splicing the primer

I’m sure many of you recall those novelty books where the pages were slashed into three horizontal sections, and you could combine the resulting dissected images in entertaining ways.

The Alphabet Primer has something of  the quality of those books, inasmuch that due to the concertina-construction, the pages can be arranged in unexpected and rewarding combinations. Here the head of John Barleycorn has been grafted to the body of a Griffin to create a hybrid  reminiscent of those great winged-bull reliefs from the palace of Ashurnasirpal II at Nimrud. Such accidents make displaying the book a lot of fun.

alphabet soup

Lucy Kempton and Shellie Byatt are to curate the next open exhibition at the Artlog. I shall leave them to explain all. I do hope that some of you may be encouraged to join in the fun.  This is the first  occasion that guest-bloggers have been invited to the Artlog, and I’m confident that the project is in safe hands.

I promised to make a logo  for Alphabet Soup. Of the several  shown here, whichever is preferred will appear at the top of all posts relating to this exhibition, so you’ll always know when Lucy and Shellie are in charge for the day. Without more ado, over to them.

C H-J

 …

Call for Submissions

Following Clive’s alphabet primer, and the success of the maquette exhibition, and suggested first by Shellie, we would like to propose another on-line exhibition on the theme of alphabets, which we are calling Alphabet Soup.  Beyond that description, we specify no other subject theme, so that people can develop their own; we only stipulate that submissions should be executed in black and white ( and tones between…) but with the possibility of using one accent colour per contribution – so for example, if ‘E is for Eve‘. she might be pictured in black and white but holding a red apple.  With so many wonderful colourists among you, we know this will be quite exacting!  However, for that reason it will, we are sure, provide an interesting challenge, and help the final exhibition to hang together more consistently overall. All submissions must include the lettering, so there are opportunities here for creativity on multiple levels. Clive cut all the letters for his Alphabet Primer from paper, and some of you may feel encouraged to try that technique yourselves.

There is no obligation to complete a whole alphabet, though feel free to do so if you wish, but we would suggest a minimum of perhaps five submissions per artist, and if we’re short on contributions for certain letters we might urge people to come up with more.  Equally, we reserve the right to be selective, and won’t necessarily be able to feature everything submitted, but will happily include links and pointers to sites and pages where further work can be seen.
To allow for busy people with many commitments and projects afoot, we are setting the closing date for the end of November, and would plan to show to exhibition at the Artlog in the middle of December.  As usual please leave all comments in the boxes at the foot of each post, but e-mail enquiries and submissions should be sent direct to Lucy at : lucy-dot-kmptn-at- gmail-dot-com
So, start coming up with ingredients for Alphabet Soup for Christmas!
Lucy Kempton and Shellie Byatt