Life is a mess? (¿Es la vida un bardo?)

Is life a mess?
Am I a mess?

This is a strange time. I can’t help seeing precarity everywhere: in jobs, living conditions, expectations, discussions, reasoning, or the lack of it. Precarity in the connection to life.

I like making beautiful, elaborate books, and sometimes, precisely because of that, they end up being expensive.

I feel the times are driving me out of that place.

So I find myself more inclined to make things with few materials, few resources, little pretension. At the same time, I resist abandoning what is beautiful, meaningful, considered, welcoming.

At the crossroads of all that, things are coming out of me from some strange place.

This book doesn’t want to be precarious; it wants to be simple. Accessible. And at the same time elaborate. Elaborate in the decisions, in the reflection, in the invisible work that makes that simplicity possible.

Bilingual: English/Spanish

Catalina Kobelt was born in Lomas de Zamora and now lives in Buenos Aires, Argentina. She started making books for her older daughter. Her creations are unique because she is an autodidact inspired by the world of Bruno Munari. She introduces herself: "I'm in the illustration world, but I'm not an illustrator. I'm in the writing world, but I'm not precisely a writer. I edit, but I'm not strictly an editor. I make books that aren't books."