Nearly there - but very nearly wasn't!

Well this has been a difficult week. On Sunday evening my last post was saying that I was going to have a day off, then get stuck into making the artist's books in tin boxes, which I had been planning since last June! I kept putting it off and putting it off - finding all sorts of displacement activites, some wholesome, some not-so! It took a real effort to try to look at what was troubling me.

I finally started in earnest very late on Wednedsay evening, when next Friday's preview started feeling as if it was breathing down my neck! i thought i knew what i was doing. Goodness knows I've been planning it for long enough. So i started printing off pictures; re-binding the books I'd bought to go in the tins; and finding samples of off-cuts to stick into the books. BUT i wasn't enjoying it. 

IT FELT REALLY CONTRIVED and I hated it.

But that threw me! What else was i going to do? Even if i am lucky enough that anyone wants to buy any of the 30 main pieces in the exhibition, i am determined that the originals are not for sale and are to stay together, in order to be able to move the whole exhibition to another venue, later in the year. It was the thing I've been worrying about subconsciously for weeks, and finally  i had made myself come face to face with it!

i knew very quickly that i would rather have nothing to sell at the previev, rather than produce something I wasn't happy with. So I stopped forcing myself, and cried!! A lot!! 

Then I spoke to my sister. She is the only person whose opinion I really really trust. I don't like her opinion sometimes (!) but I trust her.

She suggested that the boxes contain small treasures, like when we were children. She remembered a piece of moss and an owl pellet in hers. I have a really strong memory of a tiny book which she had in her box. It had photos of my aunt's wedding when we were bridesmaids. We were about 6 and 2. It was tiny - the size of contact prints - and her ownershiop of it was my first memory of covetting something.

So the idea of fhe tiny book/set of images in a handmade handprinted box came into being. It will have a copy of all 30 of the exhibition pieces in it, together with an original piece of artwork/collage and other treasures, all in one of my very precious tea-sample tins.

I am enthusiastic and inspired again! Just in time!!