Saturday, January 29, 2011

Chandler O'Leary Lecture

While I am waiting to finish the interview with Abbie Anderson, I wanted to post two clips from a book arts lecture that I went to a week ago. My friend Chandler O’Leary is finishing her interactive –shadowbox-book and was giving a lecture to the Puget Sound Book Artists group about it. She had received a grant from the Tacoma Arts Commission to work on it and all I knew was that it was going to be awesome and something I had never seen before.

My wait was finally over as I parked at the street by the Collins Memorial Library in Tacoma. It was like Christmas! Chandler’s talk was so interesting. I am posting two videos about it. The book is spectacular, and photos of it would not do any justice. If you ever have a chance to see it in person I highly recommend it. If you can't you can visit Chandler's blog, she has a great post about the book with lots of great pictures.

In the video Chandler talks about her inspiration (Hokusai), how she used topographical maps to figure out the best places to photograph Mt. Rainier and some of the challenges to get the shots she wanted. The slides for the book were printed with one color and Chandler used watercolors to add the rest of the detail. I cannot imagine having to color 40 sets of 120 slides to complete the edition + cutting them out individually with an exacto knife! The second very short video is after the lecture when people came up and were allowed to play with the book. It would be so much fun to have one of these. The workmanship is impeccable and I could have a different scene of Mt Rainier for the rest of my life.

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