Holly Ormrod

Also this evening/morning, a quick mention for one of my best friends, Holly Ormrod, who was on my MA course with me. She makes beautiful book based work which you can see at www.hollyormrod.com. 

Nexus Press

The Boat Buch, Unica T.
Last Day in Kas, Helen Douglas
Memory Lapse, Clifton Meador

Night Flyers, Joseph Scheer
I am up in the middle of the night as I can't get to sleep, so I am taking the opportunity to play around with my blog. 

Anyway, I am currently on an extended stay in Atlanta, where I am working for the Atlanta Contemporary Art Center, selling Nexus Press books. Nexus Press ceased printing in 2003 but they still have a lot of beautiful books which they are selling. You can see the catalog here http://www.thecontemporary.org/nexus_catalog.asp. 

Above are a few of my favourites in the collection.

Artist's Statement

My practice begins when I notice that something has been lost. I revisit urban spaces with which I have personal histories and use the book as a nostalgic object, and a device by which to record my own memories. Also, as an attempt to express the sense of confusion and obsession associated with loss. What I see in these spaces is how I have changed; the image of what I am no longer. I become a spectator of myself at another time. 

My headless, limbless, faceless silhouettes are idealised ‘just bodies’ of the person I try to remember. The negative space in my images is filled by what the viewer’s mind imagines to have been there and what my mind remembers to be there. I like the jarring of the memory of the artist vs. the memory of the viewer. My work plays with the idea of the ephemeral by recording things or times that have been lost, and making them tangible, satisfying the collector’s attachment to permanence. In destroying a book I have escaped the fantasy images of a past reality, and by recording this process, created a new reality. My work rejects the dematerialised object of the conceptualists by creating images of beauty from a, literally, dematerialised object. 

It has become increasingly important for me to remember that memory is littered with imagination, because the process of remembering is conjuring up what is absent, it is difficult to separate memory from an idealised reality. My books act as souvenirs from imagined perfect times. Souvenirs, as objects which cannot exist without loss and removal from their original context, idealise the past and discredit the present. 

I use the book to create sequences that allude to visual narratives through space or time, or both. ‘Reading’ a book is a process of waiting. Waiting for something to change, for something to happen, for some kind of conclusion. This never happens in my books. The book’s structure and inherent tactility has become an essential element of my work. Each page of a book suppresses the view of the next and previous page, the length of the book deciphers the length of the wait, and the paper itself has a memory. 

It's getting there...

My blog's starting to look proper now, don't you think? 

Another new item in my shop.

A new ipod sleeve... my favourite so far.

Lovely etsy seller...

Look what I came across yesterday! These paintings are just so delicious I couldn't resist putting them in my blog. And Amy was so sweet to me! You can find them in her etsy store at www.leeluandpiggy.etsy.com.

My new ipod covers.

I have been making ipod covers for my etsy shop, do you like them?

More beautiful etsy finds...

I think these cut paper pieces are so simple and pretty. You can find them at Crafterall's etsy shop. www.crafterall.etsy.com

Etsy finds...

I have been admiring the work in michellemoode's etsy shop www.michellemoode.etsy.com.

I love her combination of materials, her organic mark making and shapes and the sense of deconstructing and reconstructing...

Encore- Artist's Book

These are photographs of the original book of drawings on Japanese tissue paper. 

I recently graduated from an MA in Book Arts from The University of the Arts London. This is some of my work and an image of the final exhibition. The work is photographs of a book of drawn images on Japanese tissue paper, disintegrating in a tank of caustic soda over a course of five days. Some of the prints are available in my etsy store.

Okay... I'm really going to get this show on the road this time...

I'm starting a series of works dealing with the qualities of paper... I'm not sure what to say about it yet as I am just in the first stages. I want to capture the qualities that paper has that I so love and see where that takes me.