I can't sleep

Tomorrow is the day I hang my show. I was doing fine the past few days but this morning my body shot up at 4:30. I tried with all of my might to go back to sleep but tossed and turned consumed by thoughts. The show wasn't even my first and foremost thought, I was thinking about my past and different events in my life. I'm not sure why I was thinking of my past?? The bottom line is that I couldn't sleep and I finally gave in at 6 and got up.

I have a lot of faith that my pieces will be great but I am worrying about the wiring now. How do I pull it off so that everything looks good? I kept changing my mind yesterday and now I realize it's a lot like a test.. you should stick with the first answer, it was probably the right one to begin with.

I can't wait to have my place back, my tiny studio has been overrun by my artwork. I am constantly walking over projects, I'm finding tools everywhere. My place is so small to begin with that my art is just consuming every aspect of my life. I'm embarrassed by this big mess.. oh well.

Below are some pictures of some books I have made.

These are just the front cover of three of the four books I'm displaying. These books were all made for particular people in mind and given to them. I like the books to be interactive and every page different. This isn't a typical same page/font style book, it's a artist book. Many times I collect things that remind me of a person or something small that we shared together and then I incorporate it in the book to them. (sense make??) An example of a page in my book looks something like this:

Displaying these books was slightly tricky. I want to show them off but due to their delicate nature I don't want people flipping through the pages. So I had the idea to take old wood wine crates and use them as a shadow box. I stained the boxes and drilled holes for rope to hang them and another hole to wire the lighting in.

One box I took apart with my friend Carter and used a table saw to cut out a groove for the glass to slide in. This was super complicated to do, the wood is pine and easily destroyed if not careful. Taking the box apart was hard and putting it back together was complicated as well. The end result of the groove worked the best though. Two of the boxes will have the glass suspended within it by nails to hold it in place.

Here are the boxes during the staining process.

I haven't uploaded all of my pictures yet.. so this will have to be it for now. I will continue talking about the books later with more pictures of the final product. I do have to say that I'm very pleased with the way these turned out.

I better get to work.. I have a lot to do.