Weproductions Hand printed editions, Artists' Books, Book Art

SPECIAL HAND PRINTED EDITIONS

These titles are a departure in Weproductions' publishing and add another dimension to the book works of Helen Douglas. Printed by inkjet with guaranteed Ultrachrome inks they are hand stitched and produced in small editions.

SWAN SONGS with damselflies

Helen Douglas, SWAN SONGS with damselflies, Weproductions, 2006.
11 metres x 220 mm concertina, comprising of 86 pages, french folds, seam stitched at spine. Card end covers. Paper band with title. Edition of 30, numbered. Price £200.

SWAN SONGS with damselflies is a contemplative exploration of the lake/loch and its inhabitants. Distilled to the page as an ancient repository of time, swans reflect and glide while plants grow and damselflies flit.
A concertina, Swan Songs with damselflies unfolds in double spreads and phrases, and can be read as one long continuous 11 metre strip, much like a scroll. Printed by inkjet with guaranteed Ultrachrome inks on a gossamer fine 30gms chinese drawing paper, the saturated image seeps into the paper, fusing image with surface.
This book won the Birgit Skiöld Memorial Trust Award LAB 06.

REFLECTION and GLYPH

Helen Douglas, Reflection, Weproductions, 2006, 12pp, 160 x 195mm, printed by inkjet with guaranteed Ultrachrome inks on 35gms Chinese drawing paper, cream card cover, thread bound. Price £10.
Helen Douglas, GLYPH, Weproductions, 2006, 12pp, 173 x 228mm, printed by inkjet with guaranteed Ultrachrome inks on 35gms Chinese drawing paper, white card cover, thread bound. Price £15.

These two contemplative books were made in the same period as SWAN SONGS with damselflies. In both books the images are printed on fine transparent Chinese paper as individual double spreads, the inks penetrating to the verso of each page. Images of plants and water reflections combine with paper and print to create subtle contemplative effects within and through the pages. Reflection captures delicate shimmer in distance and depth, whilst in the foreground dead rushes bend, reflect and mourn. In contrast Glyph captures the articulated excitement of lily pads emerging from water in spring. Angled and precise in mirror image reflection they punctuate the plain of water/page as letter, character: as glyph.

THE FLIT SERIES

Helen Douglas, The FLIT series; Ephemera 1, Ephemera 2, Whirligig, Buttercup and Long-legged Fly, Weproductions 2006. 5 Booklets, each 12pp, 110 x 162mm, printed by inkjet with guaranteed Ultrachrome inks on character original wove paper, white cover, thread bound. Price £20 for set, £5 per copy.

These books were originated in 2002 and put into production in 2006. They were conceived as small visual poems. Images are paired in three double spreads, and gather around an insect or flower within their setting, upon Deuchar burn. Ephemeral like the Mayfly (Ephemera danica), they are printed on plain paper and fold like a letter into an envelope.

FIELD NOTES

Helen Douglas, Field Notes, Weproductions, 2006, 70pp, 70 x 90mm, printed by inkjet with guaranteed Ultrachrome inks, stitched with light brown cover, dust jacket, elastic textile band. Edition of 30. Price £15.

This small book was a commissioned work made for the "Special Collections" exhibition of artists' books held at Leeds University, 2007.

The book is made up of a small photographic collection of insects and leaves that Douglas had made, all photographed in relation to the book and the white page. One beetle makes for the crevice, another beetles off to the corner, a caterpillar crawls behind and up the edge of the page and a prickly holly leaf spears open the central spread. The printed pages of insects and leaves are inserted and threaded into a previously threaded blank paged notebook to create a bulging book with unruly fore edge, thus affirming the collection spirit of this final book.

THRESHOLD

Helen Douglas, Aaron Shurin, Threshold, Weproductions, 2006, 48pp,175 x 230mm pages printed by inkjet with guaranteed Ultrachrome inks on 30gsm cream Chinese drawing paper, thread bound into 210 x 300mm cream card cover with embossed title, fastened with green silk ribbon. Edition of 40. Price £50.

This folio holds within its covers a beautiful union between the prints of classical goddesses made by Helen Douglas and the light quivering text by Aaron Shurin. The goddesses are at one within the landscape garden in which they live, rendered in textural and tonal fusion, the light transparency of paper and its saturation by ink adding to this confluence. As in a garden landscape, the viewer lightly turns the dapple leafed pages and ventures through, the goddesses serenely turning their heads and redirecting our attention and viewpoint. In an opening of sky, through the transparency of the page, they lead us to the hovering plain of text, and on reading this in turn heightens our awareness and leads us in excitement to Terpsichore, Diana and the full greens of spring.