Whatever the bird is, is perfect in the bird
During the latter part of 2016 Helen and artist Katharine Nix completed the large task of completing the Bird project. The book was named Whatever the bird is, is perfect in the bird. This comes from a quote from the poem “Birds” by Judith Wright. Katharine and Judith were friends. The book was editioned to 4 copies. One copy has sold to the National Library of Australia. One has been shown at the Noosa Regional Gallery in Noosa over the summer in 2016 and 2017. And now the book has been accepted to be shown at the Manly Library Artist’s Book Award in Manly, New South Wales for 2017.
The book is a concertina structure with two layers of matt board with a rectangle cut in the centre, and a handmade water marked natural plant fibre page fixed between the two. Each page has a list of birds watermarked into the page, with a soft image of a bird from each of the lists centrally printed onto the page. The concertina needs to stand to allow the light to penetrate the hand made papers so the text is able to be early read with the light pouring through. Judith Wright’s poem “ Birds” is reproduced with permission of the publishers and the family of Judith Wright. Each hand made paper page is a slightly different colour, and the explanation for the selected plants used for each page is listed in the colophon at the end of the book.