Growing Up in Elfland

[Nicole Silvester]

Way back in 1992, when I was attending the University of Victoria's Creative Writing program, I had an assignment for second year Fiction to make a book. The working definition of "book" we were given was simply a series of sheets somehow attached together. Even "sheets" didn't have to be taken literally. Alas, back then I had a pretty narrow concept of what a book was (I suppose I kind of still do, in some ways).

Originally, I had grand plans to do a properly bound book sewn on tapes with linocuts and a fore-edge painting. Unfortunately, I'd never actually bound a book before. (Not counting a little short story I hand-wrote and tied together with string which, if I ever find it in my stuff that's in storage, I will photograph and post here, too.)

I got as far as sewing some of the sections together, using bias tape for tapes, when I realized that I simply couldn't do what I wanted to in the amount of time given. If I could even do it at all. So instead I mounted as many of my old fantasy drawings on posterboard as I could find and hand-wrote out some of my poems to go with them. Then I devised a binding with badly-cut matte board, punched holes, and a rainbow of ribbons. It's hard to turn the pages, so I had to lace the ribbons fairly loosely.

Anyway, check my "Growing Up in Elfland" photo album for the first batch of images. I photographed the whole thing from start to finish, and I'll add the rest of the photos as soon as I finish tweaking them.