Artist's Book

These images are from a book that I created for a fictional Issey Miyake fashion show; a high end production where guests were sent an invitation and given a catalogue and a gift, all of which were part of the brief. The sky was the limits as far as budget was concerned.The materials used include a purchased book from which I used the cover and some pages; silk; Utee; micro beads; coloured mica powder; laser-printed images; ink; rubber stamps; fancy papers (including mulberry, vellum and form-molded); machine stitching; and transfer papers. The book is 12"x12".

I scrapbook and make greeting cards so this book was somewhat a familiar territory for me in that I used or elaborated on many techniques that I was already familiar with. The degree of difficulty and finesse were above what I would go to for most of my scrapbooking endeavours and I spent considerable time tracking down materials.
Normally when I create a scrapbook page or album I am doing so for the benefit of myself and my husband and children, or as a gift for a family member, such as grandparents. Most scrapbooking is ‘designed’ a page (or small group of pages) at a time – papers, embellishments and design elements are unique (in combination) to that page or layout and are chosen for their relationship to the photos that will be used.

A slightly different approach was used here as I had a demographic to consider. Fortunately, as Miyake’s garments are so unique, and many of them could be considered more Art (there it is again!) than wearable clothes, I concluded that the audience invited to his show were of the same ilk – left-of-centre, visually oriented and creative. Miyake’s clothes beg to be touched and examined and so the catalogue has a highly textured cover piece, papers that range from embossed and rough to the feathery softness of torn mulberry, incorporates pleated silk and torn vellum, the pages are assembled with stitching that has its ends dangling, and the book is interspersed with hand-coloured pages.

Until the last few weeks I considered the catalogue to be 'craft' because of its similarity to my scrapbooking. Having read Drucker and explored quite a few books and internet sites relating to artist’s books, I think that I can change my description to Art, specifically Artist’s Book. My only difficulty now rests with self-definition. Am I a graphic designer, artist, crafter or a combination? I suppose that ultimately I am a combination of all three, with a lean towards a particular nomenclature with each creation.