Reflections

Dimensions of each:

10.75 cm by 13.85 cm

Book 1 - Image

With this book, I wanted the fading of the puzzle pieces to represent the fading of memory and how the memory of childhood events fade over time. From page to page, the pieces get dimmer and then on the page after, turn to black and white. On the final page, I keep a bit of colour because although I do not recall the memory of having that picture taken, the feeling of nostalgia will always linger. 

I had to recreate this book because my binding was crooked.

 

Book 2 - Text

The content of this book speaks to my relationship with my brother. The first and last pages contain word clouds with 18 unique words each. The first page contains the list of words that I would used to describe our relationship. The last page contains the words that my brother came up with. Essentially, the larger the word, the more relevant it is to our relationship. For the content in between, each page contains a quote from one of the many shows we have watched together from childhood until present time. Each of them in some way speak to our relationship whether they are goofy, serious, or come from a character that reminds me of him. The goal was to give no context to the reader as they will have to make their own sense of the content, while it would otherwise be easy to understand to my brother and I. 

 

Book 3 - Image & Text 

My third book took the longest to create and was the hardest to conceptualize. I first created the images in Procreate to illustrate the different stages of life that we have gone through being: young childhood, middle childhood, pre-adolescence, adolescence, and adulthood. In young childhood, we were full of love for each other and the world, playing with toys and video games. In middle childhood, we were very similar and did many activities together. Although we're 15 months apart, everyone always thought we were twins. Pre-adolescence was a tough period in our lives as it was when I got critically ill with kidney problems. I was in and out of the hospital with our parents split between Medicine Hat and Calgary taking care of us. My brother was incredible and understanding through the whole thing as he didn't have our mom with him most of the time. When I required both of my parents attention, he would stay with family friends for weeks at a time. Through it all, our bond remained. In adolescence, our interests started to change more and we had our own hobbies. It was a time of self-exploration and find ourselves as the teenage years often are. Finally, the last image brings us to present day as we live in different cities attending different institutions. He has now gotten a job where we will be separated for the next 16 months which is difficult as we have always come back to the same city in the summer. 

For the text that's associated with words, I originally created a collection of free writings that I thought about when making the images, but in the end, I couldn't figure out what I wanted to say with them and they came out angrier and sadder than I wanted to present to those reading it; a reflection of my mental state throughout this semester. 

For the binding, I was disapointed to run out of string material 

Overall -

I struggled with printing mistakes throughout this process. No matter how I fixed my dimensions, they all ended up printing smaller than I wanted, even when selecting borderless or full bleed options. In the end, I printed my books at the university and the low quality printer paper was not ideal for making a nice looking book. There are printing mistakes that are evident on the images in the image and text book.