Working in a space between

When I don't really know what to do in the studio, I find something to keep my hands busy. Since I started working at Tyler, that something has often been bookbinding. I have been working my way through Kojiro Ikegami's Japanese Bookbinding and have picked up a couple of new tricks...

These will probably end up as sketchbooks for a trip with the boys to the museum, but they are kind of fun to make and pretty simple. A few dozen more and I'll have the hang it and might be able to make a few tweaks...

After Thomas Edison (Mary had a little lamb...), gouache on paper

I have finished one more in the small series of Famous First Words that began a few weeks ago. This is what Thomas Edison first recorded when demonstrating the phonograph in 1877 (here's audio from the Internet Archive of Edison reflecting on that famous recording in 1927)

I've been reading Alec Foege's disappointing book The Tinkerers: The Amateurs, DIYers and Inventors who made America Great (a full review of its disappointing-ness will wait for a future post). Foege retells the story of Edison's inability to fully understand the potential of his invention. Intent on seeing it marketed as a tool for business, Edison never foresaw the transformative impact the phonograph would have on music and entertainment.

I am currently working in a somewhat scatter shot manner as I try to get some very complex pieces lined up. It feels a little like wasting time, but I am thinking of Edison as I do it, of the idea that what you make may have some impact beyond what you imagine, and that helps a little.