In January I spent a week studying with Laurie Doctor in her online workshop: Speak To Me From Everywhere.

Before the week began, I received instructions to designate a sacred work space—a temenos—for my practice. The Greek word refers to a sanctuary, a sacred space. The space could be very simple or elaborate, but the temenos needed to be intentional—a sanctified space where I could commit to daily practice as a maker. Screens and anything that beeped were left upstairs—distractions eliminated!

During the week, we focussed on four topics: scale, value, movement, and pattern. Each day, Laurie shared poetry to inspire, exercises to build on concepts, and techniques to practice. Every day, I was in the studio—in the sanctuary of my temenos—pondering and practicing.

Using full sheets of Arches Text Laid, I put down marks using pens, pencils, and brushes—even a mussel shell. I mixed a number of watercolours from a limited palette: alizarin crimson, indigo, and new gamboge. I recently learned that alizarin crimson is fugitive, so I’ve since replaced the colour with Daniel Smith’s more reliable Permanent Alizarin Crimson.

Once the Text Laid sheets were dry, they were torn down to journal size pages for binding into a multi-signature book.

Sequencing the pages into a pleasing arrangement took longer than anticipated—weeks! As the pages were examined and folded into folios, they were then nested to create signatures. Placed in various configurations, images and texts on facing pages began to relate to one another. Many pages called for enhancements—marks here and texts there.

Eventually the signatures spoke to one another and a theme emerged. In an earlier blog post titled Practice, I shared the pencil lettering that was developed for section headings for the four seasons theme. The completed spreads featuring those titles are seen here with additional sample spreads. Speak to Me grew exponentially to 64 pages!

Winter

Spring

Summer

Fall