldn't be too much of a problem.

I'm planning to put my books on the top shelf and having some sort of prompt letting the viewer know they are allowed/supposed to browse the books. Then they can hold the book in their hand or place it on the top of the bookcase and view the interventions into the pages.

I'm now off to decide on which additional books I should include in my piece and also make some mock up designs. I have a tutorial in 3 days so it is essential that I make something to show how my idea has evolved now so that the tutor can fully understand my piece.

Project Presentation

So last Thursday I had to present my idea and my progress so far to my tutor and a few other students. The reception to my idea was mixed, but my tutor said it could do with some improvement. So on advice from him I will be changing my idea slightly.

Instead of covering the pages I will now be making the scary pages much more grotesque and terrifying in order to create a very adult sinister chapter in an innocent children's book. I will also be attempting this technique with a couple of other books from my childhood to make my final piece a little more substantial. I have also got my hands on a small bookcase from my childhood that I am planning to present the books on.

So my next steps with be to try out some ideas for layouts on photocopies of some of the pages, choosing my other books to feature in my piece and cleaning up the little bookcase to present my work on.

More Development

I tried out my idea of applying one of the phrases using letraset directly to one of the covers. I also applied a 1cm strip of sand paper to the top and bottom of the page because I realised that someone could avoid by grabbing there instead.

I really like the way it looks, and even though the text looks very small and blurry here, it is very crisp and clear when looking at the book in person.

I plan to look at some artists who deal with text and typography next to help develop my ideas.

Michael Mararian

While researching artists who have worked with the idea of fear I came across an artist called Michael Mararian. In 2008/2009 he completed a series of work about phobias, representing them quite clearly and with children as the subjects. I quite like them, even if they are very literal.

Illyngnopobia (Fear of Vertigo)

Mechanaphobia (Fear of Machinery)

Eisoptrophobia (Fear of ones own Reflection)

Athazagoraphobia (Fear of Being Forgotten)

Cleisiophobia (Fear of Being Locked in a Room)

Carnaphobia (Fear of Meat)

I particularly like the last one for the vibrantly coloured background and the expressions on the children's faces.

I think this relates nicely to my work because of the themes of fear and children. However, this expression of the two themes is a little blatant and literal, my work will probably work better if it is more subtle and subliminal than this.

EDIT: After changing my idea to making the fears upon the pages more adult and gruesome I think this artists work has become more useful than I previously thought. His literal and blatant interpretations of fears are exactly the kind of thing I need to achieve on my pages in order the scare the viewer.

Developing My Project

I tried out some ideas to do with the structure of my page covers.

I tried out a square corner cut out instead, but have decided that I prefer the quarter circle. I also decided that the sand paper should be a strip about 1cm wide vertically between the two cut outs. Any thinner and it's too small to feel it, any wider and it takes over the page. I also really like how the brown contrasts with the white of the page.

I also decided to pursue my idea of illustrating certain things that would scare me into the turning the page. So I made quick sketch of a head stone with my sister's name on it. 

It looks pretty naff, but it is only a sketch I suppose. So I made a more polished version and simplified it a little. I also applied the name and dates with letraset to give it a cleaner less hand-drawn feel.

But I then felt that this might not be universal enough. A stranger looking through the book would not who Joellen Fowler is and wouldn't have the urge to turn the page. So I decided to make it more general. I thought about things that don't necessarily scare adults, but issues that adults wouldn't necessarily like to consider for a long period of time, and therefore turn the page due to the gut reaction of a personal comment.

Also although the illustrations would link nicely with the style of the book, statements about situations would fit better as these are more suited to what adults have to react to. They won't  usually be presented with an image of something scary or bad, they will be told something is happening/about to happen that they should fear.

So I made one physical mock up with letraset, and then a few graphically.

So I could either recreate these directly onto the page covers using letraset or I could print them on to paper and remake the covers. However I do it, I really like the simplicity of this idea and added to the pages with the corner cut outs and sandpaper edge I think it would look really good. I'll have to come up with a few more to fill the 14 page covers I have though.

Another idea I had that linked to this was cutting out certain parts of the page covers to reveal the page underneath. One line I found fitted especially well.

However, this was on the opposite side of the page to where I want the main focus to be. Also there are not always phrases on the pages that fit in with this theme. I also don't think I could combine these two ideas, as they would hinder each other. If the viewer concentrates too much on the cut outs, they won't turn the pages as quickly as they should do. If they concentrate too much on the written statements they could miss the cut outs altogether making them redundant and pointless. So I'll keep this idea in mind whilst moving forward, but in my opinion, my alternate idea is much better.

Irina Werning

I came across Irina Werning's work whilst watching a photography documentary on line. Amongst all her work her standout project for me was 'Back to the Future'. Here she recreates old photos bought to her by strangers from across the globe.
It started off with her recreating family and friend's pictures, and when she put the project on line, people from across the globe contacted her asking if she could do the same for them. She puts a lot of effort into recreating the pictures from the location they were taken in to finding exact copies of the clothes the people were wearing and the things they were holding. It is in these details that the pictures really do shine. They are sometimes quite strange to look at because of how similar they are but I think it is a really great concept.

All photos taken from here.

 I think this idea links nicely with my project because in essence it is recapturing childhood memories, but in the form of a photograph. My project links as much with childhood memories, but instead links with a book and a more abstract memory rather than a physical one captured in a photograph.

Looking at this artist may not have heavily influenced my project that much but it has helped me think about how I can recreate what it felt like to be terrified of looking at those pages in that book.

Damien Hirst

Just a quick bit of inspiration I found from Damien Hirst's piece 'The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living'.

Source here

Although the idea for the piece is just over 20 years old, it still shocks, intrigues and divides people just as much as it did back then. It is actually the second incarnation of the piece, as the first had to be replaced in 2006 due to decay because of poor preservation.

While planning a trip to the Tate Modern in London, where Hirst currently has a retrospective of his work, I watched a program about him on Channel 4. Here I learnt some of the interpretations of the piece. 

The title points to the fact that a living person cannot possibly conceive what it means to be dead, until they are dead, in which case they can no longer think about the state that they are in. Hirst describes the dead shark as a metaphor for this and also as a tangible symbol of people's fear of death compared to a fear of sharks which can ultimately cause death. To me this piece allows people to come unnervingly close to a man eater, whilst being completely safe, leaving them to consider what it would mean to die, possibly because of a shark and how it feels to be dead.

It may be a weak link but I thought because of how much it deals with fear, of a monster or death, it linked enough with my work. It's about representing the almost universal fear of death in calmer and more approachable way, even if that means staring at a dead shark of all things. I'm not a massive fan of all of Hirst's work, but I think his conceptual ideas, particularly the ones linked to death, of which there are a lot, are pretty amazing. Looking at his work and thinking about it's concepts really inspires me and will definitely help me develop my current project.

More Making

I had another go at making the covers. They were quite successful and I ended up covering all the pages in the chapter. I added a small strip of paper to the inner edge of each cover to reinforce them, like I said I would. I also left the sandpaper off for now, until I decide whats actually going on the pages and what shape I want the sandpaper to be cut to.

 I may end up removing the book jacket as it is looking a little worse for wear. It is about 14 years old after all.

 The extra width caused by the additional pages have greatly affected the structure of the book. However, it still lies quite flat.

 A couple of creases have occured but I think I should be able to fix these by flattening the paper down a little

 The covers don't line up very well because of there being little space for them all in the binding of the book. But I don't think it's too bad.

 Adding the reinforcing strip of paper helped the structure of the cover a little and it now lays a little flatter.

On the pages the opposite side doesnt need to be covered I made a 1cm lip to hold the cover on the page.

I have also been thinking about what I could put on the covers. I thought about things that scare me now. Things that I wouldn't want to spend a long time thinking about, and would therefore want to turn the page past them.

Things like:
-Family/friends dying.
-Failure.
-Having no money.
-Speaking in front of a large group of people. etc.

I'd obviously have to come up with alot more subjects. I thought about perhaps illustrating them using the same style used in  the book. It's a nice realistic style, and I particularly like the way it's coloured.

I'll also have to make alot of big decisions soon if I am to finish this project on time.

Photographs of the Pages

Here are some shots of the pages I am concentrating on for this project. Some pages were scarier than other. On some pages the images scared me more than the stories related to them, on others it was more the words that frightened me.

Although this book had several different chapters, each new chapter didn't have a cover page introducing the chapter like in many other books I have seen, It just went straight into the new topic. So one minute I would be reading about technology and looking at the interesting pictures, and then I would turn the page and immediately be confronted with ghosts and monsters because I had forgotten that it was after this page. The chapter after this one was also my favourite, it was about optical illusions. Therefore I had to turn each page individually so I didn't miss any pages in my favourite chapter.

I'm hoping that looking through these pages will give me some sort of eureka moment as to what I should put on the pages to simulate the experience.