Altered Book "Doors"

This month I received two books for the current Round Robin (from the ABEurope Group - Yahoo Groups) to work in. First on the list was Maijkens book: Doors.

I was thinking of making layers of doors in her spread, so when you open a door, a new one would appear which you will have to open, only to find another door.
I browsed through my collection of photographs that I took of doors (and windows) in France, Norway, UK and Spain (yes, I have a complete folder dedicated to those pictures) and started to combine some of them in Photoshop.
Viewing the results, I changed my mind and printed out the digital collages. I blended the images in the book with paint and added stamped words.

The book has arrived in Germany now and an Italian and Amercain artist will work in the book before it leaves for England and Scotland. In a few months it will be back in Danmark!

Intruiging Novel

"Families have secrets they hide even from themselves."

It is my habit to read good books very quickly, sometimes ignoring all my chores to read the book within a day or so.
The book I just finished reading: 'The Memory Keeper's Daughter' , written by Kim Edwards, had just the opposite effect. The story is so fascinating and the way the lives of the characters are described is so well done that after each chapter I had to lie down the book and try to absorb all that I had read. I felt like I was becoming really involved with the book's characters.

The book unfolds the lives of one family affected by one big secret, even without knowing about this secret for years.

The author knows very well how to describe the feelings, thoughts and emotions of the people. Showing that by keeping a secret, one influences his life and that of those around him without even realising the impact.

I bought this book while we were on a city trip to Stavanger, Norway, last August. My husband had won the trip as a prize. Since we had several days to spend in that little town, and because I get bored easily, we bought some English books that I found in a bookstore.

Stavanger: the old part of the town.

But it wasn't until a few weeks ago that I picked up this book to read. Soon I was mesmerised by the author's art of storytelling. This book really draws you into the story of the two families and the secret that shapes the lives of each individual.

This is the cover text on the back:

"It should have been an ordinary birth, the start of
an ordinary happy family. But the night Dr. David
Henry delivers his wife's twins is a night that will
haunt five lives for ever.

"For though David's son is a healthy boy, his daughter
has Down's syndrome. And, in a shocking act of
betrayal whose concequenses only time will reveal,
he tells his wife their daughter died while secretly
entrusting her care to a nurse.

"As grief quietly tears apart David's family, so a
little girl must make her own way in the world
as best she can."

My favorite books are "The Mermaid Chair" by Sue Monk Kidd, "Something Migh Happen" by Julie Myerson and the books of author Barbara Ewing. Seems that this book will join the ranks of this list!

Three Wise Owls

Yesterday I uploaded this image that I made from my photographs to Ephotozine.com and it was awarded with one of the EPZ awards: the HC!
Quite an honour! This is only the third HC I received on the site for my photography (and digital manipulation).

The first HC I received was back in 2006 when I mainly photographed flowers with a macro lens.
The second HC was for my (reworked) version of the waterfalls of the Buachaille Etive Mor (Glencoe, Scotland). It was only after removing some branches that the picture was awarded the HC...
It took quite a while to clone away the branches in Photoshop without any traces. You can find that picture in my blog in the entry of 1 december 2008:
http://exploringart.blogspot.com/2008_12_01_archive.html
Scroll down the page to view the picture.

So these owls have received my third HC award. Now I even have to work harder to achieve the Premier Award, the highest award on the site. It might take a couple of years or so to achieve that top award!