Dr Helen Douglas was invited by Siganto Foundation at SLQ (State Library of Queensland) in March 2017. Her lecture and two masterclasses were very inspiring.
I have been writing in spiral for a year then: stories, personal notes or just repetitive single words about refugees in general, but also people I met, visiting the Brisbane Detention Centre. This daily writing represented a bit like a mantra practice to alleviate anger and sadness accumulated by these experiences. I thought to take each spiral and make a book, but in a much more conventional way.
I remember a morning, during the masterclass, someone asked me how I was going. Everybody had a beautiful object already under control and in the making, while I was still experimenting with glue, scissors, strings with the idea of getting a tridimensional object, ultimately making a spiral. I was frustrated and felt quite negative about finding any kind of results! That’s where Helen’s teaching skill pushed me from an uncomfortable unknown zone to go through my process without judgment. I ended up to make a mock up, and later, reworked the graphics, and completed the first sculpture-accordion book at the very beginning of my residency at Villa Waldberta.
Below some moments of the masterclasses, process towards finding how to make the sculpture-accordion book. At that stage, I didn’t know yet I was going to make other books using this origami-binding technique that I have developed. Please read the post about my trip in Argentina later that year.
