After Kris and I had bought the supplies, the next stage was to assemble a mock up of paper using either the markers and/or the paper as collage. We delegated a full day to the activity (October 17, 2013). Kris made the mock up and I assisted. Observing her work through visual issues and materials, I felt like a medical student watching a skilled surgeon, me being safely removed from the field of action! On occasion I handed her an implement, like a trainee nurse! It was fascinating to watch her process of hands on thinking through trial and error of the paper folding and cutting, the size and placement of the flaps and the process of creating suitable images for small children to colour in and draw around the theme of snow play. I was intrigued by her sophisticated sense of flaps as layering. Unlike the early flap books I have been studying, both printed and homemade, she used the flaps in a secondary way. She began with using the flaps as transformative devices meeting over the mid section of an object or animal or person. But in addition she added another layer of visual interaction and play by using the full extent of the strip so that when all the flaps were lifted a landscape or panorama emerged.
I realized she had created a new type of flap book, combining the individual flaps with the later panorama (which I believe did not become a small paper object until the end of the 18th century: http://www.dickbalzer.com/Panoramas_Dioramas.298.0.html.) The samples I have seen, when all opened, become a strip that tells a narrative in an episodic fashion. She created a party scene created by double transformations. This panorama effect is highlighted by the image used on the flyer that my research assistant Laura created.
As a footnote, on November 15 we received the blessed news that we received the grant!