Magnum Opus
During 2020, the year of pandemic isolation, I decided to focus the formidable abundance of “at home” time on a labor intensive computer project that I was avoiding; creating a comprehensive book about my work. It will be an oeuvre. If not for the covid quarantine, I would never have found the wherewithal to tackle such a daunting job. But here was the chance to get the book made, and even more importantly, stay sane by directing my confinement into something worthwhile.
Where to start? It’s always harrowing to be confronted with the blank page, the blank canvas, and create something from scratch. Fortunately I had a 30 page booklet about my sculpture done a few years ago to use as a design springboard.
I decided to use the same landscape page orientation but this time, print it in hardcover if it ended up being in excess of one hundred pages. The question was, did I have enough material to fill that many pages? The second big question was do I have good photographs of all my work going back over fifteen years? The answers were yes and yes. It took me several weeks to track down all the photos, and the page count is currently 141.
It felt strange to be diminishing large sculpture projects to just a few pages, many that had taken over a year to produce. But this is inevitable when compiling a “greatest hits” book, doing it more comprehensively just doesn’t make sense. I thought it best to sum up the projects by selectively choosing a few in-progress shots of some of the bigger projects, but use mostly the final “hero” shots of the work.
Another issue was how much text to use. Let’s face it, people don’t read. I know that sounds dismissive, but people would rather look at pictures. The informational labeling text is there should anyone want to know the particulars. I waxed lyrical with great restraint.
The generous Creative Pinellas Professional Artist Grant funds I received this year will go directly into the cost of printing the first 100 copies of the book. Should anyone want to order a copy, let me know, it should be available by the end of the year.
Addendum
Reporting on how many people said they read last week’s post by sending a conformation email – 4!
