The journey towards a book: Part 3

The journey towards a book: Part 3

To add pressure to all of this, as if this project wasn’t enough pressure, I decided in late spring after my April opening that I would finish the layout, the selection of paintings and other artwork and the writing, while I was isolated in my studio in Montana so that I could unveil the finished book at my October 19^th opening back in Chicago.

After building stretchers and beginning the painting that was in the last blog series posted by Rebecca, I began my intense studio days. Painting all day, then working on the rewriting of the narrative for the book at night. Soon, I was weaving in the painting and the writing so that it just all blurred.

By mid summer I had a very tight, focused flow of the book. I used the 3 big themes: historical changes in my work, the building of the three spaces and the philosophical dialogue that drives my thinking in both the journal entries and the poems I write while painting. These three elements are the woven fabric, the language that flows between the works of art and the images of space, landscape and structure.

Now all I had to do was learn a new software program, Adobe InDesign, and lay it all out in time to have blurb.com print a proof I could hold and read and then correct.

Needless to say, this was monumental.

As I need to be painting everyday, I continued in the studio finishing the large canvas and then starting three smaller pieces along with three oil pastels; which I will write about in the next blog series.

I must have read and re-read my narrative 300 hundred times honing the language, yet keeping my voice. Once I had the layout the way I wanted it I was up to 221 pages. But it was right and I felt really good about this.

It, for me, was a piece of art.

As with all pieces of art, the color of the paintings needed to be as near to perfect so I turned to my long time designer of my website and invitations, Les Sandelman, to painstakingly go over each and every image, over 200 in all, and make sure they were correct and would upload properly to the book printer.

The hard copy proof came back the second week of September and I poured through it for the final corrections then sent it off to be printed. It was cutting it close, but the finished books arrived a week before the October 19^th opening.

I had done it.

If you are interested you can find the link to the book here: jonathanwallacestudio.com