This was the view we had from our apartment. We looked at a picture that was always changing. Besides making drawings and paintings for my Artists Book, I made photographs. This photograph was taken at 5:34 in the morning.1.3 sec at f/4.0 The focal length was 28mm ISO 200. I didn’t have a tripod so I set up my Canon EOS Digital rebel XTI  on a pile of books on a table. Then, I put the camera on  timer and experimented with different settings. A bit crazy, too, it was dark, I’m trying to see the dials with a flashlight – I have to remember where they are on the camera!  I’m trying to be quiet so I don’t wake up my husband, then of course when I do try that, I usually crash something.There’s not a lot of time to fiddle around because the light changes rapidly.

I’m working on how to show bigger images on my WordPress site here but so far all I can say it click on the image to see it bigger. It makes a difference. If anyone has a suggestion on a better layout for my blog, I’d love to hear about it.

In Morocco, moushrabiyas or geometrical screens

keep Muslim women hidden from view.

These screens allow women to observe

their surroundings without themselves being seen.

This is an Artists’ Book

An Artists’ Book is a work of art. It is not just a vehicle to contain a story and communicate non-visual ideas.

Different media are used in a unique way to create a book-like object.

These books are puzzles.

They are undefined.

The viewer and the artist make up their own story using clues from the book-like structure.

Text, image and structure are equally important in an Artists’ Book.

In The Bay Bridge my cover and spine is the steel box. The pages can be taken out of the box and looked at indvidually.

For a few years we lived in an apartment looking right out at the Oakland- San Francisco Bay Bridge. In a drawer near the window I kept a supply of the same  size  ’pages’  for my Artists’ Book. I’d record what was going on outside my window. What happens is you have the same size  paper for each drawing and painting so you start to think of different ways to fill that piece of paper. The book is chuck full now. Included in the steel box are stories about connections I have had with the bridge.

For many of my trips I have taken with me a  Canson 8.5×11 sketch book. Made up of acid free paper with a durable black cover and binding, this sketchbook has about 200 pages of a good quality paper. My goal is always to try to fill up the book before I go home. After the trip I paint about the experience and then have an exhibit every few years.The Egypt paintings were shown at Robert Mondavi winery.  The painting above is based upon a sketch I did of some birds that were drawn in 2450 BC. I found the images in the tomb of Teti.

For this body of work my paintings introduce large scale light boxes set within canvas structures. The light boxes highlight artwork inspired by sketches done during my trip to Egypt.  Size: 54″ x 84″ wax and acrylic on canvas, sumi ink, watercolor on two layers of mulberry paper.

Fragments, Fadings and Feelings

Mills College Art Museum

When I was in China the abstract beauty of calligraphy intrigued me. I bought some children’s textbooks on how to write Chinese script. For centuries the children have learned how to write by copying characters within boxes in order to understand their structure and proportions.

I started to copy the lessons.  Soon my strokes freed themselves from the grid. The “correct” version of the letters was replaced by the “wrong” solution.  Using sumi ink, wax and acrylic paint on xuan paper I put down marks. The shapes and colors mixed and spread into new compositions and brushstrokes. The biomorphic forms of nature took over.

As I painted I thought of the world’s largest hydroelectric dam on the Yangtze River. The Three Gorges Dam transformed the river into a deep reservoir flooding farmland, cities, villages and archaeological sites. People were relocated to new structures of mass produced design, buildings with slick, cold, white tile.

Today’s mass production and permanency of materials is replacing an intuitive expression of life. These paintings are made of materials that are vulnerable to the effects of weathering and our touch. The sun will fade some of the brilliant colors into muddy earth tones.  Fragile paper will tear. But the way xuan paper transmits light, the way people carried out their everyday life on the Yangtze. These memories will stay in my heart.

I’m thinking about adding a page for my photographs.

Right now you can see them on the following  website  http://www.carla-saunders-photography.com

A good traveling pen is the Rotring ArtPen. There is an extra cartridge in the body and it doesn’t leak on airplanes. One time it was thought of as a weapon and the airport security guy wouldn’t let me take it in the main cabin. I had to throw away my favorite pen!  My favorite moleskine notebook is the

pocket sketchbook. http://www.moleskineus.com/sketchpocket.html.

The paper accepts all kinds of media.

When I started making Artists’ Books I thought people have been making books for years and anyway, I’m a painter. What can I do that would be different? I decided to make a big book. Each page is made up of two oil paintings on canvas, stretcher bars included. Metal prongs hold them together. What is Intuitive Collisions about? My father was a financier, an industrialist and I was an artist. Our minds couldn’t have been farther apart. We ended up taking early morning walks together. He would talk to me about building a bridge or how the stock market was doing.  I would be looking at how the fog masked out the vineyard leaving only the trees to see. By the end of the walk, we’d be happy to have spent some time with each other. I think we understood each other a little bit better, too.

Intuitive Collisions  1999

Oil, transfers, acrylic on canvas, stretcher bars, wood joiners,

prong type glides, metal hinges

14″ x 29″ x 9″     58 inches open book

Wednesday they were snow sledding and skiing in downtown Seattle ! !