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7 Extinction Events ©2006, 7 x 7 x 3 inches. Cover: copper, etched in ferric chloride. Pages: Arches watercolor paper, collage, Golden acrylics. Plastic dinosaur with a book in his chest. I cut the dinosaur with a jeweler’s saw and a mat knife, it's hollow inside. The front cover has an arm and a leg attached with nuts and bolts.This book was inspired by my interest in dinosaurs. I loved them as a kid and am still fascinated by them. On my 10th birthday, my grandparents sent me a telegram saying “Happy Birthday!” and a copy of “All About Dinosaurs” by Roy Chapman Andrews. I was enchanted by the story of finding dinosaur eggs in the Gobi desert. When I decided to replace my long lost copy, I was inspired to make 7 Extinction Events. Somewhere I found a list of about 20 possible causes for extinction events. I chose the ones that seemed possible to illustrate. They are: impact, climate change, volcanism, gamma ray burst, plate tectonics and holocene extinction. Then I added death. That’s my personal death, an event on the magnitude of the extinction of dinosaurs for me. Here is another dinosaur book - Instruction Manual for the End, which sold years ago. There is a blog post about the content here. And one here about being included in Lark's 500 Handmade Books. This book was also included in Humor in Craft from Schiffer, by Brigitte Martin. Scroll down to see the pages.
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Event 1 - Impact.- I got my extinction events from Wikipedia. I limited myself to the ones I could show visually.
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Event 3 - Volcanism.
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These old plastic dinosaurs actually have a lot of nice textural detail on them. I painted it to bring up the texture, to soften the plastic color a bit, and to add a slight hint of metal. The dinosaur is first scrubbed with fine pumice, to clean him and create a little tooth and then painted a dinosaur green. Then he is painted with a darker shade with a hint of copper. The paint is immediately wiped off to bring up the texture.
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Inside front cover. I felt having endpapers was very important. The page on the left is etched copper, the inside of the front cover. The copper has to be carefully cleaned and coated with a resist before etching. The etching process takes at least an hour, I have to keep the etchant moving during that time. After the resist is cleaned off, a patina is applied.
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Title page.
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In Event 2 the stars become falling snow.
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Event 4 - Gamma Ray Burst.
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Plate Tectonics - when land masses move, new predators may come on the scene.
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The Holocene is our present age. Most biologists believe we're in a mass extinction event. To show global warming visually, I chose an SUV, and then added an atomic bomb for drama.
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Event 7 is my own death - the one I take personally. (This one does not appear in Wikipedia.)
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Every serious book has a serious bibliography.
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