Love my dummy

4-8-13 update:  Well as sands shift and people's words in poem and song (not released or sung and told on back porches) move from story to story, my work morphs from shape to shape in my woodshed. What is a woodshed (used in jazz circles as wood-shedding) to me?  The woodshed is a place (a very magic place I experienced as a child) that my grandfather worked in.  Out of it came wonderful things made of wood, not high craftsmanship but oh-so soulfully made with love and creativity.

I was blessed enough to have crossed the Atlantic with him and my family when I was 14 yrs old. He had fought in the US Marines in WWI and wanted to see Germany as a civilian in peace time. His last name Elsasser (German) came from Alsace (French) or "Elsass" (German).  He had told my aunt years before, the last thing he wanted to do before passing was to see Germany again.  As life can be, he died (right next to me) on a plane going from Germany to England. I am amazed as life plays so much like fiction.  I love the line in "Jungleland" that Springsteen wrote "The poets down here don't write nothing at all, they just stand back and let it all be."  Indeed, I thought I heard Philip Glass on American Masters say to the effect "there is a river underground where the music is and I just have to listen."  I have been thinking about doing a book about my grandfather for a while now,so maybe that river is more clear to me now. It will be interesting for me to balance a plan with my intuition as I tend to work best in non premeditated ways.

I finally got to cross the Atlantic again in March 2013 to visit Matisse and one of many other artists' favorite places to visit. There will be a quiz.

So what about "Tips and Tales" did I digress (lose discipline) or just claim "a stream of confusion" writing style?  I will just have to shoot from the hip if there will be anything here to read, real writing is not my job at this time.  Well "Tips & Tales" has morphed into something called "Break, Enter, Hunt, Gather".  I really wish I had a dummy to bring to Photolucida done, but I do not. I am very pleased with it thus far.  This does not mean as a title, book or body of work I have tossed "Tips & Tales" to the hounds, I have not.

8-15-12 update:  Join me on the back-stretch of a hair pulling, mentally taxing, spiritually rewarding August sweatshop. If you like me are still tweaking your first book this is an excellent opportunity. I have been continuing work on mine but here is a perfect reason to bring it to its next stage of finalization. 9-10-12 Deadline (I will have to check to see if I can send in my Dummy book's updated version or will have to send the first dummy).

Either way, a great chance for people to get their work under important eye balls.  "First books eligible for entry include those produced via print-on-demand." See all details here- Aperture

I thought it might be fun to loosely document my progress and changes on the book, above is a roughed in copy of the front cover I am playing with. Also if you missed the post LOOK3 (editors & my dummy book) . Here are more recent notes and photos for the book. 

The book will be longer and hardbound, here is the current dummy showing all pages.

LOOK3  is what has pushed me harder on this project, I am hoping to get a real publisher interested and there is a ton of good work out there, so I want to bring my design to a more innovative place that engages the viewer in a different way than photo books have in the past.