Have I told you about my book?
The first time I went to the Manchester Artists’ Book Fair in 2006, I thought I was going to a sale of books on art. I’d never heard of the artists’ book, and I was blown away. Subsequently I spent some time in MMU’s Special Collections looking at examples, and trying out my own versions.
But this summer, I did a 10 week book-making course with the supremely talented Lucy May Schofield
at Hot Bed Press – a fantastic resource, which by a massive piece of luck is right next door to my studio in Salford.
Lucy not only taught us techniques, but got us thinking about ideas for books of our own.
About the same time, I had a conversation with a woman at work who wanted to know why I only worked half time. When i told her I was an artist with a studio in Cow Lane, she got really excited and told me about her great grandfather who had settled in that area when he came from Ireland in the 1830’s.
Her story sent me to the local history library, to find out more about Irish immigration, and to look at the site of the studio, and what had been there before.
So somehow, these two ideas merged and my book became the story of the wave of inhabitants in the area around the studio, from a few scattered farm buildings in 1794, to the densely populated back to backs of the second half of the nineteenth century, and then through the post war slum clearances to the middle of this decade which saw the area completely uninhabited.
My deadline, always useful, was the open submission for the Manchester Modernist Society’s ‘Latitude’ exhibition, for which they wanted work to do with maps and mapping. Perfect!
www.manchestermodernistsociety.org
The book has been accepted and I am delighted! I’m going to do an edition of 25 and this year I’ll be at the Manchester Artists’ Book Fair as an exhibitor.
