Sally Blakemore is a paper engineer and
pop-up book
The term pop-up book is often applied to any book with three-dimensional pages, although it is properly the umbrella term for movable book, pop-ups, tunnel books, transformations, volvelles, flaps, pull-tabs, pop-outs, pull-downs, and more, each ...
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.
Biography
Blakemore has a bachelor’s of art degree in painting and sculpture. She also exhibited with the
International Society of Copier Artists
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 photocopier artists who used the copier as a camera with which to scan and print original and experi ...
.
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
Jan Michał Pieńkowski (8 August 1936 – 19 February 2022) was a Polish-born British author of children's books—as illustrator, as writer, and as designer of movable books. He is best known for illustrating the ''Meg and Mog'' picture book ...
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."
As a child, Blakemore, who had
dyslexia
Dyslexia, also known until the 1960s as word blindness, is a disorder characterized by reading below the expected level for one's age. Different people are affected to different degrees. Problems may include difficulties in spelling words, r ...
and
synesthesia
Synesthesia (American English) or synaesthesia (British English) is a perceptual phenomenon in which stimulation of one sensory or cognitive pathway leads to involuntary experiences in a second sensory or cognitive pathway. People who re ...
, 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!"
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.
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. 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.
In 2010, Blakemore was the keynote speaker at the
Movable Book Society The Movable Book Society (MBS) is a nonprofit organization which provides a forum for artists, book sellers, book producers, collectors, curators, and others to share enthusiasm and exchange information about pop-up and movable books. The Society h ...
Conference in Portland, Oregon.
Selected bibliography
Pop-up books paper engineered by Sally Blakemore:
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Pop-up artists' books by Sally Blakemore:
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Books illustrated by Sally Blakemore:
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References
External sources
* Official Sally Blakemore Website http://www.artyprojects.com/
* How to Make a Pop-up Book (2016 educational video) narrated by Blakemore. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bHsmfGhBhQM
* Paper Play (2016 video) narrated by Blakemore. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ju_1Xl5igsk
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Living people
American women artists
Pop-up book artists
Artists from Santa Fe, New Mexico
1947 births
21st-century American women