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Leonardo


Cindy Tonkin - March 10, 2021

So this is a collaboration with Nicola.

I made a 2 d work where I cut tiny houses out of playing cards with my cricut (it’s the first image here). It just didn’t look right. So i gave it to Nicola, who has been giving me some fabulous offcuts from her print press, which is basically left over pages with left over ink. I asked her to run my piece with its houses through the press next time she was playing. I got most fabulous things, some of the houses had detached, the texture was amazing. 

Inside this red pocket (from the art of the fold, page 117), is a concertina book. The concertina book is that piece. I sewed the concertina onto a concertina spine (this time to the valleys – last time I did this Avril asked why I sewed to the mountains, i think it’s from a double layer interwoven split concertina experience). Then I made the pocket to surround it.

I always get to the end of the piece with unique paper and have to scrounge around for something to be the cover – and this was no exception. The red was a leftover I think from Rina’s gifts maybe 2 years ago now. (Thank you Meaghan).

There are some lovely textures inside the book. I’m not sure about the leftover pva glue where the houses used to be attached – i will probably leave it like this, and i could also maybe use a moist brush or an erase to remove it.

The piece is called Leonardo because the original cards were Leonardo da Vinci cards – beautiful backs.

Also, as a working note, the oil-based inks that Nicola used would not dry on the china coated cards. My solution was to put a layer of PVA over the top. not texturally great (it’s a little rough) but it meant that when someone handles the piece they don’t come away with grubby hands!

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