“A Special Place” is the theme for the Canadian Bookbinders and Book Artist Guild, Ottawa (CBBAG-OV) 2023-24 Signature Exchange or “swap”. In the swap, each of the ten participants, prepared “signatures” – the name given to a nested group of pages in bookbinding lingo. Other than size and theme, anything goes. Each of the ten swappers received nine other signatures to be bound into a unique artist book. It is always exciting to see the results!
Plot 46: Beans, Beetles, and the Soil Biome represents “my special place” and is my submission to the Swap. My four-print set of prints represents different dimensions of Plot 46, a 400 square foot allotment at Maple Hill Urban Farm in Ottawa that I have been cultivating since 2022. Plot 46 is also the eponymous name for my multi-year art-research project on regenerative vegan organic agriculture. I am documenting my project through printmaking, writing, poetry, and video. The first print in the set depicts a traditional landscape view of my plot in its first year. The second is a picture of beans, my main crop, that I harvest, dry, and eat over the winter, always saving seed for the next season. Plants capture the sun’s energy and that energy is transferred into the soil via root exudates. The exudates fuel the bounty of organisms that comprise the soil food web – the secret sauce of healthy soil. Beetles and worms represent all the visible and invisible organisms that coexist in a pesticide-free agricultural ecosystem. These four images, each 5X10 inches, were printed on fine art paper and constructed into an accordion format for the exchange.
Other book artists contributed their own visual stories about their favourite places — from bed and bath, childhood memories, to personal retreats, in a wide range of media. Once I received the other nine signatures, I got to work making them into a book. I decided to make a Coptic book because of its historic significance. The Coptic book is an archaic form of bookbinding used by early Egyptian Christians (the Copts), originating between the 2nd and 4th century. Coptic bindings are characterized by one or more signatures sewn through their folds and attached to each other with chain stitch linkages across the spine. The advantage of Coptic binding is that the book can open flat and does not require any adhesives. I made covers for my book using hand-made paste paper over cardboard.
The contributors to the book in alphabetical order are: Valerie Bridgeman, Deidre Hierlihy, Anna McFaul, Tiffany Moore, Ruth Nuesch, Wendy Parlow, Diane Parkin, Susan Pinard, Madeleine Rousseau, and Beth Shepherd. A big thank you goes to Madeleine Rousseau and Diedre Hierlihy for coordinating this year’s swap and to all the very creative, talented, and generous people who participated.
I wanted to share the work of my fellow artists. So to do this I made a “Flip Book.” Double click on the book to start, then click to stop and start.