mandag 31. mars 2008

Calligraphy at Liberty of the Seas


I have been so fortunate to have been comissioned to make calligraphy pieces for two of the largests cruice ships sailing in the Carribean Seas - Freedom of the Seas and Liberty of the Seas. Both times I got only about a week to finish 5 large scale pieces with quite a lot of text.

The texts describe the artwork on board the ships and the theme of the artwork. The comissioners could have just written the text on the computer and just print it out, but instead they decided to use a calligrapher to write out the texts.

I never had a chance to take a photo of the pieces after they had been framed. Just by chance I did get someone to take photos for me from Liberty of the Seas. Above you can see one piece beeing made, showing my pencil marks etc., under that one of the finished pieces in glass and frame. If you click on them you will get a close up.

søndag 16. mars 2008

Exhibition / Utstilling - kunst til bruk












Skrift - forening for bokstavkunst i samarbeide med Norske Brukskunstnere stiller ut kalligrafiarbeider i Oslo rådhus.

Jeg stiller ut to arbeider. Ett gammelt og ett nytt. "Hitchcock" lagde jeg det andre året jeg studerte på Roehampton Institute, da vi skulle lage et panel. Panelet består av tre skriftfelt. Hoveddelen, de fire søylene, beskriver Hitchcocks liv og arbeide. Til høyre er resymé av fem av mine favorittfilmer, og kanskje hans mest kjente verker. Under er listet opp alle filmene og hvilke år de kom ut. Arbeidet måler ca. 80 x 110cm.

Det nye arbeidet er "Jeg ser", et dikt av Sigbjørn Obstfelder. Ordene i dette diktet synes jeg er like treffende i dag som den gangen Obstfelder skrev det. Det handler om fremmedgjøring og at verden er under stor forandring hele tiden. Jeg skrev med automatic penn og brukte sumi-blekk (rivetusj). Overførte kopier av fotografier jeg har tatt av trær og smijernsgelender med aceton direkte på arket.

Fra pressemeldingen:
"Vi ønsker velkommen til vernissage lørdag 29. mars kl.13.00 Varaordfører Aud Kvalbein åpner utstillingen. Det vil bli forfriskninger og musikalsk innslag. Utstillingen er åpen i tidsrommet 29. mars til 12.april, mandag – fredag 9 -18, og lørdag – søndag 12 - 16. Rådhusgalleriet, inngang fra sjøsiden."

Exhibition information:

I am going to exhibit two calligraphy pieces in the Oslo Town Hall. The exhibition opening is on saturday 29 Mach at 1 pm and it is open every day until 12 April 2008 (mon-fri 9am- 6pm / sat-sun 12pm-4pm).

I am exhibiting a panel about Hitchcok that I made in 1998 while studying at Roehampton Institute London. The second piece is new and is a poem made by Sigbjørn Obstfelder about feelings of alienation. Both pieces measures about 80 x 110cm.

mandag 10. mars 2008

Farmen - gårdsboka














I was commissioned to bind the farmbook for the reality TV show, Farmen. I made it in one week last summer so it is not my most recent work, but it is actually on TV right now. It was bound in a coptic style binding with an open sewing on the spine. The book can then actually lie flat on the table (or as I've seen) in the contestant's lap while they're reading it. It is fun to see your own book on TV three times a week.

I chose the coptic binding style for two reasons. I wanted to have the book flat when they opened it. Another reason is that I use that way of binding a lot, so I felt that it was "me" and not "just another commission". Also I had limited time to make a full leather binding. That would have taken way more time than just covering the two boards in leather. The fun thing about it was the wettest summer EVER! The leather just wouldn't dry, and it didn't help that I had to dye the leather first too. The scary part was when I was going to do the blind tooling of their logo on the front...It turned out a bit dark, but it looked good, though, just like the commissioners wanted it. Thank goodness!

søndag 9. mars 2008

Welcome

This is my first attempt to actually get people to know what I do as a bookbinder and calligrapher. I often get questions about what I do. Not many people in Norway understand what it is. I do get a lot of queries through my web page in e-mails. By having my own blogg I will try to give people a better understanding on what kind of jobs I do and what inspires me. I will try to update the blogg and tell about recent work I have had and what projects I'm working on at the moment etc.

I would like you to take a look at my webpage www.bokstaven.net to get a glimpse of the different projects I have made in the past. Some of them are made very recent, some were made a few years ago, but I everything I put on there show the variety of work that I do.

I will write this in English because my webpage is (so far) only in Norwegian. Maybe this will be useful to people outside the scandinavian countries.