These handmade books were created with materials inherited from my maternal great-grandmother, two of her younger sisters, and my paternal grandmother. The stitching method is inspired by sashiko.
These objects are compound books, meaning that there are multiple small books bound inside that can be flipped through independently when viewing the object. The materials used are very personal, and embed time in an intergenerational sense: the brown exterior fabric is a hand-me-down from my Japanese Canadian great-grandmother, and the patterned fabric interiors were inherited from my great-great aunt, her younger sister. I grew up very close to both of them, and they were strongly connected throughout their lives, so this was a way of symbolically representing those connections. Hand stitched meticulously for hours, the material echoes time spent in a number of ways; many of those hours were spent together.
The interiors of these book-objects consist of handmade paper, created from recycled personal records, artworks that didn’t work out from other pieces in this project, and inherited paper. Continuing with the intergenerational theme, some of the source material was paper from my French Canadian grandmother, who was an art instructor, and the person responsible for my early-childhood exposure to visual arts and textile crafts. I recently inherited many of her old supplies, including used watercolour paper with unfinished sketches. Combined with other personal paper items, the collection of resulting pages further activates the potential of these artifacts to be read in a variety of ways. Though not directly related to music or sound, this work demonstrates the extra-textual meaning enabled through the book format.
Handmade paper, published music staff paper (G. Henle Verlag Urtext Jotter), hand-stitched textile cover (inherited fabric), sashiko thread, bound with inherited synthetic thread.
Camille Kiku Belair 