Walking Away

I really enjoyed designing and making 'Craving', which has now sold out, so I wanted to make another similar book using the same concertina style.

I love making the drips of ink on the paper and watching them roll down to form the streaks of colour.

Also like 'Craving', the text is quite powerful. It's always interesting to see viewers responses to the texts I write. (I have had two people cry openly.) I like to share some insights into my inspiration and processes, but sometimes when people connect so readily, the text speaks for itself.

'Walking Away' Front cover

Concertina book

6 x 54cm

'Walking Away' 

'Walking Away' Inside

the birds

'the birds' is a poem of extracted text from Christie Lefteri's novel 'Songbirds'.

The story centres on two people who are connected by the fragility of life. It's a beautiful story of love and hope, and partly focusses on the illegal trapping, killing and trade of songbirds. It was the sadness and thought provoking descriptions of trapping birds that inspired me to write the poem.

The postcard began with a black and white tinted photograph looking up into a winter tree canopy. This, and the poem was inkjet printed onto 270gsm paper. I then used India ink, pen and gold leaf to create the feathers. 

The choice of gold leaf is a metaphor for the beauty of songbirds both in appearance and song, with the darkening feathers representing their fate in the mist nets. The bare, faded grey branches allude to the birds' loss of freedom and life and suggest a sense of entrapment. 

'the birds' is an edition of nine, with the first postcard belonging to the 'In Praise of Birds' World Book Night 2024 Postcard Project.

'the birds' Postcard by Clare Rogers 2024

Extracted text from

Lefteri, Christy. Songbirds. (London: Manilla Press, 2022)