Illustration / Part 5: Places

Wherever you go, go with all your heart! – Confucius

Discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes. – Marcel Proust

Life begins at the end of your comfort zone. – Neale Donald Walsch

There’s a whole world out there, right outside your window. You’d be a fool to miss it. – Charlotte Eriksson

Own only what you can always carry with you: known languages, known countries, known people. Let your memory be your travel bag. – Alexandr Solzhenitsyn

Further to my four posts on the natural world – Part 1: Trees, Part 2: Shrubs & Vines, Part 3: Flowers and Part 4: Animals – I am now posting the fifth theme (out of 12 in total) that have most commonly ‘appeared’ throughout my work in order to mark my 10th anniversary of graphic design and illustration. The theme, first in the series of the man-made world, is dedicated to our places in which we live and is divided into two sections – urban and rural.

Photography has always served me as a starting point for the process of making artworks. While the majority of photography is accidental gathered through my travels and day trips, a small percentage is intentional depending on the aspect of a project. A few artworks are also based on historical or contemporary visual documents, such as those showing St Petersburg and Kabul respectively. Also, while some of my photos were used in their entirety depending on the subject matter, many, on the other hand, were the starting point for experiments as details got incorporated into a new range of compositions and environments, as well as fragmented or transformed into new shapes and textures, through the use of various techniques.

God made the country, and man made the town. – William Cowper

Knowledge and power in the city; peace and decency in the country. – Mason Cooley

 

1. Urban

When a man rides a long time through wild regions he feels the desire for a city. Finally he comes to Isidora, a city where the buildings have spiral staircases encrusted with spiral seashells, where perfect telescopes and violins are made, where the foreigner hesitating between two women always encounters a third, where cockfights degenerate into bloody brawls among the bettors. He was thinking of all these things when he desired a city. Isidora, therefore, is the city of his dreams: with one difference. The dreamed-of city contained him as a young man; he arrives at Isidora in his old age. In the square there is the wall where the old men sit and watch the young go by; he is seated in a row with them. Desires are already memories. – Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities

Arriving at each new city, the traveler finds again a past of his that he did not know he had: the foreignness of what you no longer are or no longer possess lies in wait for you in foreign, unpossessed places. – Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities

Cities, like dreams, are made of desires and fears, even if the thread of their discourse is secret, their rules are absurd, their perspectives deceitful, and everything conceals something else. – Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities

A city is not gauged by its length and width, but by the broadness of its vision and the height of its dreams. – Herb Caen

Under trees, the urban dweller might restore his troubled soul and find the blessing of a creative pause. – Walter Gropius

Nature is impersonal, awe-inspiring, elegant, eternal. It’s geometrically perfect. It’s tiny and gigantic. You can travel far to be in a beautiful natural setting, or you can observe it in your backyard – or, in my case, in the trees lining New York City sidewalks, or in the clouds above skyscrapers. – Gretchen

 

2. Rural

I like rural areas. – Will Oldham

I long for the countryside. That’s where I get my calm and tranquility – from being able to come and find a spot of green. – Emilia Clarke

When you take a flower in your hand and really look at it, it’s your world for the moment. I want to give that world to someone else. Most people in the city rush around so, they have no time to look at a flower. I want them to see it whether they want to or not. – Georgia O’Keeffe

In small towns, news travels at the speed of boredom. – Carlos Ruiz Zafón

People have a tendency to see country life through rose-colored glasses. – PJ Harvey

City people. They may know how to street fight but they don’t know how to wade through manure. – Melina Marchetta, On the Jellicoe Road

Country life has its advantages…You sit on the veranda drinking tea and your ducklings swim on the pond, and everything smells good… and there are gooseberries. – Anton Chekhov

Anybody can be good in the country. There are no temptations there. – Oscar Wilde

I lived in solitude in the country and noticed how the monotony of a quiet life stimulates the creative mind. – Albert Einstein

Beletrina book cover designs / Feb & Dec 2013 & February 2014

Some recent book covers for Beletrina, a major literary imprint of the Slovene book publisher Beletrina Academic Press.

Beletrina book cover designs / April 2013

Recent book covers for Beletrina, a major literary imprint of the Slovene book publisher Beletrina Academic Press.

Beletrina book cover designs / Sep & Oct 2012 & February 2013

Some recent book covers for Beletrina, a major literary imprint of the Slovene book publisher Beletrina Academic Press.

Beletrina book cover designs / July 2012

Recent book covers for Beletrina, a major literary imprint of the Slovene book publisher Beletrina Academic Press.

Beletrina book cover designs / June 2012

Recent book covers for Beletrina, a major literary imprint of the Slovene book publisher Beletrina Academic Press.

Beletrina book cover designs / March 2012

Recent book covers for Beletrina, a major literary imprint of the Slovene book publisher Beletrina Academic Press.

World Book Day 2012

Today is World Book Day in the UK. I contributed a postcard to the Random Project to mark this occasion. The words related to the theme were: Words, Dream, World, and Imagine. The postcard below is a response to the Words.

The hand-made letters were initially created for a public art installation – France Prešeren’s New Outfit – dressing the Slovene Romantic poet in a huge cloak, whose monument stands in the main square of Ljubljana, Slovenia. The project was created for the Festival Fabula 2010, run by a literary book publisher Študentska založba, as the central event of Ljubljana’s time as UNESCO World Book Capital 2010. I have created over 200 book covers for the publisher since 2007, hence my naughty play on the usual phrase “Don’t judge a book by its cover.”

World Book Day – also known as World Book and Copyright Day, or International Day of the Book – is an annual event organised by UNESCO to promote reading, publishing, and copyright. It is a celebration of authors, illustrators, and books. According to the UK World Book Day, the main aim of today in the UK and Ireland is to encourage children of all ages to come together to explore the pleasure of books and reading by providing them with a £1 token against the purchase of a book from the list. The organisation will send these tokens to schools that participate in the World Book Day.

According to Wikimedia, the World Book Day was celebrated for the first time on 23 April 1995. The connection between this date and books was first made in 1923 by Spanish booksellers, at the initiative of the Valencian writer Vicente Clavel Andrés, to honour the death of the author Miguel de Cervantes in the Catalonian festival of St George. In Catalonia, St George’s Day (Diada de Sant Jordi), the Saint Patron of this historical region, has been commemorated since 1436, and it involves the exchange of gifts between loved ones and respected people. St George’s Day in Catalonia is celebrated with giving loved ones Books and Roses, and is an opportunity for Catalans to honour their patron saint and show their love of culture.

In 1995 UNESCO decided that the World Book Day would be celebrated on that day, as, an addition to the anniversary of the death of Cervantes, the date is also the anniversary of the death of William Shakespeare, as well as, of Inca Garcilaso de la Vega and Josep Pia, and the birth of Maurice Druon, Vladimir Nabokov, Manuel Mejíla Vallejo, and Halldór Laxness.

The date for the World Book Day, however, differs from country to country. In the UK and the Republic of Ireland is held annually on the first Thursday in March as the established international 23 April would clash with Easter school holidays and as the 23 April is also the National Saint’s day of England, St George’s Day.

The World Book Day is not funded by the British government. The funding for activities mainly comes from the major sponsor, National Book Tokens, and the UK book trade (publishers and booksellers).

Beletrina book cover designs / November 2011

Recent book covers for Beletrina, a major literary imprint of the Slovene book publisher Beletrina Academic Press.

Children’s Picture Book: Barvice / Feb 2011

Children’s picture book of poetry on 12 colours by Feri Lainšček and illustrated and designed by Andreja Brulc, called Barvice (Coloured Pencils), was released by a Slovene publisher Franc-Franc.

The book is part of a multimedia project for children called World of Colours. The project, which will take place next year in conjunction with Maribor 2012, European City of Culture, will be carried out by a group of four people: Feri Lainšček, Janja Vidmar, Benka Pulko and Andreja Brulc.

I responded directly to each poem, and each colour is treated on a separate double-page spread. The book was, therefore, very complex and ambitious. It demanded considerable technical skills, including an understanding of 6-colour print technology as the book includes gold and silver inks.

The illustrations are, I believe, highly innovative and original – a view supported by reviews. They show a variety of technical skills, not only in construction but also in using mixed media, combining various techniques, including drawing, photography collaging, photomontage and digital manipulation. The process involved a cut and paste technique of many pieces of paper in various tones, patterns and textures, representing the 12 colours. Many papers used were from my collection and included recycled paper shopping bags and napkins, collected during various travels around the world over the years. I also used inks and scrim tape to achieve the desired textures and colours. Shapes were pasted or collaged together to construct each element of the image playfully.

The book was one of the five books nominated for Večernica and Desetnica (2011), the two highest awards for children’s and youth’s literature in Slovenia. The book was named ‘Book of the Month’ (March 2011) by Lunin Festival, one of the most important children’s festivals in Slovenia.

Interesting and vivid illustrations … incorporate different kind of images as a whole, both from the point of technique (photography, cut out images, drawing) and from the point of selected motives (a visual translation of the poet’s words).
– Dragica Haramija & Janja Batič, Sodobnost 10 (2013): 1450–1452

I enjoyed from the start how Andreja followed and understood my verse, which she then interpreted and included in her own visual way of thinking. The result was new networks of meanings and symbols, perhaps even artistic expression that goes beyond literary and visual art.
– Feri Lainšček, quoted in Zdenko Kodrič, Večer (Večernica), 22 Sep 2011

… more than wonderful …
– Zdenko Kodrič, Večer (Večernica), 22 Sep 2011

Her first children’s book embraces the poetry in a sophisticated and artistic manner, and has caught the rhythm of Lainšček’s literary thoughts …
– Liljana Klemenčič, Večer, 4 July 2011

… highly innovative and exploratory …
– Sensa (Za navdih), 3 Feb 2011

The picture book is one of the five books (out of 261 books) nominated for Večernica on 14 June 2011. Večernica is the most prestigious award for youth literature in Slovenia. The results will be announced in Sep 2011.