Days of Laughter I-IV

I got my four unique artists Days of Laughter I-IV back from the bookbinder Flodstrands a little more than a week ago. I’m so pleased with them! All those little details in the bookbinding – and the fact that they look and work as planned. This set of artist books in a box is intended as an art piece, not as documentation. It is laughter in a book, laughter as a book.

the covers are screen printed by me

100 pages of an ever-changing laughter, each book containing a different laughter

if you want to get back to a special laughter you can use the pink ribbon

Flodstrands Bookbinder has made a fantastic job

The background is this: during five weeks I made five big drawings of laughter (130 x 100 cm). I started on Mondays and drew, erased, drew, erased and drew again - and on Fridays I stopped. I photographed the process in ever changing daylight and each drawing resulted in more than hundred photos. The fifth and last drawing was utterly uninteresting during all the process and thus didn’t make as an art piece. The set of 100 photos of each drawing became four animations (meant to be projections) and now: artist books.

documenting my sketches

As part of my preparatory work for process book 2 and 3 I'm trying to properly document all the sketches I always make before arriving at the final art pieces. My work process involves many steps and a lot of after thought. Most of these ink drawings were made already in August 2015 and I didn't manage to get the art pieces working until autumn 2016 and the beginning of 2017!

I always work on parallel series as I very often have to let my work take a break. With these form cut drawings I tried so many adaptions that didn't work before I found the right solution.

SaveSave

"PARTY LAUGHTERS", installation view at Gislaved Konsthall February 2017

showing size

These tiny print-outs of my drawings (made to better plan my photo session) look just like the real drawings, don't they?

This is the real thing, though. Each drawing measuring 70x50 cm. Did you notice the coffee cup? I put it there as size reference, but I'm not sure if it really works ...

... and then I added me. I like the blue as a contrast to all the monochrome tones.

Size and motion

I've just had a photo session day at the studio documenting some new work but also taking some better photos of older art pieces.

It's weird - even though I've been taking photos of my art for many years now I still feel I have so much more to learn. It's not just about using the camera and the right light source, but also about how to convey size, materiality, concept - and even motion in a photo (or a set of photos). As most people will just see my work online it's crucial that I succeed with this - how can anyone otherwise understand my work and appreciate it? I'm nowadays also trying filming what I do - check my Instagram to see some short film clips. What do you think works best?

Days of Laughter

The publication course also made me think more of the possibilities to use printed material as art. I made four unique books of laughter called "Days of Laughter". Part of this work can be seen in my process book (Laughter).

The books are quite big and I screen printed the cover papers myself. I am now waiting for the book binder to finish his work for me. I'm very excited about these books and it is hard to wait patiently ...

Each book contains many pages of laughter (approx 100) 

My process book

The book is called "LAUGHTER graphite eraser paper" (in Swedish though) and contains photos of my work in process, drawings in my studio, finished art pieces, som shorts texts and an interview with me conducted by Angelica Olsson.

I now have my dummy and will print the book in a small edition in February and bind it myself as it contains some pages in transparent special paper. A version in English is also coming up later this spring!

A great publishing course

I just took a publishing course at Valand Academy (one semester halftime). Not only did we explore digital publications and pdf format, but we also made some paper publications. We finished the course with a book release and an exhibition at Galleri Monitor.

I’ve been reflecting a lot about how people experience my art and the best way to present my art pieces - because most people will not experience them in real life. I work a lot with scale and material which is really hard to mediate digitally or in printed matter. Thus I ended up making a small material and process book, which is to be the first one in a series of three.

a visitor checking out my process book "LAUGHTER graphite eraser paper"