Artist book project:

It has occurred to me that my faithful readers, who knew so much and saw so many of my printmaking projects from last semester, have no clue what I have been up to in that class this term.

I still have printmaking class on Saturday mornings, and this semester there are about 10 more Americans in it -- it is a really popular class, not just me and Cathy and Lauren sometimes and Dasha, the one Russian girl, anymore. But as the new kids learn the techniques from Yuri (and it is always Yuri this semester, Pyoter makes a point to never come in) that we went through last year, Cathy and I get to work on our own on our individual projects which are artist books using printmaking techniques....

Artist books are handmade books of prints, limited in quantity, usually a very small edition of maybe only three to five, that tell a story or have a theme. For example, Cathy is going to make a cook book of monotype prints of recipes from chaotic times in her life. My idea started out as sort of an encyclopedia of family members for Agnes, but evolved into something quite different....

In the style of some women photographers who I adore -- Cindy Sherman, Sophie Calle and Nikki Lee -- I decided to take on fictional identities and basically play dress up in my house for hours while taking mug shots of myself as different characters. I came up with twenty-two different people, and now am in the process of creating their histories and identities so I can make criminal, secret files of their lives to compile into my book.

I'm excited about this project, and at least having a shitload of fun doing it, and when I talked to Yuri about it on Saturday, he thought it would be great if I showed the photos to people and got their opinions on what kinds of people these characters are, maybe how old they are, their genders, their ages, their professions, what crimes they could possibly be accused of committing.... so, I thought, what forum better to show a bunch of people a bunch of photos than my blog?

So, here I present to you the twenty-two characters I came up with. I would love to hear what you all think of these people, which one you think could be a serial killer, which one would be accused of bank fraud, if you think one is a prostitute or a junkie or a professor.... whatever weird shit first comes to mind, I want to hear it. So let me know -- leave comments, or send me along an email response.

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