The making of my book

A few snaps from the book making process

First off the cover is made from a thick Japanese card stock and Chris brought the trimmed covers to our friend Paul's house so that they could letterpress the covers together. It was an intensive and full day process to get the 25 covers done and Chris took the photos below of the process.


I had the pages printed by a commerical printer who calibrated their machine for me so that the colour and density would be what I was looking for. This left me with a huge box of almost 1000 sheets of thick paper. They were trimmed but then they needed to be folded. Here is my folding station at Concordia:

After folding the sequenced and grouped pages would come home with me so that I could sew them while watching (more like listening to) movies or crappy TV:

Pencil marks added to where I will make my holes in the pages:

In the middle of sewing a group (the groups are also called signatures):

One book where the sewing is finished:

A cover that is scored and ready to glue to the body of the book:
So there you go. It has been an interesting process, and one that I have really enjoyed so far (still have some sewing and glueing to do!). Many people have asked me: Why a hand made book? Why not a blurb book? Why not a digital book? I guess I thought it would be interesting to try and do it myself, to see what it takes to put a book together. This way Chris designed it to my specifications, and I got the exact cover that I wanted, and the size that I wanted, and the paper quality that I wanted, and the printer calibrated the way I wanted it. And then doing all the work myself also makes it a bit cheaper in the long run. And I am so happy with how it turned out, much better that I ever could have hoped. There are still a few left to sell so let me know if you are interested in owning your very own copy!

Review of my exhibit in The Montreal Mirror today.

Another image from "Ulysses, a personal journey"

Vernissage and Book Launch tonight at Warren G Flowers Gallery,
4001 de Maisonneuve West, Dawson College, Montreal.
If you use the de Maisonneuve doors the gallery is on your right as you enter.

A copy of my book! This book accompanies my "Ulysses, a personal journey" exhibition which is opening this week. Facts about this book:

Contains 79 colour images, image notes and an essay about the work
144 pages in length
The book is hand stitched and hand bound
Is in a edition of 25
For sale for $100 (email me if you are interested in reserving a copy: kate@katehutchinson.com)

The book will be present at the vernissage (which is also functioning as a book launch), but will not be in the gallery during the rest of the show.

For this book I must thank Aislinn Leggett for tutoring me in book binding, Paul Lessard for doing the letter press of the cover, and of course my husband Chris for the layout and design.

Also the show was hung yesterday and even though the vernissage is not till Wednesday the gallery is open to the public as of this morning (hanging took less time than I thought so the show opens one day early). I think the exhibit looks great, go visit! Hope to see you Wednesday!

Another image from my upcoming show "Ulysses, a personal journey", which you may have previously seen on the Hey Hot Shot! blog.

A very brief summary of what this work is about:
The images are all set in Dublin, Ireland and feature Hutchinson and her father as they try to connect and understand their place of origin through James Joyce's Ulysses.

Vernissage (opening) on Wednesday the 20th (info in my last blog post). This evening will also serve as a book launch for my limited edition artist book version of the work. More on that and images of the book making coming up in the next week or so.

Invite to my exhibit, opening next week.

Here is the info in case you have trouble reading the invite:
Exhibit runs from April 19th to May 13th.
Vernissage is April 20th 6 to 9pm.
The gallery is the Warren G. Flowers Gallery, in Dawson College. The College is a big place so the easiest way to find the gallery is to enter by the de Maisonneuve entrance (just West of Atwater).
Hope to see you there!

Spring seems to have finally sprung here in Montreal!

Tonight Chris and I did the final layout of my book. Today I also cut all of my covers to size. Tomorrow I am off to the printers and Chris will visit our friend Paul's letterpress! It is coming along.

Chris at the cottage in the fall. Either Chris never wears a shirt or I only like to photograph him shirtless. Which do you think it is?

My friend Zoe Jaremus' MFA photo thesis show is up at the Parisian Laundry till Saturday.

I found an old photo of Chris on the meds after his knee surgery.

Things are coming along well for my exhibit. When it's been a while since you last mounted a solo show you forget all the details that take so much time: spotting, trimming, mounting; and then getting the prints in the frames: measuring and cutting spacers, cleaning the glass, etc. Well now all that is done. And my invites were printed today. Last week I did a first practice run of my thesis talk for the MFA class and it went pretty well. Lastly I am doing an artist book to accompany the show (an edition of 25, some of which will be available for purchase in a few weeks). So the images were all scanned and chosen a while ago, now the book layout is done and designed, the image notes for the back of the book are done, but my essay is not finished. So once that is done and the digital layout is double and triple checked I will be printing it out and stitching it together myself. Almost there, I can see the finish line in sight! I am feeling a bit more relaxed so I hope to be posting as usual from now on.

For those of you in Montreal you may not be aware that tomorrow evening Vik Muniz's Waste Land is playing as part of Films That Transform (a series that my father helps to organize) at McGill. I missed it when it was in theaters so I am hoping to find the time to see it tomorrow night.