All my books are projects that start with a vague outline of what it will be in the end. I improvise. I experiment. With images. With words. I combine digital tools with hand making techniques. Step by step something emerges and takes shape. I had no bookbinding skills when I set off in 2017, but I have learned. I do not see myself a bookbinder. My interest is in content and form, not primarily in the craft of bookbinding.
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? First: it is obvious in some aspects of my practice that my background is in graphic design. I like to explore the materiality of books. How size, quality of paper, text appearance and bookbinding influence the content I create. Second: teaching artistic practice (design). 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.