Fartin' Around with Books

As my ineloquent headline implies, I made a (very) short book recently. The project was for a class on bookmaking and the scope of said project was... to make a book. You following me here, reader-guy? Time for some pictures.

Here is the outside of the book. Simple soft-spine binding method. Titled "Home" but I kind of came up with that just on the fly and scribbled it on there in pen about a minute before I handed it in.

Page one, if you aren't counting end sheets. Although this is kind of an end sheet. Wraps around so the last image in the book is also this type of silhouette thing.

Page two. Guess who.

Text reads "I don't really have a Home." The more I look at it, I think this could be my favorite page. Originally it was my least favorite.

Text reads "Lived in apartments most my life." This is actually my least-favored page in the entire thing. Too much rendering here. The entire book was set on the notion of rendering as little as possible to give it this kind of disparate, lonely feel. Why? Because I had like a day and a half to make this thing from start to finish.

"Once you move out, someone else moves in. Can't go back. Its not Home."

"But maybe I consider places where I have memories to be home. Like school."

E.L. Bowsher High School in Toledo, Ohio. Demolished.

"Or a favorite mall."

Southwyck Mall, that is. South end of Toledo, built in the early seventies. I lived half a mile away from it during my high school years, and spent every Saturday there with my friends, pretty much the entire time I was in high school.

"But those places got demolished." Interesting video (not mine) shows the mall at the beginning of its demolition: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0qxig3UIWqM

"Oh well. This city is still home."

This is another favorite of mine from this whole project.

"In fact..."

"It probably looks a lot like your home."

That's it, man. I left part of the end paper in this one just so you can see it.

So, I didn't have much time at all to work on this project because of the limited time frame we were given. I was well-aware of this fact and thus chose to keep all the illustrations minimal. In my opinion, this aesthetic choice meshes well with the overall isolated feeling the theme of the book seems to impart.

This book really doesn't contain a story of any sort. I don't know how to categorize it, other than just an illustrated experience. The subject matter is one I've been leaning towards more and more in my paintings-- under-appreciated landscapes, typically the result of suburban growth and industrial decay. However, at the end of the book, I make acknowledgement of globalization, which, admittedly, was a choice I made out of simply not really knowing where to go with the "story." For that, I am a little ashamed and I think it makes the book read like a brief, illustrated foray into a schizophrenic's reminiscence.