Old Is New Again

From the Inside Out is long over--the show was in 2014, however I don't want to lose access to this blog which details work put into curating and participating in the show along with the artists who were part of it.  So I am inserting this brief post now before Google begins deleting inactive blogs and gmail accounts.  Heads up if you haven't heard this is happening. The deletions begin in December 2023.  

I think about this show often--it and the connections made with the participants and the exhibition catalog that was created is the finest work I've ever done IMHO. The catalog is still available at Blurb.

Since then, my partner in crime: co-curator Elizabeth Adams-Marks moved to Florida to be near family. Her interests lean strongly toward gardening nowadays and enjoying her two beautiful granddaughters.  

Fabienne Rey continues to eco print and to create gorgeous stitched pieces. She and her spouse moved to a new location where she has more room to garden which supplies her with printing material and also for her handmade inks.   

Irit Dulman's eco printing techniques have reached new heights. She travels the world teaching workshops. In 2022 she announced a book is in the works which I think may be released sometime in 2024. 

Rio Wrenn continues rust printing and natural dyeing. She regularly showcases fashion pieces on Facebook and has begun offering workshops in the Portland, OR area.  In 2022 she published Spirituality of Rust, A Sacred Language of Iron Through Art.  The book is beautiful and you can acquire it here.

I'm not sure all the links in the sidebar work.  I will check those later.  

Let's celebrate! Catalog is now available!!

The long wait is finally over!

I thank you for your patience.

The exhibition catalog for

From the Inside Out

Felt, Paper, Textiles: Revelations in Natural Mark Making

is finally complete!

I've seen the book digitally and in a test print copy and, 
pardon my vanity, but it is a thing of beauty!  

Here is the front cover of the book.  

The 100 page book is available online in softcover and two hard cover versions, plus PDF which is viewable on most platforms 

and an ebook version that will work on macs or iPads and smart phones. You can purchase the book at: 

Blurb here.

This is a comprehensive catalog of “From the Inside Out – Felt, Paper, Textiles: Revelations in Natural Mark Making” an international art exhibition two years in the making that Elizabeth Adams-Marks (USA) and I curated.  Joining us in the exhibition were Irit Dulman (Israel), Fabienne Rey (The Netherlands), and Rio Wrenn (USA.  All five artists share a devotion to ecological and sustainable ways of working. Elizabeth and I have been friends for over a decade and 8 mile neighbors in Madison County, Illinois, we curated the show and created the catalog as a team.  We are alumnae of SIUE, both art teachers (me formerly) who actively exhibit and have work in public and private collections.  We were thrilled to curate and participate in From the Inside out.

All 52 works of art are included in the book, full color, high definition photos were used.  There are many close ups of works, and some great enlargements.  The book is an 8x10 landscape format.  Every picture has a detailed caption.  All artist statements are included as well as a curatorial statement and addition conmmentary by each artist.  

Some info about Blurb and our book:

Blurb is a print on demand service.  They accept major credit cards and Paypal and will ship just about anywhere in the world.  Go check it out.  

NOTE:  If you are familiar with blurb, you'll notice the FTIO book is treated as two separate books.  That's because the ebook version had to be uploaded separately from the print version because the file was so large - something like 1.7 GB!   

So there are two book thumbnails and 2 descriptions.  The print version has a custom preview set up and the ebook shows the first 30% of the book.  The print version will show front and back of book and something from each artist.  The ebook preview shows the beginning third of book and you'll see only one artist in that section.    

You can search for the book by title From the Inside Out, or by either my or Elizabeth's names.   Although if you can't find the ebook, then seach via the ebook category. 

The print versions of the book are all essentially the same but come with different covers.    The soft cover and image wrap hardbound versions have the cover photos printed directly on the cover.  The dust jacket hard cover version has a plain black cover under the dust jacket.  Please note that if you purchase the PDF version, you will want to set it to view in two pages if possible because I designed the book with several large photos that jump the gutter. You should see them in all their glory.  The ebook version is already in 2 page format, unless you are viewing on your mobile phone.  

I must add that Blurb has been a wonderful platform on which to work.  They provide the software and easy to use templates that allow for creative customization, and the support if you need it -- all free of charge.  You can take as long as you want to complete the project, although you might need to install updates to the software. When the upload is complete, you can place an order at the base price or set a profit margin.  The books can be shipped practically anywhere in the world...a list of international options can be found on the site.  You can also arrange to have your book sold through Amazon or the iBooks.  

Update on the FTIO exhibition catalog

I am ridiculously overdue in explaining the delay in finishing the catalog.

I have my fingers in so many pies this year--making new work and preparing for 5 shows this fall, one of which I am curating, plus another major project involving my art and one small one have taken over my life and put the catalog on temporary hold.

On top of all of that my big desktop computer on which the catalog is being created has decided it doesn't want to work properly anymore.  Some really strange things have been happening.  Never fear--the catalog is archived on a separate drive and available when I am ready to resume the proofreading and a few corrections that are still to be made.  It is very close to being finished.

My sincere apologies for the long wait.
I WILL finish the catalog.  And I will keep you posted on when it is going to be published.

Thank you for your patience!
Pat

Here's a preview gallery shot…

A glimpse of one of Fabienne's 12 eco printed panels on the left, Rio's large silk circle on the far wall, Irit's tree bark felted piece on the near wall, and Fabienne's embroidered eco print on the right.

Getting really close!

Our catalog will be ONE  HUNDRED  PAGES! 

It's big and it's beautiful just like this detail of Elizabeth's that will appear in the catalog. 





Elizabeth Adams-Marks, Leats and Buddles, Tin Mines on Bodmin Moor, Cornwall, UK, handmade abaca and flax paper, rust printed and embossed, tannins and teas, stitching, 19.5" x 23.5" [50 cm x 60 cm], 2014.  DETAIL.

Photos: Patricia Vivod

I am proofreading now.  Reading backwards very slowly.  Then will set the page numbers and few other details and finally will be able to upload and start the process of offering our exhibition catalog to the world.  Just a little more patience required.  It will be worth it, I guarantee that.

75 pages and counting

A favorite gallery scene that will appear in catalog.  How many rectangles?

A recent visitor to my house (who shall remain nameless) made light of my efforts to get the catalog done, teasing me for taking so long. The more I thought about it, the more I thought that was an unfair assessment of what Elizabeth and I are doing. This is no brochure. This is a full fledged catalog of the entire exhibit. And it will be a thing of beauty when it is done. Granted it has taken some time, but we have sifted through nearly 600 photographs taken for this show, finding the best image for each of the 52 pieces that hung in the gallery, plus detail images for much of the art. We are also including 30 or more gallery scenes such as the one above that features work (L-R) by Irit, Fabienne and Rio.

Before we even started, we took some time to select fonts that we liked and made sure that they would work in print or e-book format. Each of the photos selected has had to be color corrected and then plugged into a custom layout. Blurb offers a nice array of layout choices, but many pages have been modified or built from scratch and all of them have been done one at time--importing the photos as needed. Each photo is tried out and adjusted for size and often cropped on the page, a nice feature that Blurb offers. We've discovered a few of the photos, for one reason or another, have been too low res, so tomorrow I'm actually going to rephotograph a couple of Elizabeth's pieces and Rio is sending a higher res image of one of her pieces for which we neglected to get a detail. There is always something...

Each piece of art has to have the correct caption and captions are in a different size font and style so we are constantly proofreading to be sure we are consistent and once in a blue moon there is not enough space, so the page has to be adjusted--a font made smaller or a picture resized to accommodate the information. For those of you who live in a metric world, we are converting all dimensions so that we all can know the sizes.  Elizabeth and I don't always agree on the outcome of a particular page, so there has been compromise and editing as we go along. She can spot a comma dilemma from 20 paces and keeps me on my toes for professional writing.  We will soon be proofreading the heck out of this--Elizabeth was an illustrator and graphic designer for 25 years in her former life and I taught yearbook for 14 years along with teaching art for 25 years, so we know how to design and we know how to spot mistakes--and we so want this book to be perfect. 

Elizabeth and I agonized for a week or more at the beginning writing the introduction to the book for which we have a dazzling panorama of the gallery--can't wait for you all to see it. Each of the artists contributed an artist statement that is being included--and an additional statement for a special piece--something that was not offered in the gallery.  And of course all of that information has to be typed into the text boxes on the pages. 

Last I counted, there were over 75 pages with a 1000 MB file to go along with them.  I like that Blurb is easy to use.  I have run into a few glitches along the way as I mentioned in my last post, but I've had Blurb support helping.  We are in the last stretch of creating.  I hope we'll be able to announce the publication of the book very soon.  Thank you so much for your patience.  I hope you'll think it's been worth the wait. 

Here's to kicking off the new year with a bang!

Catalog Update!

Irit Dulman eco printed shibori felt dress,
one of the icons from the exhibit.

You all must think we dropped off the face of the earth! Here's a confession. Creating From the Inside Out took 2 years and frankly, when the show came down and everything was packed up to send back to the artists, I felt I deserved a little rest. (Elizabeth doesn't get any rest--she's a middle school art teacher with a demanding schedule to contend with plus students (probably) jumping out of their skins in anticipation of the coming holidays.) But I assure you that the catalog is well underway! Elizabeth and I have consulted several times and will continue to do so. 

It took awhile, but we wrote one heck of an intro. We've got gorgeous photos. Sometimes I get caught up in just staring at them, conjuring memories of the exhibition. Blurb is easy to work with, but once in a while I hit a little snag. For example, last evening, suddenly any picture I tried to upload was declared corrupt. So all was saved and the program was shut down to rest. Then everything began working like a charm again and, for those who know me well, I worked LONG into the wee hours.

This morning, however was a different story. When I tried to find the book file and open it, it wasn't where it was supposed to be. And when I did find it, several pages that were created last night were gone. GRRRR! (I know what you are thinking!  I did SAVE it!)  Hopefully it won't take too long to bring it up to date again. Wish me lots of luck! I hope the catalog can be finished soon!

Peace and Best wishes to all of you!

Pat

Down and Out the Door

From the Inside Out came down in about 5 hours on September 22. Amazing how fast the de-install was compared to the over 100 collective hours to get it up on the walls.  Many thanks to Mary Jo Larson and John Knowles for helping again. 

In the meantime, the moveable walls have been rearranged and a new exhibition is being installed this week at SIUE. I'm anxious to see the new show, but it was disconcerting to see the gallery changed after spending so much time contemplating FTIO in the space.   

After spending a week on packing, I didn't want any help with the task, I took Fabienne's work to Fed Ex which, for a hefty price, did a fine job of shooting it across the pond and into Fabienne's hands in under 48 hours. Wow that was fast.  Rio's will go a bit slower, by ground with UPS. But I learned something new. Fed Ex was not going to accept one of Fab's boxes because I'd wrapped it in heavy paper to cover all the logos on a reused box from a retailer. But the clerk finally relented after I wound tape around it from one end to the other. He even supplied the tape free of charge. Of course the revelation that paper is not allowed sent me back to SIUE the next day to rethink one of Rio's boxes. I ripped the paper off her pieced together box and wrapped the entire thing in another layer of cardboard to strengthen it. I must say it was not an easy task single handed, but at 72" long (with her rods inside) I didn't want the box to suffer getting bent. It was handy too that the art supply cage at SIUE sells 4x8 sheets of cardboard!

Now, finally, I can give my full attention to the making of the catalog.  Stay tuned...