Summer has arrived and as I ´ve been meaning to write about the course of our new little book ("Met twee ogen kruipen", Sandrine Lambert, Het Punt 2015) for a while now I finely find the time to do that.
One day, actually a few years ago, I was in between projects and waiting for answers.
So I decided to start drawing things I felt like, imagine how I would like to make a book without any commercial limits, publishers guidelines, context, verbal story…just the way I imagined I would like to have had a book when I was little.
I book in which you could almost "feel" a variety of materials.
I draw for about a week or 2, and I got about 12 drawings (24 pages) which suddenly could be a book. But something was missing. Pictures, in little windows to be opened in the drawings.
We gathered with Brazilian photographer/ artist Andrea vannucchi and idea s quickly matched.
We found a selections of pictures which communicated perfectly with the drawings. Her husband who had a peak, and teased us :"ah, a book for a very small market: "artists kids " ;)
Well, looking for a publisher was not easy: we actually got quite a few considerations, but overall , it s commerciality was questioned.
But through a grant of Auraco I got to build a 40-40 cm fabric book out of it. I developed a series of workshops to tour at daycares in 2012- 2014, and yes, also surprisingly working very well, in elderly houses.
After that, a silence...
In the mean time Andrea showed the book to a friend of her, Pauliina Vesslin, who got crazy about the pictures and saw a teatreplay in front of her.
We gathered a group of … , let s call it, "arty" ;) parents: music LauNau, Direction Sarika Lipasti, and 2 actors Pauliina and Siiri.
After brainstorming we decided the pictures could be projected with an oldschool light-box, on to a bed sheet with a whole in the middle, just like the book. Also building this play took a while, we builded about 3 versions until we got to the right feeling. It was builded from the inside out, just like the work-title of the book.
The performance was received surprisingly well: we got grants from different places and also wonderful feedback.
We are working on a sequel now, and courageously started to call our group "Nurinpäin (inside out) Collective"
But so the book. I couldn t visually make text, drawings and pictures work. Somehow it felt like there where to many languages. I couldn t find anyone who was interested in publishing the manuscript without words.
Then I met Sandrine ( http://www.avondroodboeken.be ) online, actually trough my sister who took a writing course with her. She and some other people highly recommended me to contact her. I fell in love with the way Sandrine uses words.
We actually worked on it, just in bits and pieces, about 1 1/2 years, until we decided to send it to a few publishers. And in the beginning of this year we found a Belgian publisher "Het Punt" to be interested !
You can purchase this little pearl at:
http://www.deleeswinkel.be/sandrine-lambert-met-twee-ogen-kruipen.html
You can purchase this little pearl at:
http://www.deleeswinkel.be/sandrine-lambert-met-twee-ogen-kruipen.html
Now I feel like the circle is complete. Sometimes lovely things come from meaningless moments of play. This was one of these projects <3
So always keep on trying, even when it feels like it doesn t make sense!
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