Tuesday, July 21, 2015

Update on the FTIO exhibition catalog

I am ridiculously overdue in explaining the delay in finishing the catalog.

I have my fingers in so many pies this year--making new work and preparing for 5 shows this fall, one of which I am curating, plus another major project involving my art and one small one have taken over my life and put the catalog on temporary hold.

On top of all of that my big desktop computer on which the catalog is being created has decided it doesn't want to work properly anymore.  Some really strange things have been happening.  Never fear--the catalog is archived on a separate drive and available when I am ready to resume the proofreading and a few corrections that are still to be made.  It is very close to being finished.

My sincere apologies for the long wait.
I WILL finish the catalog.  And I will keep you posted on when it is going to be published.

Thank you for your patience!
Pat

Here's a preview gallery shot…

A glimpse of one of Fabienne's 12 eco printed panels on the left, Rio's large silk circle on the far wall, Irit's tree bark felted piece on the near wall, and Fabienne's embroidered eco print on the right.


Wednesday, January 28, 2015

Getting really close!

Our catalog will be ONE  HUNDRED  PAGES! 

It's big and it's beautiful just like this detail of Elizabeth's that will appear in the catalog. 





Elizabeth Adams-Marks, Leats and Buddles, Tin Mines on Bodmin Moor, Cornwall, UK, handmade abaca and flax paper, rust printed and embossed, tannins and teas, stitching, 19.5" x 23.5" [50 cm x 60 cm], 2014.  DETAIL.
Photos: Patricia Vivod

I am proofreading now.  Reading backwards very slowly.  Then will set the page numbers and few other details and finally will be able to upload and start the process of offering our exhibition catalog to the world.  Just a little more patience required.  It will be worth it, I guarantee that.



Friday, January 9, 2015

75 pages and counting

A favorite gallery scene that will appear in catalog.  How many rectangles?

A recent visitor to my house (who shall remain nameless) made light of my efforts to get the catalog done, teasing me for taking so long. The more I thought about it, the more I thought that was an unfair assessment of what Elizabeth and I are doing. This is no brochure. This is a full fledged catalog of the entire exhibit. And it will be a thing of beauty when it is done. Granted it has taken some time, but we have sifted through nearly 600 photographs taken for this show, finding the best image for each of the 52 pieces that hung in the gallery, plus detail images for much of the art. We are also including 30 or more gallery scenes such as the one above that features work (L-R) by Irit, Fabienne and Rio.

Before we even started, we took some time to select fonts that we liked and made sure that they would work in print or e-book format. Each of the photos selected has had to be color corrected and then plugged into a custom layout. Blurb offers a nice array of layout choices, but many pages have been modified or built from scratch and all of them have been done one at time--importing the photos as needed. Each photo is tried out and adjusted for size and often cropped on the page, a nice feature that Blurb offers. We've discovered a few of the photos, for one reason or another, have been too low res, so tomorrow I'm actually going to rephotograph a couple of Elizabeth's pieces and Rio is sending a higher res image of one of her pieces for which we neglected to get a detail. There is always something...

Each piece of art has to have the correct caption and captions are in a different size font and style so we are constantly proofreading to be sure we are consistent and once in a blue moon there is not enough space, so the page has to be adjusted--a font made smaller or a picture resized to accommodate the information. For those of you who live in a metric world, we are converting all dimensions so that we all can know the sizes.  Elizabeth and I don't always agree on the outcome of a particular page, so there has been compromise and editing as we go along. She can spot a comma dilemma from 20 paces and keeps me on my toes for professional writing.  We will soon be proofreading the heck out of this--Elizabeth was an illustrator and graphic designer for 25 years in her former life and I taught yearbook for 14 years along with teaching art for 25 years, so we know how to design and we know how to spot mistakes--and we so want this book to be perfect. 

Elizabeth and I agonized for a week or more at the beginning writing the introduction to the book for which we have a dazzling panorama of the gallery--can't wait for you all to see it. Each of the artists contributed an artist statement that is being included--and an additional statement for a special piece--something that was not offered in the gallery.  And of course all of that information has to be typed into the text boxes on the pages. 

Last I counted, there were over 75 pages with a 1000 MB file to go along with them.  I like that Blurb is easy to use.  I have run into a few glitches along the way as I mentioned in my last post, but I've had Blurb support helping.  We are in the last stretch of creating.  I hope we'll be able to announce the publication of the book very soon.  Thank you so much for your patience.  I hope you'll think it's been worth the wait. 

Here's to kicking off the new year with a bang!