I make books by hand in very small editions. Using manual techniques combined with digital tools. Each book is a project that starts with a vague outline of what it will be in the end. To begin with is a floating vision of the materiality of a book. Properties like size, orientation or number of pages, or the touch and feel of handling the book, or the details of bookbinding, or the tactile marks of the print on the sheet. Once I have that vision as a guide I start searching for the content that fits into that frame. Images, ornaments, prose and rhymes. Improvisation is a starting point. Surprises and failures follow. Until content and form consolidates and merges with the restraining frame that I have set up for myself. In the end it is the sum and balance, harmonious or disharmonious, of these material and physical properties and the imaginary content that make up the personality of each of my books.

What about editions? In most cases my books exist only in one copy. Even though many books are made of digitally printed material that could be massproduced I add elements that are unique – original drawings by hand, monotype prints, handpainted paper for the cover. Handmade bookbinding is another restriction that narrows the possibility to produce more than a handful of copies of one book.

What kind is my work? Is it artists books? Some kind of visual poetry? Is it maybe more like comics? Or graphic stories? Is it craft? Is it even art? My practice is artistic – but is the result necessarily to be classified as art work? I do not really care what the answer is.  Most of the time I am just happy doing my projects.

What about my background? I am a graphic designer by profession. In addition I have been teaching artistic practice (design) in higher education. Having trained students I find myself observing my own learning process in telling a story, and reflecting on my methods. It somehow becomes integrated and expressed in the content of several books. But most of all my aim is to tell a simple story. Apart from that, I don’t think I have anything special to say. Maybe that is the reason why I am fascinated by the unassuming and the insignificant. This I have tried to express in my work.