Bookmaking as an act of transition
Why taking time to do art and then make it into a book, helps a heart with healing
Finding the story, the thread, the theme
I am a collector…. I find beauty and meaning in weird things. I always says that everything in my house has a story – the things I keep are because they spoke to me or taught me something or could teach me….
I like to use words and images to find my way, my direction. Becoming an empty nester hit me hard – unreasonably so. I missed the crazy, the mess, the conversations, and the reality checks of life in the world of a young adult. I felt broken and scattered.
I pulled two things from my collection – a poem and pieces of beach glass collected on beach walks at home. I felt like I needed a book in my life – my own chapters as one ended and another one started.
So I turned to words and images, gathering them up, turning them over in my mind and heart and over a month, created something I am quite proud of as a physical, emotional, spiritual and intellectual effort.
I started working on a book using a poem called Seaglass by Oliver Tearle. I found the words, the images, the thoughts and gathered them. The colours, decorations and themes and sorted them. I played with text and lines and rearranged them. Again and again. I threw out more than I kept. And I found that the glass could teach me, the words could sooth my soul, and the art reminded me of how lucky and special my life is, edges and all.
So here are my notes and thoughts and the process roughly documented. I hope you find something for your soul in here too.
I wanted to tell the story of the glass over time. Me over time. I wanted the reader to feel like they were a new piece of glass at the bottom on the sea, being pushed and pulled by the tides
Well…… Lessons learned…. never pick paper with a blueish hue – it is awful to scan – and then use blue and green paint for lettering – awful to scan on top of awful to scan…… The original is prettier to look at in some ways.
But I really liked the overall look and feel of the writing being ocean waves and currents with the water’s edge in white and the beach in gold. I laid it out so that the water’s edge was continuous as you turned the pages – sometimes more white foam, sometimes less – sometimes, a rockier beach, sometimes less but always connected to the previous page. Our now is connected to our just now and connected to our now-now – we are a continuum of time and circumstances, destinations and adventures.
I kept the palette simple and let the glass be the sparkle on the page – even though there is gold on the page…. I wanted the glass to be the highlight. The glass starts sharp and colourful and as you move through the book, the edges round and they become whiter, wiser, and more opaque but never fully opaque – and so do we. There is always light in us to shine out.
I scanned the pages and pulled them into Publisher and laid them out side by side. I seweed the covers with a Japanese Stab Binding. The cover is cork material and I want to glue the seaglass onto the front cover. So the current cover is just a mockup of the glass laid on top of the cork.
The seaglass is mostly glass I picked up along the beach at home in Africa. One piece is even the shape of Africa that a friend gave me that she picked up on a beach. I have had this glass on my desk for years and it has always been nice to have a bit of home close by.
This poem is one of my current journey poems as I navigate becoming an empty nester and retiring soon after a corporate life that has taken me to 42 countries, 6 continents and a lot of crazy – marrying late, having kids late, trying not to be the oldest Mom in the school and failing, trying to balance kids, career, family, passions, and journeys as I tumbled along life’s ocean floor, swept by currents, stuck in crevices and floating at times, just giving myself over to the forces at play. Letting the light from the sun create sparkle in my life with new opportunities but always moving along, gathering bumps and scratches, polishing my surfaces, becoming harder and then, a diamond, robust and strong.
This is the poem and the author’s note:
“Sea Glass
This weathered jewel began as normal shards
of shattered glass, but given enough time
and natural persistence from the seaboards,
that sharp, translucent, brittle crystalline
material, just so much composite sand, is ground
from broken bottles or even distant shipwrecks
until sharp edges become smoothed and round.
This cocktail of colour, found among the rocks,
crafted by the patient ocean’s constant dance,
leads this same glass to lose its former lustre.
But whilst it loses this, it gains a gloss
of frost slow-formed that shapes a stronger matter,
a shell as tough as nature can command,
and fragile glass becomes as hard as diamond.
Note: Sea glass is glass that has been weathered by the salt water of the ocean, which turns the broken glass from bottles (or even, in some cases, shipwrecks) into natural frosted glass. It is often found on beaches and is used as jewelry in brooches, necklaces, and the like. The process of converting real glass into sea glass takes decades; the point of the poem is that, just as brittle glass is weathered by the years and the elements, so we are weathered, but also shaped, by the passing years as we grow older. Glass loses its original slickness when it becomes sea glass, but it acquires its tough, frosted appearance which makes it durable and resilient. Similarly, we may lose the lustre and good looks of our youth as we grow older, but we acquire an emotional and psychological robustness. This poem © Oliver Tearle 2021″
As I completed the book, I found my edges softened and my heart less shattered. The gold lifted my spirits and the waves soothed my soul. I emailed the poem’s author and send him some pages from the book as I wanted him to know that we had been on a journey, with his words being my map. He replied:
Update: I have sold this book into a private collection. I kept the seaglass pictured here and used different pieces for the delivered cover with the buyer’s permission. I am going to do this again, having learned much from this process and journey, – and my heart is stronger now too.