Maybe the bite from the front of this book was the unfortunate conjuring of a savage demon. That time, you were lucky. Hide your magic words in the pockets inside the book, that's my recommendation.
Tuesday
The Little Book of Magikal Wonderings
Maybe the bite from the front of this book was the unfortunate conjuring of a savage demon. That time, you were lucky. Hide your magic words in the pockets inside the book, that's my recommendation.
Thursday
What is a Knicker Drawer Note Book?
I know the Knicker Drawer Books speak to some people, because for you, neither of us needs words.
But I have to describe a Knicker Drawer book to someone I won't meet.
I'll say, a Knicker Drawer book is a curiosity. Think of it as a unique mix. Assemblage Art meets Artist Journal meets Commonplace Book meets Collaborative Art meets Storytelling meets Object Narration meets Therapy Journal meets Sensory Book.
Did that help?
Erm.
Maybe, the only way to know about a Knicker Drawer Book is to hold one.
A Knicker Drawer Book seeks your physical engagement. It can be a puzzling, or sensuous experience, or both. Pick it up, and you become a part of the physical moment. The book responds to you by the way it falls into your hand and perhaps the materials begin a story. It is expression and identity; it hints narrative, fantasy, or truth, as you find it; this little book suggests, proposes, queries, reveals, and conceals. This knowledge is released, forbidden, closed, open. Strange. It is already an object that is old, but it offers you new possibilities: it is a place filled with old meanings, yet a blank space waiting to be changed by your expression.
Did that help? Hmm.
Perhaps I could help like this?
I make the books selfishly, and they draw on ideas that form me. I draw inspiration from imaginative books of story. Magic books, folk tales, fables. I draw inspiration from broken things, found objects, discarded or damaged things. I draw inspiration from lived experience: how the layers of lives and complexities of metaphor combine to create a moment that is lived anew, yet is lived before; it is old, as old as humanity.
And I want the person who holds a Knicker Drawer Book to take what I make and change it; to re-shape and re-transform this object in your hands. I want the books to become the change that is part of life.
Let's put that another way. Time is an unstoppable flow. The book I make, it is on its own time journey. It is an object in transition. The pieces have been assembled - perhaps papers newly pressed, perhaps leather restitched, perhaps an item found - but is an object assembled of parts, made suddenly into a new whole. But that is already a temporary state, moving to a new transition.
In your hands, your book will change. Over time, you add new layers, new objects, new experiences. The book you create when you write, draw, doodle, pin, stitch, stain, tear the pages, all can become, if you like, a metaphor for your experiences when observed by another, or a short-hand way for you to identify, remember, and recount your own matters, or simply a collation of stuff you happily ignore as you pass by. In this way, the book I once made continues on its journey as you use it and leave it in turn. Where next in space and time? Will it pass from you, given to another? Will it be discarded, to change again by minerals and earth chemicals? Will you unpick the book to create new objects bound for other journeys? Or, as we are all outlived by our things, will your book be left in a drawer, waiting for discovery?
I don't know whether musings upon space, time, transience, and timelessness help much either. And I sure could go on (and on) with intellectual inquiries on forms of narration. Or how I know books I make are used to navigate healing, end of life, loss, and spiritual journeying.
But perhaps the Knicker Drawer Books are simply a great toot-toot of celebration!
Stuff your book full with the ephemera that surrounds you - scribbles, notes, discarded print, casual jottings, doodles, found objects, cards. This unique and bizarre collation, in its new, framed context, gives a strange beauty. Purpose, value, and a curious sense of wonder.
That's a Knicker Drawer Book.
A celebration of your ordinary, everyday.
But I have to describe a Knicker Drawer book to someone I won't meet.
I'll say, a Knicker Drawer book is a curiosity. Think of it as a unique mix. Assemblage Art meets Artist Journal meets Commonplace Book meets Collaborative Art meets Storytelling meets Object Narration meets Therapy Journal meets Sensory Book.
Did that help?
Erm.
Maybe, the only way to know about a Knicker Drawer Book is to hold one.
A Knicker Drawer Book seeks your physical engagement. It can be a puzzling, or sensuous experience, or both. Pick it up, and you become a part of the physical moment. The book responds to you by the way it falls into your hand and perhaps the materials begin a story. It is expression and identity; it hints narrative, fantasy, or truth, as you find it; this little book suggests, proposes, queries, reveals, and conceals. This knowledge is released, forbidden, closed, open. Strange. It is already an object that is old, but it offers you new possibilities: it is a place filled with old meanings, yet a blank space waiting to be changed by your expression.
Did that help? Hmm.
Perhaps I could help like this?
I make the books selfishly, and they draw on ideas that form me. I draw inspiration from imaginative books of story. Magic books, folk tales, fables. I draw inspiration from broken things, found objects, discarded or damaged things. I draw inspiration from lived experience: how the layers of lives and complexities of metaphor combine to create a moment that is lived anew, yet is lived before; it is old, as old as humanity.
And I want the person who holds a Knicker Drawer Book to take what I make and change it; to re-shape and re-transform this object in your hands. I want the books to become the change that is part of life.
Let's put that another way. Time is an unstoppable flow. The book I make, it is on its own time journey. It is an object in transition. The pieces have been assembled - perhaps papers newly pressed, perhaps leather restitched, perhaps an item found - but is an object assembled of parts, made suddenly into a new whole. But that is already a temporary state, moving to a new transition.
In your hands, your book will change. Over time, you add new layers, new objects, new experiences. The book you create when you write, draw, doodle, pin, stitch, stain, tear the pages, all can become, if you like, a metaphor for your experiences when observed by another, or a short-hand way for you to identify, remember, and recount your own matters, or simply a collation of stuff you happily ignore as you pass by. In this way, the book I once made continues on its journey as you use it and leave it in turn. Where next in space and time? Will it pass from you, given to another? Will it be discarded, to change again by minerals and earth chemicals? Will you unpick the book to create new objects bound for other journeys? Or, as we are all outlived by our things, will your book be left in a drawer, waiting for discovery?
I don't know whether musings upon space, time, transience, and timelessness help much either. And I sure could go on (and on) with intellectual inquiries on forms of narration. Or how I know books I make are used to navigate healing, end of life, loss, and spiritual journeying.
But perhaps the Knicker Drawer Books are simply a great toot-toot of celebration!
Stuff your book full with the ephemera that surrounds you - scribbles, notes, discarded print, casual jottings, doodles, found objects, cards. This unique and bizarre collation, in its new, framed context, gives a strange beauty. Purpose, value, and a curious sense of wonder.
That's a Knicker Drawer Book.
A celebration of your ordinary, everyday.
Friday
cat book, black book, black cat book
.
maybe sinister black cats on the loose
next up, cat book two, wink wink.
Sunday
Giger inspired
I have become a bit of a nerd. If a nerd means you happily sit and watch other people play Dark Seed while narrating their experiences, because you are looking for the portal design to the other world beyond the mirror.
I am finding this world of biomechanical Alien exploration with its borderlands of fetishism and eroticism all jolly brilliant, and to the lady who nodded at me with the word Alien, I thank you.
Three versions using the same leather below - one with magnetic fold and lash, one with buckle, one with tie cord.
Themes I've used throughout for inspiration from Alien - black, black, and more black; hard technical costume for military or heavy-use duty; ribs, vertebra and skeletal structures; tendril trails and slinky lines; egg cases and objects held in stasis; tunnelling and worm-like holes, here made through the pages.
In all of the books, the outside cover is both flexible and wrapping so invites involvement round your fingertips, but at the same time it's tough and raw and hard to touch. The nets and silky feel in all the books suggest smooth and beautiful flexibilities, but frayed ends and multiple layers catch your fingers. The transparent fabrics and papers allow you partial views of what lies beneath, between, beyond. The ripple of needle pricks along pages feels like the regular curve of vertebra. And in all three books I've tried to incorporate sounds that are discomforting. Run your fingernails along these nets and hear the scrape of a saw; rub those nets together and maybe something is scuttling between those pages.
Magnets and lash:
Buckle:
Tie cord:
I am finding this world of biomechanical Alien exploration with its borderlands of fetishism and eroticism all jolly brilliant, and to the lady who nodded at me with the word Alien, I thank you.
Three versions using the same leather below - one with magnetic fold and lash, one with buckle, one with tie cord.
Themes I've used throughout for inspiration from Alien - black, black, and more black; hard technical costume for military or heavy-use duty; ribs, vertebra and skeletal structures; tendril trails and slinky lines; egg cases and objects held in stasis; tunnelling and worm-like holes, here made through the pages.
In all of the books, the outside cover is both flexible and wrapping so invites involvement round your fingertips, but at the same time it's tough and raw and hard to touch. The nets and silky feel in all the books suggest smooth and beautiful flexibilities, but frayed ends and multiple layers catch your fingers. The transparent fabrics and papers allow you partial views of what lies beneath, between, beyond. The ripple of needle pricks along pages feels like the regular curve of vertebra. And in all three books I've tried to incorporate sounds that are discomforting. Run your fingernails along these nets and hear the scrape of a saw; rub those nets together and maybe something is scuttling between those pages.
Magnets and lash:
Buckle:
Tie cord:
Tuesday
Travel, sail, yoga, sing...
The book for all bits and bobs, change the label as you wish.
Soft brick red cover; travel journal style; plenty of pockets, maps, and places ...a little bit of organisation and discipline, or chaos and random patterning as you like... to stash tickets, notes, musical refrains, reminders to srtetch both legs at once, and the picture of the Yogi.
This next choice, I can imagine suits intrepid Victorian lady explorer. She probably thinks nothing of doing battle with a tiger before breakfast and then composing a small sonata for her evening dinner guests. Pretty index markers, delicate tissue, hand felted wool, transparent net and claw. Or tooth, or tusk, as you will.
Or the one that says to me, fun, fancy, spirited and free? Soft ribbon untied curves and shapes like the tra-la-la refrains inside. Stitching to match, gold print handmade paper, net, hand felting, folding cover from recycled, upcycled suede.
Which one to choose?
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