Today is my birthday so I decided to post a book I made. I made this a long time ago at RISD for a class on zines and handmade books. We had an exchange at the end of the semester so we all had to make an edition of 21. It’s an accordian book where the pages are wood blocks. When the book is closed it makes a house and when it opens, it tells the story of the people living in the house. The story was totally made up about a guy who inherits his grandmother’s house and has all his old friends come move in with him and what their were motives for doing it. This was a big undertaking. My boyfriend at the time cut all the wood in the woodshop for me which was a heavy box to carry home(five pages for each book.) I attached the wood accordian style with I think gaffers tape. Then I had silkscreened all the pages which were all two or three colors onto tyvek(my teacher’s brilliant idea.) I got the tyvek from the post office. All their priority and express mail envelopes are made of tyvek so I just cut them up and used the white backs. The tyvek was great because it folded easily without creasing too much and also had such a nice sheen compared to the flat matte silkscreen. Then I had to glue all the pages by sort of wrapping them and then sliced them where the book would open. They weren’t very clean and perfect at the end and this copy I have is a mess since I have moved with it so many times. I remember everyone in the class made such amazing stuff- Matt Leines and Caitlin Keegan were in that class with me too. It was great. I miss school thinking about it. Since then I haven’t really worked on any big book projects. Just recently I had an idea for one that I think I want to do. I have been getting back into silkscreening since I took a class at the Lower East Side Printshop so I think that may be the my next endeavor. But for now, I want to enjoy my first day as twenty seven. xo

© Julia Rothman 2007