The Great Bridges of Brooklyn

The title of my book is “The Great Bridges of Brooklyn”.  The book is 4” x 4” and is screw bound.  There are no spreads in my book due to the binding style.  The front portion of the book is pictures of the Brooklyn, Manhattan and Williamsburg Bridges.  The pictures are up-close images of aspects of the bridges such as the towers, cables, and arches.  The images are in a black and red duotone.  I chose to do the duotone because the bridges already have this romantic feel to them that I decided to embrace it.  The reverse side of the pictures is information on each bridge.  The information is in short phrases, which matches the simplicity of the photos on the front side.  The font used throughout the book is Sabon, it is a readable, elegant, serif typeface.  The book is supposed to inspire you to look at things differently.  Don’t always keep you head straight but move it up and down to get different perspectives of things.

Contact: [email protected]

December 3

In the beginning my book had two structure designs.  The first one was 11” long and 4.25” high and would be bound by stab stitching.  This was the more obvious choice for doing a book on bridge but this is not the one I chose.  My second book structure is 4.25” x 4.25” and is going to be bound with a screw posts.  I chose this book because I don’t want to show images of the whole bridge.  Instead the book will focus on parts of the bridge, the steel beams, wire cables, towers, arches, etc.  This structure doesn’t have any spreads either.

I have changed the pictures to a black and red duotone.  The images of the bridges have this romantic feel to them so I decided to go with that.  Right now the duotones still need work but I have all the pictures.  The back of the pictures is going to have information on the bridges.  It’s not going to be full sentences just bullet point format.  I’m still working on getting all the information and then I will be shortening it into bullet points.

Its almost as if there are two separate books one side will be all pictures and the other side will be information.  There will also be two different covers, one for each side.  Although the sides are different they connect because of the simplicity of the information on each.

Pinta Art Fair – Pinta is a Modern and Contemporary Latin American Art Fair.  This was its third fair in New York City.  They also have fairs in London.  The mission of the fair is to revitalize Latin American artistic actives.  The Pinta Art Fair happens once a year in the month of November.

Title: The Dinner, Death of Nicola No. 1

Artist: Nicola Costantino

Medium: Inkjet Print

Gallery: Galeria Sicart  (located in Spain)

This is a very serious painting in content and in style.  It is a very dark painting with the body being highlighted.  All of this artist’s works had a very dark quality to them.  This picture reminded me of “The Last Supper” by Da Vinci.  The woman is lying on a long table with the old fashioned wine glasses.  She is lying on what looks like a bed on mixed nuts.  I was reading and article on this artist and it said that she has a piece called Savon de corp, which is a series of 100 torso-shaped soap bars in an elegant soap dish with the phrase Take your bath with me.  The bars of soap contain 10% human fat in which the artist underwent liposuction to produce the fat in each bar.  This is an extreme measure for an artist to go through for her art.

Title: Basquet of Light

Artist: Flor Garduno

Medium: Gelatin Silver Print

Gallery: Peter Fetterman Gallery (Located in Santa Monica, CA)

The photographs exhibited by this gallery were beautiful.  I particularly liked this one because it has such a high contrast between the image and the black background.  Having the background black highlights the image so much more and really emphasizes the importance of this girl and the flowers above her.  If there was a picture/scene in the background the feeling of the picture would be totally different and she would lose some of her importance.  Only one of her eyes is visible and she is looking directly at you.  There is life behind her eyes in this picture.  She has a story to tell, and she’s waiting for someone to listen.

Title: A Thanksgiving Prayer To The Mixe God Kioga In Gratitude For The Good Harvest, And Asking To Survive Another Year

Artist: Sebastiao Salgado

Medium: Gelatin Silver Print

Gallery: Peter Fetterman (Located in Santa Monica, CA)

This is another photograph fro the same gallery but a different artist.  All the photos exhibited by this gallery were amazing.  Just like the previous one this picture has a high contrast.  Here the contrast is between the land and the sky.  The land in which the men are stand on is black, you can hardly make out any of the detail in the ground.  Then the cloudy sky is so light.  The men have their arms stretched out almost as if they think they can fly.  Its like they are on top of this mountain and they are just taking everything in, letting it all hit them at once.  In this photo the men are the focus.  They stand out so well because it is the only area in the photo in which there is a slighter contrast and you can actually make out a little bit of the detail on their clothing.  This photo along with the previous one has so much life and soul behind them.  They are more than just beautiful photographs.

Title: Kinetic Object P – 4

Artist: Abraham Palatnik

Medium: Stainless steel, tin, painted wood and motors

Gallery: Galeria Nara Roesler  (Located in Brasil)

This sculpture is interesting to me because it is hanging on a canvas and mounted on the wall like a painting.  There are 5 spheres, 5 circles and 3 arcs connected by wires.  The spheres are black and orange, the arcs are black and blue, and the circles are orange, blue, and ocher.  The sculpture isn’t contained to the size of the canvas.  It shoots off the canvas in all directions.  There are four main objects on the canvas: an arc, and two multicolored circles go from the bottom left up to the top right corner.  Then there is an orange circle to the left of the circle in the middle.  The thing I find fascinating about sculptures is the shadows that form.  The shadows change with each different perspective you look at it, as does the sculpture.  If a sculpture is outdoors the shadows change with the different times during the day with the different positions of the sun.  The shadows on this piece aren’t as prominent in other sculptures but they are present.  This piece is a cross between a painting and a sculpture.

Title: Operative

Artist: Teresa Margolles

Medium: Chiseled Phrase on a wall

Gallery: Y Gallery New York  (Located in Queens)

This piece is simply the phrase “para quienes no la creen hijos de puta” (for those who don’t believe those bitches) chiseled out of the wall.  I didn’t understand this at all during the fair but when I read about it in the catalog for the fair it is actually very sad story.  On May 20, 2008 in Mexico City a life-less body was found on the streets with its hands tied to its ankles with a drug-gang’s message.  On that same day a woman was found nearby wrapped in a blanket.  During the fair people would look at this and laugh and for a while I didn’t understand what it said cause I only speak a little Spanish.  When I found out what it meant it still didn’t have any meaning at all and was just a funny, weird phrase.  After knowing a little of the background on it, its actually a very serious piece.  A piece of art has a totally different meaning with a little background information.

Title: Troya

Artist: Eduardo Tokeshi

Medium: Oil on Canvas

Gallery: Galeria Forum (Located in Peru)

In this painting the horse is so tiny on the canvas.  It is centered horizontally on an ocher background that fads to black (looks like clouds).  The horse is sitting on a board with wheels under it in a thick black strip lining the bottom.  The color of the background is so intense.  With the image so small you can almost over look it if you are passing by quickly but if you stop and actually look at the image the size of the horse makes it more important.  Something doesn’t always have to be huge to be dominant.  My favorite part of the painting is the background color and its highlights and shadows.

Staples

535 Morgan Avenue

Brooklyn, NY 11222

-Double sided 11’’ X 17’’ color print on regular copy paper – $3.58

-To trim a stack (per trim) – $2.00 (up to 200 sheets)

-To fold something (per fold) – $0.02

-Coil bound – size 11’’ –  $3.99

-They don’t do saddle stitch

-They don’t do perfect binding

For my final project I would like to do a book on the bridges of Manhattan.  I want to give some background information on the bridges.  To make it more interesting and different form the books that already out there I am not only going to show a picture of the full bridge but also of the different parts of the bridges at different angles.  I want to show the beams and the steel that makes up the bridges.  Another thought I had was to draw the different parts of the bridge myself instead of using pictures.

Some of the different brides are:

Brooklyn Bridge

Manhattan Bridge

Williamsburg Bridge

Queensboro Bridge

Throgsneck Bridge

Bronx-Whitestone Bridge

Hell Gate Bridge

Roosevelt Island Bridge

I plan on focusing only on the bridges that connect Manhattan and Brooklyn because to do all of them would just be too much.  These include the Brooklyn bridge, Manhattan bridge, and Williamsburg bridge.

For the picture book I choose to use pictures that I have taken myself.  I used pictures from a hiking trip I went on a few weeks ago at the Minnewaska State Park Preserve up in New Paltz.  As I was looking through the pictures I noticed some figures in the rocks (like one you can find when looking up at the clouds).  The first part of the book is just some pictures of the hike.  The second half of it is picture where I saw images in the rocks.  I put a picture and then put the answer to what I saw in it on the back page.  There are six of those.  For the cover I used a paper bag.  I liked the natural feel of it.

I took a couple of schedules for the Harlem line from Grand Central and put them together in a book and used black card stock for the cover.  It is not a fully functional book as for train schedule.  There is a mixture of schedules and advertisements throughout the pages.  Some of the pages are upside down.  As I was putting it together it became very boring and so I wanted to make it more interesting by putting some upside down.  It cause a reaction and it goes along with how confusing traveling can be.  You can feel disoriented and lost as the upside down pages do.  Binding the book together went fairly well.  The hardest part was gathering the contents of the page and orienting it in a way that made sense and fit the proportion.  My book is 9’’ high and 2 ¾’’ wide.

1. Title: Pictures of Walls

Author: Conceived and compiled by Banksy

Price: $100

Binding Style: Glue Bound

Printing Method:

Edition Size:

This is a small book of graffiti art from various people who have sent in pictures.  Some the graffiti is short phrases while others are reworkings of the cracked plaster to make such images as dogs monsters, and continents.  I thought this was a great concept and it was really interesting to look at.

cover

inside page

2. Title: Between Beauty and the Beast: Sculptures, Drawings and Photographs

Author: Paul McCarthy

Price: $35

Binding Style: Multiple Saddle Stitch

Printing Method:

Edition Size:

This was a large book that had a wooden cover and backing.  The idea of placing planks of wood for a cover was intriguing, and different.  It gave the book weight and made it feel more important.

3. Title: Kompression

Author: Makka

Price:$75

Binding Style: Saddle Stitch

Printing Method: Silk-Screen

Edition Size: 33

The images in this book were great.  It had a comic feel to it.  The writing was in German so I couldn’t understand anything but I really like the style of silk-screening.  It was only done in two colors, blue and white on a tan paper.

4. Title: Lies to Leo

Author: Mike Lash

Price: $24

Binding Style: Spiral

Printing Method:

Edition Size:

This is a children’s book.  It tell children things like rabbits like carrots best, you only use 10 percent of your brain, or the earth is round, then in the back it gives explanations as to why these are not true.  The book isn’t currently available.  The artist Reception and Book Signing are Saturday, October 24, 4-6pm.

5. Title: Small Talk

Author: Kristen Romaniszak

Price: $60

Binding Style: Saddle Stitch

Printing Method:

Edition Size: 10

The book is very small square book that reads as a comic.  It’s a conversation between two dogs done in black and white.  I was shocked at how expensive the book was because it was so small and in black and white.

6. Title: Ah Baby Baby

Author: Michal Zori

Price: $34

Binding Style: Saddle Stitch

Printing Method: Silk Screen

Edition Size: 155

This was another silk-screened book.  I really like the construction of the book.  The inside was on a heavy white paper and the cover was a tan heavy paper with a silk-screened tree on it.  The cover had a curved flap that was connected by velcro.  The only thing was that the paper inside was a little too heavy because it didn’t seem to fold well.  But it probably had to be that heavy because of the silk-screening.

Katie Hunt

1. water towers – Screw post/bolt binding- this type of binding has an industrial feel that will go along with the water towers.  not sure how arrange it but i would like to capture various water towers at various times and put it all together some how.
2. geometrical shapes- something i’ve already done but feel it can go furthur.  the way shapes combine to make more shapes and using the negative space interests me. – saddle stitch

3. buildings- aspects of the buildings such as the window structure, lighting, molding – screw post/bolt binding 

4. news topics – this would be relative to the time it be done.  by watching the news or reading the newspaper i will pick a topic of interest and the binding method would depend on the topic chosen. 

5. human anatomy – i’m very interested in the aspects of the human body such as the skeleton, muscle structure, veins, and so on – saddle-stitch
6. archways- not exactly sure how to go about this one but how archways are constructed is something of interst, is it round or square, how much detail is put into it – screw post/bolt binding

7. bridges-structure of beams – again i would use the screw post/bolt binding as the binding would mimick the industrial context of the book.  a compiliation of images of the structure of the bridges.  the beams not only hold up the bridge but can be seen as a pice of art work. 
8. nature – trees/ tree stumps/branches, leaves – saddle stitch

9. family- twin nieces were born in july 8 weeks premature and under 4 lbs. the book would document their progression to date.  – saddle stitch

10. herbs/plants – i have just become interested in herbs/plants and their health benefits as opposed to taking prescription meds for every problem.  it would be a book listing some common home remedies for things..possibly??-  saddle stitch