Map Book #1 - Mapping more than just the road from point A to point B...

This will need to be the first of several posts.  There are too, too many photos for just one.  So today I will post the photos of each double page spread, so you can see the 'whole picture', how one page leads to another.  I'll save the details for another post (or 3!)

This was such a different experience for me.  Up in the city, I would drop off a painting to an art exhibition, then go along to the opening, rarely meeting anyone I actually knew.  Then after a week or two, I'd go and pick it up (or on rare and exciting occasions, receive a phone call to say it had sold), and that would be the end of it.

But this time?  At the opening there were people I have come to call friends here in this little town, I sang the 'A New Kind of Map' song (see previous post) with my lovely friend Linda on beautiful, beautiful cello, and got so many heartfelt comments from people throughout the whole 10 days the exhibition was open.  I even got comments from people I'd never met.  I was truly in danger of getting a swelled head, I think!  But such a wonderful, supportive, encouraging place to be, full of so many incredibly talented people.  I wouldn't go back to live in the city if you paid me!

The book itself is A3 size closed (297mm x 420mm).  The outside cover is canvas, painted in acrylics, and tea (yes, I probably did go overboard using the marvelous properties of tea in this book), sprinkled with salt to get the mottled effect (I'm in love with this effect, it looks like a tropical reef).  I must say a huge 'thank you' too, to Trace Willans at Soewnearth, because if I hadn't done the lovely bookmaking workshop with her at the beginning of this year, I wouldn't have had a clue how to bind this all together.  It wasn't a very professional looking effort, but it did the job, looked OK, and most important, held together over 10 days of being looked at by lots of people.

As for the interior, well, anything and everything I could get my hands on.  You'll see some familiar pieces, recycled bits of artwork, recycled ideas, recycled mistakes, even some very VERY old scraps recycled from my days as a graphic design student in Perth almost 30 years ago (which just goes to show, sometimes being a hoarder is a GOOD thing).  There are still more maps in my head that time would not let me finish (hence a couple of 'UNintentionally blank', or almost blank, pages), so perhaps I'll try to add those in future, to make it a more 'complete' version.  I don't think I'll say any more than that, or I'll end up over-explaining every page, and that would just get boring and annoying.