With all the super-thick binder board cutting, Fat Max has been put through his paces. I have had a couple of near misses — fingers and thighs (thank goodness for denim) are the usual targets — it’s surprising this hasn’t happened earlier. It’s only a flesh wound, but still not for the squeamish.
The catalog was delivered to Grossenbacher on Monday.
This took me all day yesterday (9am – 1am with breaks for lunch and dinner) – the first photo is from 12:35 pm. I built the shell of the inner case that morning. I had three separate boxes that I had put together with too little sleep, and realized that it was better to make the top and bottom all one piece. Fewer variables for screwiness – and I have to account for screwiness in the materials every step of the way. Also, note that the previous door knobs have been replaced with knobs of a more appropriate scale for the piece. It’s hard to find small wooden knobs!
The catalog in progress. (PDF 1.68mb)
There are three groups. I will be adding one more item (a key – have to reshoot it) to group “B.” I also have two other groupings — (1) an uncle-nephew relationship with geology samples (2) something Victorian/Edwardian for which I have yet to figure the story kernel but whose items would be the niftiest and most obscure — that I have yet to shoot, but which I might feature instead of one or two of these.
In any case, I’d appreciate any input about layout or comments on the current groupings. I also would like a critique on my brief introduction. I’m thinking of asking Grossenbacher to include a cloth bookmark which I will place on the introduction page to hopefully guide folks to read it. I’m not happy with the design of the introduction page, it’s pretty boring, but I only have so much time to spend on it!
My goal is to wrap this up today and get the thing to Grossenbacher tomorrow. Then that will be out of my hair and I can get cracking on the cabinet over the weekend and before I get my paper back from David Ritchie on Tuesday.
The time has come to choose who will be included in the cabinet and I wish I had room for more than just 3 people! The picture to the right shows everything I have to work with arranged in piles (mostly). Click on it for the big picture. Of course, I want to include all the most intriguing stuff, but the intriguing stuff doesn’t fall neatly into only 3 stories. My plan, at this stage, is to document all the stories that I find, and then enlist some innocent observers and guide my choice by their reactions. I’m trying not to entertain thoughts about creating more drawers (current plan: 3 stories x 6 drawers = 18 drawers) than I had planned, but… In any case, the most important thing right now is to focus on getting the groups together so I can photograph them and then layout the book. Perhaps I will present all the stories to Paul to see what his take as an educated outside observer might be. I have to get the book design to him in short order, anyway. I’m going to get the book bound at Grossenbacher to match the cabinet and they need a good deal of turnaround time. I present this darn thing in less than two weeks! Eek!
And one last bit (for now) from Cabinets of Curiosities: Four Artists, Four Visions — instructions for visitors to that exhibition could almost have been written for mine.
These are “novels,” or more appropriately “autobiographies” in visual form, and an attempt to identify each object or justify its use will be as sterile as reading a novel one sentence at a time. Read these pieces for the effect the juxtaposition of objects may produce. Consider this exhibition as an excursion into the world of real things, objects directly seen, without amplification or intermediation, other than that of the artist’s hand and eye as each artist has created and guided the placement and interrelationship of the things contained within these small spaces.
— Thomas H. Garver in Cabinets of Curiosities: Four Artists, Four Visions. University of Wisconsin-Madison, 2000. p. 53
Abberdab loves finding quirky stuff and sharing it with strangers.
