Book Camp 2018 - The Process

Another of the questions we were asked in the lead up to Book Camp was:

Do you have a goal/challenge you’d like achieve while at book camp? (It’s OK if
you want to cut loose and just go with the flow!) To create without anxiety.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

And, although I had anxiety around driving in Auckland, what if I have another stroke while on the motorway, what have I forgotten to bring, what if I get sick yet again, what if I die.... and although I had some frustrations and difficulties arise during the creative process..... I actually found I did not suffer debilitating anxiety when creating as I usually do, especially in the presence of others.


On the first morning of Book Camp, Liz gave us a package of goodies, which included a little pad of Post-It notes. She asked us to use these to keep track of our process during the week. She told us to stick them on the wall as we went along, but I knew that I would forget to do it unless it was right in front of me, so I stuck them on to a piece of sheet music that I happened to have in my bag, not because I am a musician but because it is delicious paper.

Our instructions were deliberately vague to the point of being suggestions: we were to do something with a large old book, bottles, calico, paper, collected words, plus or minus anything....

Thoughts were to be noted on the Post-It notes as they occurred. I found this as silly as the proposal that we 'listen to the book and it will tell you what it wants' and 'the book will emerge' as Liz always rabbits on about.

Except the notes really helped, and my book really did speak to me and emerge! It's the first time this has happened to me, and I put it down to the fact that post-stroke I have an excuse to let go of the tyranny of the absurd expectation that perfection is both possible and required.

So here is some of my process as recorded on my Post-It notes:

• Arrrgh! Too many thoughts and ideas... 
• Calico book - 'renovate' the one I started at home...
• Altered (medical) book - collage - magic potions - cures
• find the rat in the wall (we heard a noise which was suggested to be that, though was actually just a branch in the wind) - rat behind a flap in book.... 
• old marbled book end-paper to line holes cut in book to house bottles...
• what can I do wit all the bits of paper cut from the book? (I threw them out at the end - couldn't come up with an idea._
• rust paper for cover of miniature book 'Instructions for a Cure-All' with the pages made from a Romanian encyclopedia...
• words - losing words - swallowing rats - Violet....
• type out poems about losing words

• gluing together pages individually - gesso no, pva too slow, glue stick too slow, pva edges - partially worked, make holes and tie pages together yay!
• gesso edges
• 'lost for words' - 'falling' - 'calling for help'....
• larger bottle - message in bottle - 'the stopper has been lost, the bottle knocked over, and my spirit has spilled out across the universe'
• stamp designs
• note from talk: thinking positively v negatively - challenge v struggle
• note from talk: starting day right with a walk, meditation, to still the mind, to open mind
• note from talk: Hilary's joyful approach, 'glorious'
• can I develop something of that or is one born with it? Can I discover? rediscover? retain? that childhood enthusiasm?
• half way through I have found that I can start something without any intention other than the intention to start and not be bothered by thoughts that it may come to nothing
• doing / being - standing in the edge of the waves doing nothing 
• it's ok to say 'I love what I've made, this is gorgeous' - after all, why bother doing it if it's not something you like?
• 'Emerging' my medical book is telling me it wants to be about my stroke, about my aphasia...
• gesso index, all except my ailments

• 'bee hopeful' - tape in bottle
• collage cover

• paint gold on edges of book
• wipe gold stamp pad on edges of book
• next project? too tired - do something familiar
• gelli prints..... on calico.... round gelli plate
• stitch on gelli printed calico
• make prayer-type flags from them?
• hang them from ladder in The Messy Playroom?
• Maybe it's time to put my art - yes 'art' - in a living area, a more 'public' space - never done that before....
• BUT WAIT..... there's not much room .... because there are already a bunch of my art on all the walls....
• ....I have just never seen them as art.....
• but my womad flags ARE art!
• I am a writer. I am a poet. I am an artist. I am okay.

Thank you, Liz Constable or Book Art Studios.