CM: I ve been involve

Today we welcome bookbinder and book artist Charlene Matthews to the Library as Incubator happy birthday sms Project. Charlene’s recent Ulysses -inspired project happy birthday sms caught my attention several weeks ago and I knew we had to reach out to her to talk about books, literature, and how they inspire her creative life and work. Enjoy. ~ Laura
Charlene Matthews (CM): I m a professional bookbinder/book artist, with a Bindery happy birthday sms in Hollywood California. I have been in my shop front for 14 years, and began binding about 28 years ago. Along with my Book Art, I do restoration, box making and work in various levels of bookmaking in the entertainment and art fields. I realized early on in order to excel in my own book art I had to bind everyday, to learn all facets of the craft, opening a bindery made all the sense in the world. It has been an education.
I do a lot of photography that I use in my book art, I have various types of cameras, mostly handmade pinholes and I dark room myself. Plus, I love to make shadow boxes, that contain objects that correspond with my books. I rarely happy birthday sms use any type of computer happy birthday sms generation.
LAIP: In your work as a book artist, literature clearly plays an important role in defining your subject and the way you create the work. Have libraries – their spaces, collections, and/or the people who work in libraries – played a significant role in your creative development?
CM: I have been a voracious reader from early on, I used to sit across from my Mother while she was reading and learned to read upside down. In Junior High I was given a pass to the High School Library, as I had read every book. I was then given an adult pass to the Public Library when I had read all those books. I wish I could say a particular librarian had influence over my reading but I was following my own senses. When I went to London at 20, I discovered a whole new library type system and was known to have a least a dozen chits to check out books, one was issued only three. Also, the books in the London Libraries were of very different authors. I feel very comfortable in a library.
All this reading has put a lot of stories in my head, and I ve digested them into pictures and maps. Subconsciously my book art creates some of those maps. I am drawn to words, a story and smell. The words fragment into graphics and photos, the story into maps, the smell into the materials I use.
LAIP: The Ulysses project was quite an undertaking. Can you tell us a little bit about how you arrived at the idea for the project, the sort of planning that goes in to such a project? For example, happy birthday sms in a really practical sense, how were you able to gauge how many poles you’d need for the text?
CM: The Ulysses project came about through a project I was invited to participate in, and required me to do a sculptural piece. Being a book artist, with this idea I had in my head that sculpture used the space outside the object and book art used the space within, I was torn. I did have this pole in my backyard that had been leaning against a wall doing nothing for years from a previous bindery job, and I was also at the time reading The Complete Short Stories of JG Ballard.
JG Ballard (the oldest known futurist) was known to have aluminum happy birthday sms palm trees in his house and so the pole leaning against the wall just made sense, write one of his stories on the pole. I thought he would have agreed to that. I picked the shortest story from the book, and it really is not that good of a story, as I had a hard time completing it. It was just not interesting. But I did test out pens and different styles of writing on that pole.
I knew it would take quite a few poles, I took the Ballard pole amount of pages and calculated the 610 pages of the Shakespeare Co. Edition and came to about 37-40 poles. I found a local supply for them, as they are made for ship building, non warpable. The 2 x 7 pole is not that common, and I got the lumber yard to agree to supply me at least 40 poles throughout time. I bought them two at a time (they come in 14 lengths). I went on a pen hunt. I knew a gel pen was best on the wood, and found Pentel had a new gel pen that was archival waterproof and lightfast. So I was ready to go, and it just so happened to be a few days to the day Joyce finished happy birthday sms Ulysses .
After the first two poles, I knew it would be 38 poles. I kept calculating non-stop as I was writing as a game, but it still came to 38 poles. One pole has 12 pages on it and another has 22 pages depending on the gaps of paragraphs, 16 pages was the average. I never once got tired of the process, as I was always adapting the writing method. Ways to write and turn the poles without hurting my hands and back.
Perhaps the poles are sculpture and also book art. They work on the space inside and outside, much like nature. As I was writing, my eyes would look up to the words, and I would see pictures formed by the letters.
CM: I ve been involve