Sally Blakemore

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Sally Blakemore
BornSally Blakemore
(1947-04-15) April 15, 1947 (age 71)
Odessa, Texas
Residence Santa Fe, New Mexico
Education North Texas State University, University of Texas, Austin
Occupation Book artist, paper engineer, artist
Website artyprojects.com

Sally Blakemore is an award-winning paper engineer and pop-up book packager based in Santa Fe, New Mexico. She is best known for NASCAR Pop-up: A Guide to the Sport, which includes two dozen pop-ups and a 12-second sound chip. Blakemore also heads Arty Projects Studio, a pop-up and novelty book packaging company.

Pop-up book book with moving parts, commonly directed at children

The term pop-up book is often applied to any book with three-dimensional pages, although properly the umbrella term movable book covers pop-ups, transformations, tunnel books, volvelles, flaps, pull-tabs, pop-outs, pull-downs, and more, each of which performs in a different manner. Also included, because they employ the same techniques, are three-dimensional greeting cards.

Contents

Biography

Blakemore has a bachelor’s of art degree in painting and sculpture. [1] She also exhibited with the International Society of Copier Artists. [2]

The International Society of Copier Artists (I.S.C.A) was a non-profit group founded by Louise Neaderland in 1981, intended to promote the work of copier artists and to advocate for the recognition of copier art as a legitimate form. The group is best known for producing The I.S.C.A Quarterly as well as for coordinating exhibitions of xerographic artwork, and the distribution of "The I.S.C.A Newsletter". Women made up the majority of society's membership.

Blakemore is a self-taught paper engineer. "I bought my first pop-up book in 1979, at the age of thirty-three. Tor Lokvig's paper engineering in Haunted House by Jan Pieńkowski totally intrigued me and made me laugh with glee. I studied each mechanic, took it apart, and put it back together again. It was my education in the making." [3]

Jan Michał Pieńkowski is a Polish-British author of children's books—as illustrator, as writer, and as designer of movable books. He has also designed for the theatre. For his contribution as a children's illustrator he was UK nominee in 1982 and again in 2008 for the biennial, international Hans Christian Andersen Award, the highest recognition available to creators of children's books.

As a child, Blakemore, who had dyslexia and synesthesia, could not read at all. According to one interview, she said "I liked to look at the comics and the weather map in the newspaper. It was very humiliating. I could not make the leap from a printed word to the meaning of the word....I could not spell at all and phonetics didn't really make sense....It is so strange that I somehow got into publishing!" [4]

Dyslexia neurological condition, developmental or acquired

Dyslexia, also known as reading disorder, is characterized by trouble with reading despite normal intelligence. Different people are affected to varying degrees. Problems may include difficulties in spelling words, reading quickly, writing words, "sounding out" words in the head, pronouncing words when reading aloud and understanding what one reads. Often these difficulties are first noticed at school. When someone who previously could read loses their ability, it is known as alexia. The difficulties are involuntary and people with this disorder have a normal desire to learn.

Synesthesia neurological condition

Synesthesia is a perceptual phenomenon in which stimulation of one sensory or cognitive pathway leads to automatic, involuntary experiences in a second sensory or cognitive pathway. People who report a lifelong history of such experiences are known as synesthetes.

For nearly two years in the 1990s, Blakemore worked as art director for paper engineer' James Diaz's White Heat Ltd. company, where she learn the basics of pop-up and novelty book production. [5] [6]

As head of Arty Projects Studio, Blakemore once spent a month in Malaysia overseeing the commercial production of the pop-up book Ancient Dwellings. The first print run was 10,000 books and involved 400 women in hand-assembling the book. [7] One of the company's most successful novelty book is Peek-A-Moo!, a lift the flap book by Marie Torres Cimarusti, with over 390,000 copies in print. [8]

In 2010, Blakemore was the keynote speaker at the Movable Book Society Conference in Portland, Oregon. [9]

Selected bibliography

Pop-up books paper engineered by Sally Blakemore:

Pop-up artists' books by Sally Blakemore:

Books illustrated by Sally Blakemore:

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Ib Penick (1930-1998), a native of Denmark, was known as "the creative mind behind the resurgence of pop-up children's books in the 1960s and 1970s. In his career, Penick designed more than 130 children's books, including Star Wars: a Pop-up Book, which sold more than a million copies. Penick related to one reporter, "...there are only about 100 folds and tricks to [his paper engineering] trade. It's like playing a piano. You have only a certain number of keys, but it's the combinations that make the difference."

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References

  1. Bluemel, Nancy Larson; Taylor, Rhonda Harris (2012). Pop-up books: a guide for teachers and librarians. Santa Barbara, Calif.: Libraries Unlimited. pp. 32–33. ISBN   9781591583981.
  2. "Untitle". The ISCA Quarterly. 7 (1). Fall 1988.
  3. "In Conversation with Sally Blakemore". Movable Stationery: quarterly publication of the Movable Book Society. 17 (4): 1. November 2009.
  4. Olmon, Kyle. "In Conversation with Sally Blakemore". www.kyleolmon.com. Retrieved June 11, 2017.
  5. Bluemel, Nancy Larson; Taylor, Rhonda Harris (2012). Pop-up books : a guide for teachers and librarians. Santa Barbara, Calif.: Libraries Unlimited. pp. 32–33. ISBN   9781591583981.
  6. Steinberg, David (September 27, 1998). "Profitable Pop-Ups". Albuquerque Journal: C6.
  7. Zibart, Rosemary (September 12, 2004). "Books That Go Pop". The Santa Fe New Mexican: E-1.
  8. "In Conversation with Sally Blakemore". Movable Stationery. 17 (4): 2. November 2009.
  9. Rubin, Ellen G. K. (November 2010). "Magic and Passion in Portland". Movable Stationery: Newsletter of the Movable Book Society. 18 (4): 18–19.

External sources