I have had another productive week here in my studio. Early in the week, I bound my loose sketchbook pages, and now that project is finished. My final thought on this piece is, “meh.” I like it well enough, but the subject matter never formed into a solid theme. It did, however, serve its purpose as a sketchbook. I feel like I gained some new skills and more than a few interesting ideas. Here are images of the final binding:
This week I tried a new, and surprisingly fruitful, process for the creation of my next book. Here’s a little backstory before I describe this process: I’ve mentioned before that I LOVE paper. This is true. I not only love crisp, new, beautiful paper, but I also have an affinity towards sad little scraps. I save everything. The tiniest scraps get saved in little white envelopes. Medium sized scraps get stored in old greeting card boxes. The big scraps are stored in manila folders. All envelopes, card boxes, and folders then get stored in large cardboard boxes. As of this time, I have several boxes full of pretty papers, sad little scraps, and everything in between. This hoarding may or may not turn into a problem. It doesn’t help that my mother works in a library and is always scouring withdrawn books for things I might find appealing. I often find myself trying to sort through the scraps to choose images that might work together in a collage. Mostly I put the images away for another day because I’m too afraid to actually use my precious scraps. (Imagine me, Gollum like, crouching over my tiny papers.)
However, this week I grabbed one of my small greeting card boxes and decided that I would create a work using only images and scraps inside that particular box. When I sorted the papers I found they mostly fit into a black, white, and “aged paper” color scheme. Kismet? And but for a few exceptions, I used all the papers and images in that box to create a handmade artist book titled, Cleverest Girl.
I enjoyed perusing my old scraps. I had totally forgotten about this gem. A verse from an old 1930s poetry book:
Ah, yes, the clever girl: dancing, singing, writing, cooking. And let’s not forget her sweet, sweet BJs. (Keepin’ it classy since 1982.)
Megan Caldwell Chandler 
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