Author Kate McCalmont-Woods

The Book

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I haven’t made a book before. I’ve watched a couple of YouTube videos. I told myself not to have any expectations.

I copy and pasted my blog posts into Word booklets. Each booklet is 5 A4 sheets which is 10 sides and therefore 20 A5 pages amounting to 1 signature. The book will have 10 signatures (totalling 200 pages) and already I know that there will be more than one volume.

It was a laborious task of formatting, copying and resizing the images and creating QR codes for the videos.

Having printed each of the signatures and folded them, I set about sewing them together using linen thread, which I waxed using a beeswax candle, and an upholstery needle. The wax helps prevent the thread from fraying and tangling. First, I had to use an awl to puncture the holes.

Then I applied two layers of archival PVA glue to the spine and attached the ribbon.

Next I had to attach the end papers. I decided to use a couple of cyanotype prints that I had made using the lino cuttings and the shredded cardboard.

The next step was to trim the edge of the text block. When the paper is folded into signatures the outside sheets have further to wrap around and so protrude less than the inner pages. When they are sewn together it creates a zig zag effect down the edge of the pages and so this needs to be tidied up. A stack paper cutter would be ideal in this situation but the woman in the video successfully used a metal ruler and a craft knife.

This is where it all started to go wrong. I think that the craft knife I used was too lightweight and the blade flexed so that the cut edge was all over the place. I tried to remedy it by re-trimming and unfortunately it turned into something akin to the time I trimmed my daughter’s fringe and in repeated efforts to level it out had to resort to taking her to the local hairdresser to get it fixed – ok, made to look less awful.

In an effort to straighten things up I clamped the text block between two pieces of grey card and used 220 grit sand paper to smooth down the edges, which seemed to make it a bit better. I appeared to be back on track.

The next stage was to make and attach the head and tail bands, and the mull.

I then had to start thinking about the cover. I decided to make my own book cloth and made a cyanotype using some of the main words from my blog’s tag cloud. I wrote them onto an A3 plastic sheet and used some pretreated fabric, which unfortunately only came in A4. I masked out an area onto which I then ’embroidered’ the title.

To make it into book cloth I sewed it together in such a way that the seam would run down the middle of the spine – unfortunately because of the measurements I couldn’t do it so that the words matched up. I attached some Japanese mulberry paper to the reverse using Heat and Bond.

I then measured and cut the front and back boards and the spine, and then taped them together to see how they fitted the text block. The idea was to trim the long edge of the front and back boards so that they overhung the text block by 3mm. And this is where it went irretrievably wrong. I’m not quite sure what happened.

I don’t usually do fiddly and I thought that I was being extra careful in my measuring and cutting but something went wrong somewhere and 3mm doesn’t leave a lot of wiggle room. When I had folded over and glued down the edges of the book cloth I tried putting the text block inside only to find that not only was there no overhang but that the paper protruded beyond the edge of the cover in some places.

I tried removing the spine board and replacing it with thinner card and sanding down the edge of the paper. Eventually it fitted so that there was a miniscule amount of overhang but the price was that the text was very close to the edge of the page. Nevertheless, I carried on because I wanted to complete the process.

So there we have it.

What do I think? I’m amazed that I’ve managed to produce something that looks like a book. For a first effort I’m pretty pleased with it. I feel like it’s a real achievement. Obviously there are some major issues with it but on the whole apart from the last stage I think it went quite well. I really like the cover and the end papers – I think that they work really well. I clearly didn’t set out thinking that it wouldn’t work, otherwise perhaps I would have used substitutes as I’m now going to have to make them all over again. But now that I know what I’m doing and where to be careful, it won’t take as long.

I will remake this book, but not yet. I need to feel like I’m making some progress so I will get going on volume 2, which will hopefully go a bit better, and then come back to it.

On the whole it was an enjoyable process – I enjoyed learning something new. What will I do differently next time? Oh, quite a bit! It was a great exercise from which I learnt:

  • accuracy in measuring and cutting is crucial
  • I need to get a more robust craft knife or alterrnatively contact my local printers to see if they can do the trimming for me.
  • The paper used for the end papers was cut from larger sheets and either wasn’t truly A4 in size or had shrunk after the cyanotyping process as they turned out to be slightly too small, but as usual I thought that I might be able to get away with it. I didn’t. Next time I should make them larger and cut down to size before attaching them to the text block.
  • Change the font and size of the page numbers
  • Think about where the thread is on the reverse of the title – connecting threads can cause lumps and bumps once the mulberry paper is bonded to the fabric
  • I need to adjust the margin settings – I allowed for an inside margin of 1.5cm plus a 0.5cm gutter and an outside margin of 1.5cm. Once the book was put together the inside margin turned out to be quite generous whereas the outside margin turned out to be problematical after my attempts at trimming. I think next time I will reduce the inside by 0.5cm and increase the outer by 0.5cm.

What I find intriguing is that the act of researching and making this book to document my becoming, is itself part of the process of becoming.

Onwards and upwards!

The End

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This week’s session centred on the Unit 3 assessment and the end of year show.

It was interesting listening to others talking about their planned pieces and how they could be displayed within the space. I can’t deny that I had a small flicker of panic that I don’t have a singular large finale piece in mind. But on the whole I felt quite calm and relaxed about it. Fingers crossed, I will hopefully have my book which is A5 in size. I would also like to show a larger piece but I think that is yet to come. For the time being, I’m feeling confident that something will emerge from my ongoing experimentation over the coming weeks. I just need to be mindful of elements that might be time dependent such as drying etc.

Josh then said it out loud. He acknowledged the end of the course. We then had a moment reflecting on how we feel about it. Eleana commented that she had asked herself whether she would want to repeat the experience (yes) and Rebecca mentioned that she is dealing with it by having plans and making work which go beyond its end date. Personally, I wouldn’t want to repeat it. There was a time when I wondered whether I could apply again, but on reflection I wouldn’t want to go back to the beginning – I have made so much progress. What I would like is for it to continue because I like the structure and I like the people, but that’s not possible, although we can always stay in touch with each other and use the structure and the way of working which we have developed within the course to carry us forward.

I feel that I now have the tools to continue to develop as an artist beyond the end of the course. The problem is time. My fear is that once the structure has gone I will slip into old ways, of allowing the everyday things and the needs of others to suck up my time. At the moment, others accept that I spend periods of time making because there is a reason – the course. But when it is gone I need to find a way to ensure that I keep that time for myself and that others respect it. I think carrying on the blog will be fundamental to this. One can’t really post about the making of work without making it. I also need to think about my future goals and how I might achieve them.

The Accidental and the Incidental

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I wanted to make some marks – layers of marks – and so I took some A2 paper and used charcoal, pastel, an eraser and a pen.

It wasn’t meant to be anything. I thought that I might use it as a base for something else. I had been wanting to have another go at overprinting the linocut image from Never Say Never. In that post I comment that the shapes look like crouching figures – in retrospect they are foetal-like. The subject of microchimerism has come back to my mind recently and I thought that the idea of making the ink more transparent with each print could touch on that. Also, the marks underneath would also become increasingly visible. I gave it a go but I made a hash of the ratio of ink to extender, and I couldn’t find the new tube of extender so I just added some white which, of course, made the print totally opaque, which wasn’t the original intention.

I left it for a while and got on with other tasks relating to the book and when I revisited it I thought about umbilical chords (something I have referenced previously in Sisters). I thought I might use some of the red thread that I had for my paper experiments to sew some kind of twisting chords which then made me think of using black stitching to delineate between the three shapes. I used a blanket stitch on the second shape as I’d seen at her Tate Modern exhibition that Tracey Emin had used it on her blankets to give a less defined line.

I’m really chuffed. I was thinking as I was sewing that maybe I should have planned where I was going to go, but then decided that, no, I liked the spontaneity of it all. Would I have done anything differently? No. How did I feel as I was making it? I felt pleasure, at all stages. I enjoyed the making of it and I like how it turned out. In fact, over the last few months (Summer Exhibition aside) I have really enjoyed making. That’s not to say that I haven’t enjoyed the process of making before then – I have, particularly the experimenting and and the wandering, it’s just that recently I have felt contented, as if some things have fallen into place. I particularly enjoyed the experiments with lino cuttings and packaging, and I’m really happy with the video that I made.

I think that it comes down to the accidental and the incidental; the unexpected that happens in the process and the small things I notice within the process which then lead to something else.

After Everything Else

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Rebecca recommended a series of short videos on YouTube about elderly artists living in New York made by Joshua Charow.

In one of them, the artist, John Willenbecker, comments that he thinks that he could be a really great artist if he didn’t care about anything else except his work. He quotes Ad Reinhardt as saying that ‘one paints when there is nothing else to do. After everything is done, has been taken care of, one can take up the brush. After all the human social needs, pressures are accounted for. Only then can we be free to work.’

Try being a female artist with a family, I thought to myself.

Oh, That Looks Interesting…

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I often become distracted; I’ll put a pan of water on to boil and then get distracted by something and go wandering off, only remembering that I was meant to be boiling some eggs when the pan has boiled dry.

I was cutting some lino yesterday and I collected the bits of lino on a piece of tissue paper. As I was lifting it up to dispose of them I thought, ‘oh that looks interesting’. And off I went. I wrapped some tissue paper around an old photo frame. I couldn’t be botherered to go off and find clamps etc so I balanced the frame on some books on two chairs. I then set up a couple of anglepoise lamps. Lying flat on my back on the kitchen floor allowed me to photograph the tissue paper from underneath. I experimented with the lino bits as well as some packaging which I had saved, just in case it might come in useful.

To save me from getting up and down, I enlisted some help with the sprinkling. These are the results:

I really like the effect of the lino bits – they are dynamic and have the sense of someone having just made some quick gestural marks. I like the added depth provided by the bits that are further away from the surface of the tissue paper.

I really like the effect in the photos. The first one in both sets is without any backlight and it almost looks like something trying to break through the tissue paper – like something crawling under the skin. It would have been good to try with just a few bits, but by the time I had the thought, I had put everything away, but something for the future.

I also made a video of the ‘sprinkling’. Otto, the dog, was in the kitchen at the time and decided to have a bark and come close to my head grunting like a pig. I was in the process of cleaning up the audio – I was even going to try out Garage Band – but then decided not to – I liked it how it is. I used some audio effects in Capcut – Deep 2, Echo and Super Reverb. I wanted to make the audio unexpected – the sprinkling of something light has been distorted so that it sounds unusually heavy and the background noises are unexpected when heard with the visual which I think makes it more interesting and unexpected.

Video of Sprinkling

April

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April is a strange month. On the one hand lighter nights, Spring, and so many birthdays, including my daughter’s. On the other, my mother’s birthday and the third anniversary of her death. It’s not surprising that she’s been on my mind.

My thoughts have turned back to microchimerism. I’ve mentioned this before, mainly in the context of siblings in The Invasive Sibling. In that post I also refer to the mother’s cells travelling into the baby via the two-way street that is the umbilical chord, something that I didn’t really think about any further at the time. I was doomscrolling on Instagram earlier, and came across a post which was about this very thing. It took me aback in the moment, and its profundity made me suddenly feel really emotional.

In general terms, it’s a difficult one to get my head around – the mother is inside the child, which in turn is inside the mother.

Regrets

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I’ve spent the last few days chained to my laptop copying and pasting most of my 195 blog posts (now plus one!) into a word document. Am I regretting my decision to make a book out of my blog? No, because it feels like it’s ticking a big box somewhere inside of me – it’s keeping my chimp happy – I’m making something that evidences the last two years. It will leave me free to experiment with something else.

That said, I have already reminded myself that I have never made a book before and so the process is very much an experiment, and that I should have no expectations as to the result.

I have formulated a plan though. The book is going to be in A5 format as that avoids the need to deal with things like columns. I’m going to print it in a series of booklets – signatures – of 5 sheets of A4 which equates to 20 pages. These will then be stitched together – I’m currently thinking no more than 10 in a single volume and then covered with a hardback cover. I am thinking that I may use some canvas that I have knocking around which I could paint, draw, print and stitch onto. Alternatively, I could try sheer fabric, cotton or linen. I’ll need to experiment. Even the end papers could be pieces in themselves.

I have already formatted and printed off a couple of signatures. It’s definitely going to run to more than a single volume, so I think that I’ll format and print off the first 10 signatures and make a single book just to see how it goes, rather than spending time formatting and printing out all of the blog.

Thus far the process has revealed a couple of things. Firstly, I need to be mindful that future posts will have to be included, so it may be an idea to limit posts going forward – but who am I kidding? Secondly, in carrying out the exercise I have relived the past two years and it has been helpful to note ideas that I have had along the way and which I could develop in the future, as well as discovering some draft posts which I didn’t publish, perhaps because I wasn’t quite ready. This is an example of part of one which was on the subject of perfectionism:

‘But old habits die hard and when my mother became ill I couldn’t process it on an emotional level and so I became the best carer that I could be, which now I regret because at times it meant that I wasn’t the best daughter that I could be. To this day I can’t understand why, when she said she fancied a gin and tonic, I told her that she couldn’t have it because she was taking morphine. She was dying, what did it matter? It is one of my biggest regrets. And when she didn’t eat one of the many offerings I had made for her, it was because I was a failure, because I wasn’t able to find that one thing that she would want to eat.

I had the same thought this evening as Monty, the dog, only had a few little bits of meat which he had been quite happily eating yesterday. What am I doing wrong? What is it that he wants that I’m not offering him?

And, of course, the answer is nothing. I can only do what I can do in the circumstances. If he was hungry he would eat. If my mother had been hungry she would have eaten what I had made for her. Even if they did eat, it’s not really enough to make any significant difference. I’m not responsible for them not eating. There is nothing that I can do on a practical level anymore to avoid having to deal with the inevitable outcome. ‘

Reflecting II

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I suppose that it’s only natural to pause and reflect on the fact that there are only 10 weeks left: 10 more Tuesday sessions with everyone, 1 more tutorial. Maybe it’s because I’m feeling as if time is slipping through my fingers like sand, that it seems like a blink of an eye since we started, temporally that is because I know that I have undergone enormous change in the interim. When I think back to the session in which we had to introduce ourselves and our work, I find it difficult to reconcile myself to the person I was back then. I now see, think and make differently.

I feel sad.

But all good things must come to an end. I’m trying to subdue that part of me that is panicking that I haven’t made the most out of the last 2 years. But I know that I have; what I’m feeling is the knowledge that there is so much more that I want to try and to experiment with, and that this is not the end, but the next step. So mingled with the melancholy is a flicker of excitement at what the future may bring.

Patterns Of Power

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I do like a pattern.

Today I was at the library in Winchester working on reformatting my blog so that I can make it into a book, whilst my daughter did some revision. The library, recently rebranded as The Arc, has lots going on from talks, plays, life drawing classes as well as a small gallery. The exhibition on at the moment is Patterns of Power by Yinka Shonibare RA. Shonibare explores cultural identity and colonialism. He uses African fabrics in his work. African wax prints were introduced to Africa by the Dutch who took inspiration from the Batik designs of Indonesia, which at that time was a Dutch colony.

It was a riot of colour from screen prints, sculpture to woodblock and collage.

No threads, apart from the woven kind, but I found the collage and his use of fabric particularly interesting.