Q&A

About a week ago, an illustration student contacted me with some questions about my laser cut book Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde.  Unfortunately I get mailer daemons ('mailbox unavailable') whenever I reply to her email, so instead I'm going to include the questions with my answers here on this blog.  Hopefully she'll find them here and they'll be of some use!

I was just wondering if there was a reasoning for the book being a concertina form? 

I think I wanted something that could be as small and compact as a book, and something that could fold out in to a small landscape as well.  I thought that the setting of this story is something that should somehow be incorporated in to how the book looks too.  The concertina format worked well for that.

What have you found this brought to sequence? 

It lets me include the landscape in a way that's more physical than a regular book that's stitched together at the spine, and I really like that dimension to it.  It lets you include all kinds of other things.  Though having said that, the concertina format can also be quite limiting.  Hopefully it makes me a better editor in deciding what to include and what to leave out.  You can't include everything in a story, but it does allow you to accentuate other little details.

And finally, does the form effect how the sequence is read?

I sort of hope that it gets read left to right like a regular book, but it doesn't always happen!  Some people start looking at the book in the middle pages and work their way backwards in the book.  I also designed some of the pages in it so that it could be read like a comic as well, so you'd start by looking at the top left of each page and work your way to the bottom right corner.

The Strange Case of Jekyll and Hyde: Part II

As promised, here are a few production photos from Lung Ha's The Strange Case of Jekyll and Hyde. The combination of stage smoke and coloured lighting really added to the atmosphere and much use was made of the shadows and lighting, which looked incredible on a large set like this:

(this felt like being shrunk and then walking around in your own work!)

"Lung Ha Theatre Company and Drake Music Scotland have together pulled off an atmospheric reworking of RL Stevenson’s, The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde."  **** Edinburgh Guide

"The thematic assists from composer Greg Sinclair and the musicians of Drake Music work extremely well...a fleet and surprising adaptation of a famous story that really belongs to Edinburgh and which Lung Ha Theatre make their own."  **** Edinburgh49

"Together with a team of musicians and an ensemble cast bursting with spirit and passion, Lung Ha present a revitalised and genuinely enthralling tale."

***1/2 The Public Reviews

"Pearson has constructed a fascinating feminist reimagining of Stevenson's story which resets it in Victorian Edinburgh, the original city where politesse becomes a facade for a far darker Old Town underbelly. This leaves plenty of scope for light and shade in Caitlin Skinner's production, which navigates Lung Ha's regular ensemble of some seventeen performers through the big city bustle."  **** Sunday Herald

"This production, directed by Caitlin Skinner, proves that art has no boundaries, not even for the disabled: it is an exemplary piece of theatre" **** TV Bomb

"...featuring an outstanding, lyrical and pensive musical score by Greg Sinclair, played live by a six-piece band. Yet there’s even more than this, in Caitlin Skinner’s fine production." **** The Scotsman

The production goes on to Dundee this Wednesday (25th March) for one night at Dundee Rep.

The Strange Case of Jekyll and Hyde

I'm delighted to announce that Lung Ha's Theatre Company's new production of 'The Strange Case of Jekyll and Hyde' will feature a set design inspired by my laser-cut book.

The show opens this Thursday at the Traverse Theatre in Edinburgh before going on to the Dundee Rep laster this month.

Photos to follow later!

DCA Print Studio Registered Artists Exhibition

One of the laser-cut 'Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde' books will feature in this new exhibition alongside work by other members of the Print Studio at DCA (Dundee Contemporary Arts). 

Expect to see a wide variety of old and new techniques in this showcase of work at the Roseangle Gallery in Dundee...

 

BABE 2013

Photo by Francesca Phillips

The Bristol Artists Book Event (BABE) is finished for another two years.  Last weekend's fair at the Arnolfini in Bristol was fun, inspiring and another great opportunity to see book art by national and international artists.  It was also very busy!  

 

Also, the Jekyll and Hyde laser cut books sold out.   There were a couple of people who expressed interest in buying the last copy of the laser cut book, however I was a bit slow to write down the names and email addresses of those of you who were interested.

If you would like to order a laser cut copy of Jekyll and Hyde, then please contact me at Robsonjk@yahoo.co.uk

New laser cut book

 
New work - all laser cut from black plike paper

The narrative for this is based on Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson, and features dozens of silhouetted characters in a city based on Edinburgh's New Town.

The book isn't yet finished, but below are some photos of the work done from yesterday's session on the laser-cutter... 

All photographs copyright to Tai Kedzierski

shadow play

soft light and hard light combined

 

Books measure 60cm by 15cm