Wednesday 21 May 2008

24 the clergyman


may 2008

136mm x 171mm
12 pages, sewn, wrappers
ink drawing on cover

The Clergyman originally appeared in The Great Impediment Valve and Other Stories, but I liked it enough to want to print it up separately. Mischievously, given the rather sinister nature of the central character, the book's outer wrappers are Victorian bible endpapers, and these are garlanded with a crown of laurel, the victor's crown.

23 to draw poultry


december 2007

150mm x 197mm
6 pages, wrapper

Reading Isabella Beeton's instructions on how to draw poultry I wondered how easily her words could be followed today with instructions such as cut off the pinions, take out the crop and make a deep straight cut across the body between the tail and the vent. I decided there was some fun to be had with this. So, the first method in this book is Beeton's own. The remaining three are anagrams of this first method, and whose instructions veer between probable, improbable and downright impossible. However, because the vocabulary of the three pieces is entirely Beeton's, they have a straightforward conviction of command that lends their incomprehensibility a bewildering clarity. The illustrations that accompanied the original instructions have been similarly treated. Now, scrape the skin pinions...

22 horses


november 2006
146mm x 178mm
22 pages, with bookmark
16 copies

I know the horses come down in the night. What started life as a number of observations on local weather turned into a re-imagining of Colva and its community after an undefined post-catastrophic event, when its isolation has become even more pronounced. The horses of the title are noticeable by their absence. Their only direct appearance is in the far distance, the white stallion lit by the evening sun, on the bookmark in the book's pages. Their health and vitality have left our lands.