Sketchbook collages

Scalloped collage © Karen Thiessen 2012 

 Remains collage © Karen Thiessen 2012 

Over the last year I've been unpacking all that I learned from my June 2011 Tactile Notebooks and the Written Word workshop with Sandra Brownlee. One of the things that stuck with me was to prepare my sketchbook pages with washes of colour. This year I've gone all out with preparing pages with watercolour and ink washes, plus I dug out my watercolour wax crayons (that I first used during a Fran Skiles workshop) to gussy up a few pages. A bonus is that in the process I'm using up old art supplies.

Corticelli Book

Cousin Edna passed this book on to me when she was moving last summer. It once belonged to her mother, my Aunt Hilda, who is still going strong as the family matriarch and oldest member of my extended family. Cousin Edna is a retired teacher, but I think she would make an excellent archivist since the each of the textile items in the two bulging bags was carefully labelled with its provenance. Some items belonged to my late Oma, some were Aunt Hilda's, and others were from my late Aunt Erika. It's nice knowing where the textile books, notions, and fabric came from. The Corticelli book appears to be from the 1940s. What do you think?

Quotes: William Henry Channing

"To live content with small means
to seek elegance rather than luxury
and refinement rather than fashion
To be worthy, not respectable,
and wealthy, not rich
To study hard, think quickly,
talk quietly, act frankly
To listen to stars and birds,
babes and sages, with open hearts
To bear all cheerfully, do all bravely
await occasions, hurry never –
in a word, to let the spiritual,
unbidden and unconscious,
grow up through the common.
This is to be my symphony."


– William Henry Channing

Week 18: Adobe Illustrator

Cabbage Roses ©Karen Thiessen 2012

Last week I was tickled pink with figuring out how to make the Ziggy Zag pattern. This week I feel the same with the Cabbage Roses pattern which also has its origins from the starburst pattern. This design required that I twist my brain into mental pretzels to figure out all the angles, reflections, and rotations but it was well worth the effort. Learning a new computer program is akin to learning a new language.

Sandra Brownlee: Departures & Returns Deluxe 1

* This is a multi-part essay about Sandra Brownlee's Deluxe Edition catalogue, Departures and Returns, and my experience with it. I've written the context in plain text and my experience in italics.

Departures and Returns Deluxe Edition by Sandra Brownlee Photo Credit: Jack Ramsdale

In 2009 Sandra mounted her solo exhibition In 2009 Sandra Departures and Returns at the Mary Black Gallery in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Accompanying this retrospective were a video and two catalogues, a Deluxe Edition and Special Edition. With a focus on her notebooks, the catalogues are a chronicle of Sandra reconnecting with community and place. Upon her return to Nova Scotia in 2005, after 26 years away, she decided to explore, gather, respond to, and immerse herself in the notebooks to create a record of reconnecting with evidence of her different experiences like smells of the ocean, sounds of water, and viewing the Maude Lewis paintings at the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia. The exhibition allowed Sandra to bring together her past, present and future: her past 26 years of development; her re-immersion into this place; and contemplating and inviting "the next." With twinned foci of notebook and weaving at the core of Sandra's studio practice, it only made sense that she create a Deluxe Edition artist catalogue that included selections from her notebooks, images of her weavings, an actual woven cover, inclusions of fabric and paper with stories to tell, and finally, an original woven image. Making one Deluxe Edition is a serious undertaking. Take that and multiply it by 30. Yes, Sandra and a team of hired assistants created 30 Deluxe Edition Departures and Returns catalogues. They sold for $500 each, a small price considering the labour involved in making each one. Sandra and her hired guns also produced 100 Special Edition catalogues that cost about $45 each. Since 2009, she has reprinted 200 more Special Editions.


A package arrived the other day and I confess that it sat unopened over a weekend mocking me for my reticence. I knew that once opened it would draw me in and claim my attention. When I was a student at Sheridan, a professor loaned me an art doll from her collection so that I could take time to experience and learn from it. Likewise, Sandra Brownlee loaned me the Deluxe Edition of her Departures and Returns catalogue for a few weeks and moments after it is in my hands I am in a state of wonder.

Departures and Returns Deluxe Edition by Sandra Brownlee Photo Credit: Jack Ramsdale

The cover of the Deluxe Edition is made up of three images that were copied from her notebooks. The warp for both front and back is an image of a dream that she had in Philadelphia of coming back to Nova Scotia. The front weft is the Tree of Life and the back weft is a bird that Sandra stitched into one of her notebooks. She cut 1/4 inch strips of paper colour copies to create the warps and wefts. For each cover she cut 60 paper warps of the dream, 30 paper warps of the Tree, and another 30 paper warps of the bird. She then wrapped these paper weavings around boards, then glued them on. Sandra and Jennifer Green, a studio assistant, did the bulk of the work, with some help from Susan MacAlpine Foshay, former director of the Mary Black Gallery. Just a reminder, multiply all of this labour for each book cover by 30. Each of the 30 Deluxe Edition covers is unique. Book binders Niko Sylvester and Joe Landry bound the deluxe editions with help from Sandra. There's more: the ribbon on the spine was designed by Sandra and hand-woven by Jennifer Green.


Opening the package, I carefully extract the book from its wrappings, I have in my hands an original work of art. How often are we able to touch a work of art, unless it’s our own? The closed book with its hand-woven cover of paper strips feels good, even pleasurable in the hand. Ditto, the black finger-painted band enclosing the book. Both cover and band slow me down with their tactile offerings and indicate that this is an experience to be savoured. The band is a small moment to celebrate and consider. I do, and then I carefully slip it off. Just a heads up, careful and slow are two words that I will be using liberally in this text. Although I own the affordable special edition of Departures and Returns, it doesn’t prepare me for the richness of the deluxe edition. To call the deluxe edition a catalogue is accurate but unfair. Yes, this book does chronicle the bridge between Sandra’s twenty-six years of development in Ontario and the United States and her return to Nova Scotia, but calling it an artist book elevates it to a higher level, where it belongs.

Departures and Returns Deluxe Edition by Sandra Brownlee Photo Credit: Jack Ramsdale

What differentiates the Deluxe Edition from the Special Edition are 25 additional features like the two woven covers, a finger-painted book enclosure, various fabrics and translucent papers, a fold-out page, a folio containing an original woven textile and more. Each inclusion has a story to tell. Do I need to remind you to multiply the 25 features by 30 Editions? (Psst, that's 750 extras in case you were wondering) It boggles my mind. As I wrote in this post, Sandra hired Sarah Bodine, a New Jersey-based editor and designer to help bring form to her images, words, and vision. Through Sarah's input, Sandra gained insight into what was important and what was the next step. Based on Sandra's themes of tactile notebooks, pathways, weavings, and ground I stand on, Sarah designed a wayfinding system for the catalogue with chapter headings in a coral-red colour. Sarah chose many of the papers and found the printer in Flemington, New Jersey.


When I open the book, I encounter a translucent page veiling a page with a circle of pierced red dots. Turning the translucent page, I realize that it has a subtle grid of tone-on-tone dots, barely perceivable unless one takes the time to really see. The grid of dots mimics the circle of red dots. From the get-go I am aware that each insertion has been selected with great care. Departures and Returns is not a book to be rushed through. I get out my magnifying glass to look even closer. This book does that to me.


Sandra drew the dots with a waterproof fine-tipped marker and then her studio assistant, Jennifer Green pierced each dot with a T-pin. The dots are a way for Sandra to focus and prepare herself for studio work. Thirty Deluxe Editions means thirty pages of hand-drawn pierced dots. That's a lot of work.


To be continued (with a hint of things to come)...

Departures and Returns Deluxe Edition by Sandra Brownlee Photo Credit: Jack Ramsdale

Departures and Returns Deluxe Edition by Sandra Brownlee Photo Credit: Jack Ramsdale

Design inspiration

Where do you get your inspiration? For me, it's travel, nature, packaging, magazines, blogs, walking, reading, gardening, daily studio work, listening to and recording family stories, cleaning the house and more. Inspiration is everywhere if you slow down and look for it. For years I've gathered inspiration into notebooks, sketchbooks, and books of commonplace. Now I do all of the above plus I write this blog. This week I reviewed a sketchbook (#6) from 2008 and recorded the salient bits in my current sketchbook (#13). Looking back and then forward is like mental yoga: a spinal twist for the brain to keep it supple and young.


The above image was from tasty chocolate in great packaging. Naturally I think about how to recreate these designs in Adobe Illustrator when I look at it. Most of the motifs are beyond my current skill level, but they are something to think about.

Old + New = Brilliant