Creative Leftovers - One Last Project

You've seen my finished pieces, the TA-DAs! for my graduation show. However, I created lots of other images and marks on paper over the last two years that didn't really fit into any particular anything. I wanted to keep them, but I didn't want all that loose paper hanging about. What to do? What to do?
     Then I remembered a one-of-a-kind, handmade book that our ECA librarian Jane Furness shared with us in my first year. It was a unique mishmash of images, ideas, and substrates, bound with metal. I thought I might do something like that. Yeah!
     One of the challenges creating my version, though, is that all my images were various sizes. I used black duct tape as my unifying material. It gave me the width I needed and a means of attaching each separate image into the whole. It's also extremely strong, which this needed to be. For the cover, I did a linocut carving of hand-drawn text, which I printed on 3mil cardboard painted with my leftover textiles ink. Here's what it looked like.Clamps held it together while it was a work-in-progress, but they weren't strong enough to become the permanent binding - this sucker is heavy. That's where the metal comes in.
     I purchased some aluminium stripping and nuts and bolts, then sought help from the university metal shop.Such an inspiring space, even the ceiling is wonderful!Ideas and possibilities are everywhere, even crows! (I'm all about crows these days!)I would so love to do an MFA in sculpture someday, especially considering my history in bronze casting and welding years ago. For now, it was just this little bit of playing. Malcolm cut down my aluminium stripping and drilled holes through it. We both assembled the book with the nuts and bolts, then Malcolm sanded down the parts still sticking out.And VOILA!Here's a close-up of the binding.Inside, are prints, posters, figure drawings, ripped paper, linocuts, you name it.
Even the large blue cat that I had on my window first year makes an appearance!All said, it's a visual treasure of my time here at the University of Edinburgh College of Art - a collection of the experiments that have guided this wonderful journey. It seems fitting that there should be only one of these in the world.