debbie harman books

Some thoughts about artist’s books Debbie Harman (Qadri)

For the

2015 Diamond Series : Education Conversations in the Community

Hosted by the College of Education, Victoria University, at 100 Story Building 2^nd July 2015

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I have sort of come to the book in a roundabout way and continue to circle. Often artists make a series of artworks and then as a way of sharing the work they might make it into a book. But also the opposite to some extent happens when they make an artist’s book which is a one-off. Artist's Books begin differently, they often begin in a way that doesn’t foresee the future of mass production or how the audience might access the book.

Recently I made a series of artist’s books for an exhibition. I wanted people to turn the pages but they tended not to touch them. This one book I had spent an hour each night for thirty nights making and everyone was too scared to turn the pages!

A friend bought one of the fabric books and then framed it, open onto the page that held significance for her. But that meant of course that the rest of the pages had been locked up, sort of preserved in the frame and perhaps might be discovered many years later if the book was unframed.

They lie in a strange space. Unable to be hung on the wall, and only to be read but often fragile, their owners face a dilemma of whether to have them out and available to read and face disintegration and damage, or lock them away as precious objects which will hardly be read.

A book as an artwork is a strange thing. Usually you hang the artwork and you can see as much of it as you are meant to see, whenever you pass it. You live with it and it sort of moves into your head. But an artist’s book that needs the pages turned might get put away on a shelf. And I think it has much more of a private and secret experience to it. After all you turn the pages and you are perhaps the only one who gets to do so, if you own it. Its private but also exclusive. Most of the books at the exhibition, I couldn’t bear to part with, because I had spent so much time making them and also I didn’t know where I was going with them. Often an artist will keep their work if its hasn’t moved on yet.

This year I have been working on digital books as a way of encapsulating collections of drawings. But I have also encountered some very interesting issues. A series of drawings might work very differently by themselves, and then change when they are in a book.

Firstly, if you are used to making artworks about particular things as one offs, you don’t usually have ethical considerations, but if you are making a book which documents something real, and the artworks going together actually give away more of the story. Often an artist’s work is autobiographical, but sometimes it drags others into the story. It has brought up some interesting ethical considerations for me. You can see that if exhibited and sold as separate drawings the work wouldn’t be as potent or as revealing of other people’s lives. But it would destroy the storyline, the trajectory and the layers and interweavings of experience that a book of many words or many drawings gives us.

Also I felt that because I was making the drawings with the intention of making a book from them, that I was editing as I drew. I was altering the normal flow of the work with reproduction in mind. It wasn’t how I normally worked. This was an intentional book and so it became more straight forward and aware of its audience. So in that sense it was censored and eventually I felt that half the story had been suppressed and I needed to write the other one somewhere else. How to write that? And then you have a second book which is perhaps unpublishable because it is all the things you need to say but cant.

So how to share an artist’s book - Photograph it, scan it, film it, app it.pdf it, ebook it.

Whatever happens though is that you lose something from the original. The repetition or copy is a simulacrum. The actual artwork, the real stuff has been on a journey but the silmulcrum lacks the reality of this journey.

below is just an explorative table of ideas. Not to represent truth or reality but to draw on diferences that may exist between published books and artist's books.

published book, reproducible, multiples	Artist book
Many people can share and read. It accessible Large audience	The book will only have one reader or owner at a time. Small audience
The original work may not exist, it might be digital or in separate parts	The original work is damaged each time people turn the pages
Book is created with the audience in mind	Aesthetics are often more important than readability and perhaps the artist doesn’t care about communicating her idea. Artists understand their own codes which are incorporated into their imagery and the way in which they do things.
Made to sit with the others on a shelf, Easy to purchase, grab and read.	Doesn’t fit well on the shelves Difficult to store
Intertextuality within the text or graphics	Has many layers, intertextual as well as material. Three dimensional and aspects such as the ground, illustrations, binding, size, the physical way it is opened and pages read may contribute to the affect of the artwork
The book can be read as text or the reader can bring to the book some history and understanding of the author or personal relationship to the reading	Same: and also the interacting with the book is part of the artwork and the knowledge of how it was made is part of its meaning
The book can be reproduced in many versions over time, editions and digital versions	When reproduced the book loses its physical properties
author	artist
More affordable	Expensive to make and purchase (priceless)
Many copies Simulcrum, The authors signature is valuable	Rare and only one copy, the original copy, has the artist’s handprint. They touched the book
Linear – there is an understood or inferred way to read the book	The book may have not been made to be read in a particular order, so each reader may read it in a different way. The meaning of the book may not be arranged for clear communication

links to book projects by Debbie Harman (Qadri)

Drawing the Library - Sunshine Library

https://www.facebook.com/drawingthelibrary

http://drawingthelibrary.blogspot.com.au/

Down the Rabbit hole

download the pdf:

https://app.box.com/s/1u0ravh7v1wzyyfi04bggo064xwb6p14https://app.box.com/s/1u0ravh7v1wzyyfi04bggo064xwb6p14

Masters Documents

This is a selection of imagery and text from my Masters of Fine art

( Art in Public Space) submission in 2014 at Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology.
There are two documents that go hand in hand, which are both separate posts on the blog listed below.

Masters Documents

Putting Personal Texts into Public Space: Projects

Putting Personal Texts into Public Space: Research

http://puttingpersonaltextintopublicspace.blogspot.com.au/

If you find it easier to read a pdf.

these are available at the following for download. Please note that these are very large files and you need to be aware of this if you have limited download.
Putting Personal Texts into Public Space: Projects (29 mb)
https://app.box.com/s/373lqq70x0ja7lxky0xrfw6ll3tzqhpy
Putting Personal Texts into Public Space: Research ( 54 mb)

https://app.box.com/s/wjsaa3pf9tuhswbclnut1kn3zavn6r7r

I Don't Think YOu Know Who I am

'I don't think you know who I am: An Approach to making a career/living as an artist',
Explore the agony of being an artist in a mad world where economics and art don’t quite go hand in hand. Should you be thinking about your superannuation and preparing for your old age or throw caution to the wind and get on with the business of creating in case tomorrow you are run over by a tram? Get a read of this mercurial madness and see if you come out the other end with a better idea of the ball game.

click on this link to retrieve it from 'box'
https://app.box.com/s/7xqd6jqvmgnuj4h96ch7

available in hardcover on amazon
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1320230911

click on this link to retrieve it from 'box'
https://app.box.com/s/7xqd6jqvmgnuj4h96ch7

About: A Year of Envelopes

A Year of envelopes emerged as an idea to facilitate the opening of envelopes that continually arrive in the mailbox. You open the envelope and you do a cartoon on it. The contents of the envelope will have more chances of being read if the envelope is opened.

Also I was inspired by this book by Shrigley. He is a cartoonist. I had been trying on and off for several years to make a cartoon about everyday life – and it wasn’t working for me. It seemed to have no, rythym or theme that could carry it through as a series. Shrigley’s work seems to have none of the above either and on top of that he got his work published.

So that is the problem – to encompass ‘the everyday’ just cannot have a theme or style. Our everydays are always so same and so different. They leap from the washing up, to intense experiences, to memories, to reflection. You can have a day when you do not laugh. Sometimes the day is about someone else, not even you.

So here it is or will be – a year of opening those insidious envelopes and responding to the everyday.

blog site: https://ayearofenvelopes.wordpress.com

Publications of 'A Year of Envelopes",

A Year of Envelopes: Artist's Faves 2014 ( Hardcover )

is Available at BLURB - http://blur.by/1A3aAbU

free pdf download (large digital file)

https://app.box.com/s/92qtqh2g7fhb7yu3hheoor70c0sw9vpx

Sunshine Babel Onion

As an artwork/ film: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LVeoYbmsLf4

As a book:

Alice in Tartland (Cartoon Book)

http://aliceintartland.blogspot.com.au/