The Penland Experience - Part 3

I finally managed to take photos of the books I made at Penland, and here are some of those images.

I'd worked only briefly with acrylic paint in the past, so I was looking forward (although with a bit of trepidation), to my two-week Book Arts workshop at Penland, where we were going to paint papers for our books. I wasn't disappointed. We spent days and days painting layers of paint on both sides of large sheets of Arches Cover. We used various techniques and tools to create texture with each new layer. We cut up the papers and used them as pages for the books we made. Altogether, we made about a half-dozen books, each a different structure, each a little more complex than the last.

We supplemented this with other processes: printmaking (making collagraphs on an etching press), carving rubber stamps for mark-making, and using handwriting as graphic imagery. I loved it all. I loved it and I was anxious about it. "Am I doing it right?," I kept wondering. After a while, I stopped wondering. I still wasn't sure, but I'd decided to treat what I was doing as an experiment. After all, if you can't experiment during a workshop, when can you?

So though perfectionism and I are on a first-name basis, I told myself that wanting to achieve perfection at something that others -- notably, our instructor, Laura Wait --had been doing for years was just a titch overambitious. The self-talk helped, and there's something about Penland itself that encourages you to take risks and try new things.

I didn't lose all my fear when I was in the studio (fear of failure, of embarrassment, of whatever else scares us when we feel vulnerable), but what was left was healthy. It was the kind of fear that pushes you to create even though you're not sure of the outcome. And since by nature and habit I really like to know the outcome in advance, managing to live with the ambiguity was a big deal.

I read somewhere today that, in art, the most important thing is to start, and the second most important thing is to finish, and that if you do those two things, everything else will take care of itself. In a fundamental way, that's what places like Penland give you: a start and a finish. And that makes the next time all that much easier.

More to come.

Drum leaf binding (developed by Tim Ely) - the book is approximately 15" high by 3 1/2" wide.

The first two-page spread from the book. We worked with signs and symbols.
I focused on the triangle and the letter 'M'

A close-up of another of the spreads from the book

We overpainted mylar that we'd used underneath our pages as we painted.

A two-page spread from another book

A head-on view of the pages of another book

Another One Bites the Dust

Peter Zane, the book editor of the Raleigh News and Observer for the past decade, tells us in his goodbye column that he's moving to a post as the paper's "ideas writer." He is hopeful (but not optimistic) that the paper will resurrect its book column. This is the latest entry in the decimation of book coverage at various newspapers around the country, including those in Atlanta, Dallas, Orlando, Cleveland, Los Angeles and Chicago. Zane calls it a "literary St. Valentine's Day massacre." I've commented on this before, including here and here. Clicking the National Book Critics Circle Campaign to Save Book Reviewing button on the left column of this site will tell you how you can get involved.

Zane writes:

"...while the rest of the paper reports the news of the day, we [the book review writers] carry news of the spirit...Book reviews are an integral part of the journalistic mission: They bring new information to light, scrutinize ideas shaping our culture, foster debate and encourage people to read -- not only books but magazines, journals ... and newspapers. When newspapers diminish books coverage, they diminish themselves."

The Pumpkins Are Coming, The Pumpkins Are Coming!

What does this post have to do with books? Not a thing, but then, BookGirl reserves the right to write about other things that catch her fancy. Today it's the Smashing Pumpkins coming to Asheville.

The re-united alt-rockers are doing a nine-day gig at The Orange Peel as part of their U.S. comeback tour. Their promoter said that the Pumpkins were interested in doing an East Coast "residency" -- a series of shows in one place -- and asked for an Asheville venue. I'm not a big Smashing Pumpkins fan, but even if I were, the tickets were sold out in less than five minutes, so it's just as well.

The tickets originally sold for $20 (a price set by the band -- nice to see that in these days of wildly overpriced music-act tickets, the Pumpkins are being generous in their pricing. Unfortunately, they're already being scalped on the Internet: $890 at TicketsNow.com as of this morning). Fifty percent of the tickets sold outside the state, with sales in NY, DC, Massachusetts, Indiana, and Canada.

That's more than 8,000 people coming in over the course of nine days. Maybe they'll buy some books at Malaprop's while they here, where they can order the only existing biography of the band: Smashing Pumpkins: Tales of a Scorched Earth. Ha! There's my book tie-in!

The Pumpkins at a recent concert in Paris:

Words, Words, Words

I started reading the major English newspapers during my tenure at my two former BLFs (Big Law Firms), both of whom had London offices (I have a particular affection for arts and books coverage in The Guardian and its blogs). I also scan Canada's newspapers from time to time. On any given day there's usually something of particular interest to BookGirl in one of these, so keep that in mind when you're deciding whether it would be of interest to you -- but, of course, you wouldn't be reading BookGirl unless you shared at least a little of her less-than-mass-market pasttimes.

Today's entry is an article from Canada's Globe and Mail: Vocabulary: Are We Losing Our Lexicon? There are few things that BookGirl likes more than words and language -- and books, of course, are simply a variation on the theme -- so this story of the battle between the linguists and the logophiles was just my cup of tea/coffee this morning. Not because I have a large vocabulary (I don't, a fact I constantly bemoan), but because I love to see and hear words used well, and precisely, and think that people who care enough about words to argue about them are pretty cool.

Here's the subtitle of the story:

"With the Lord of Loquacity in Chicago and schools playing down language to level the playing field, is the mind-expanding power of a well-stocked vocabulary becoming a thing of the past?"

Now, tell the truth, aren't you just dying to read this?

Collecting Journals

I think more about journals now than I ever have. The reason, mostly, is a Creative Journaling class I took at BookWorks with textile artist -- and journal queen -- Heather Allen Swarttouw. I wrote about it here. And while blogs are a form of journal, they're nowhere near as deliciously tactile as the three-dimensional variety.

There's an item and a photo in a recent post in Notebookism that reminded me of how much I've enjoyed buying journals over the years. I now make many of my own, but it doesn't diminish the pleasure of finding just the right journal, and like the author of the post, I particularly like to bring back journals from places in which I've traveled. My favorite to date (I guess this means I'll have to take a photo of it and post it here sometime soon) is a dark leather journal from Venice, with a small piece of round millefiori glass set into its cover. The endpapers are a subtle patterned paper, and each creamy white page has small illustrations of Venice across the top.

And here's a different take on journals (and the people who fear them!) from artist Kelly Kilmer.

Susan

I miss my friend Susan, whom I was fortunate to have as a colleague for several years during my tenure at BLF (Big Law Firm). She's extremely bright and highly capable, not to mention stylish, witty, and generous... well, you get the picture. But to me, one of her finest qualities is her silliness. Hands down. What a joy, working as hard as we were, to allow ourselves the luxury of total and abject silliness from time to time.

Naturally, we were judicious. Because we worked in different cities on the East Coast, we usually reserved our alter agos for nights on the road when we found ourselves in the same town at the same time. There's no point in trying to describe our dialogue or exploits. They were what my husband calls a "Be There" experience. And, in fact, they probably weren't funny to anyone but us.

Susan and I were/are particularly silly about our dogs. She was goofy about her dogs before I was, since my dog, Twiggy, didn't join our family until two years ago. I caught up quickly. Susan has two delightful standard poodles and I have an adorable Shih Tzu (this isn't hyperbole, it's the honest truth). Susan's dogs emulate her curly 'do ("coif" as Susan might say). My 'do and Twiggy's look more alike the longer we co-habitate.

Susan's latest car is a bright red MINI Cooper convertible-- if ever a car had her name on it, it's this one (well, actually, it does have her name on it, but that's another story). Those are the two pups with her -- one riding shotgun, the other in the rumble seat. We don't talk very often these days, but getting this photo reminded me of how much I miss her.

Veddddy In-ter-est-ing

My thanks to my friend, Mary, who posted a link to Personal DNA, an online personality test, on her blog. Having worked all through college as an assistant to the director of my college's Psychological Testing Service, I have a predictable attraction to tests that profess to tell me what I already know.

The test took me about 35 minutes to complete. I'd say it was about 80% accurate, and I think I understand how the 20% discrepancy came about. The category they assigned me is "Faithful Visionary," which to me sounds a bit like a description of a Moonie (Mary's "Benevolent Architect" sounds much more -- well -- benevolent).

One interesting thing was my comparative score on one of the qualities the test measures: "femininity." Relative to the 30,000 other test-takers that Personal DNA claims to have on file, I registered a paltry score of 4 , which means that 96% of the other (I assume) females that took the test had higher showings in that category. I have only my recollection of the types of questions and the way I answered them to go by, but I suspect that the questions likely equated "femininity" with qualities that society has traditionally associated with women -- for example, putting others' concerns before their own (a question I specifically recall from the test) -- qualities that I, partly by choice and partly by circumstance, possess not at all or to a lesser degree than this historical model of womanhood.

The other way to look at this, of course, is that 96% of the women who took this test have these qualities, irrespective of whether there's gender bias in the questions, and that I'm way out of step with my fellow women (or at least the ones who took this test). BookGirl isn't going to lose any sleep over this -- gee, I almost said that BookGirl wasn't going to worry her pretty little head over it, but that would have been wrong.

If like me, you enjoy this kind of thing, take the test. Many of the questions are thought-provoking, and that's always a good thing.

Each Day Is a Different One

There's little I enjoy more than looking out the windows of our bright front room toward the mountains in the distance. Usually there's at least one squirrel enjoying the kernels of corn that fall on the deck from the birdfeeders. Sometimes Twiggy, who usually prefers to see the world comfortably from his spot on the kitchen window seat, moseys outside too.

I read this quote on Misty Mawn's blog site this morning. How easy it is, isn't it, to forget something this simple yet so true?

"You can become blind by seeing each day as a similar one. Each day is a different one, each day brings a miracle of its own. It's just a matter of paying attention to this miracle." ~ Paulo Coelho

The Penland Experience - Part 2

I'm still processing (what a clinical word that is!) my two-week book arts workshop at Penland. I signed up for the course because I wanted to explore content in bookmaking. I've been taking bookbinding classes for just over a year now, and I've concentrated on book structures. It seemed the way to lay a foundation in book arts, to build a vocabulary and establish a context. If you know me, it isn't news that I tend to be linear and incremental in my approach to things. So it seems that I've intuitively been developing a personal book arts curriculum over the course of the past year.

From the time I took my first book arts class -- at the John C. Campbell Folk School during a week's vacation more than two years ago -- I've been interested in the book as a whole, both form and content. I knew virtually nothing about artists' books at the time, and the more I learned, the more fascinating I found the concept and the books themselves.

It's too early to know how my own style will evolve. I love language too much to exclude words, so text will play a part. But what else? Who knows? I'm clearly attracted to paint and color and abstract forms. Art & Soul was a way to did my toe in this pool, in ways unrelated to book arts. The Penland workshop was a perfect next step, an opportunity to work on new book structures, but with an equal focus on creating imagery and working with paint.

Our instructor, book artist Laura Wait, has a bold, vivid style that attracted me to her work and to the class. She has a background in conservation, too, so she made it clear first thing that "books have to work!" In other words, technique matters. I knew at that point that I'd come to the right place.

More to come.

Laura Wait with one of her artists' books

Detail from another of Laura's books

The Penland Experience

The specifics of my Book Arts workshop aside, my two weeks at Penland were like nothing I've experienced. The environment is designed to make the work the entire focus. The accommodations are spartan, there's no television or radio, meals are short, and the campus is pretty much in the middle of nowhere. So the intensity is built in, which is all to the better. And because everyone is equally absorbed, you feel a kinship with all the perfect strangers that you meet and take meals with and run into at the coffeeshop. Nobody cares how you're dressed or what you do in your "real" life, unless you're an artist. That's worth talking about. "How's your class going?" is the main question at meals. Almost always, it's followed by a comment about how tasty the (french toast, pasta, salad, pesto grilled cheese sandwich) is and how impossible it is that you're still eating three such squares every day.

The view from the Pines dining hall tells you that you're in the country, and the llamas in the field remind you that you're at Penland. For a little solitary R&R I headed to the Craft House porch and the coffee house directly downstairs.

While I was there, PBS aired a three-part series, Craft in America, the first nationally-broadcast series on contemporary craft in the U.S. Penland was featured in the third installment, Community.

More to come soon. Here are a few photos to tide you over.

A great photo by Mary, one of the students in the Book Arts class,
of the view from the Craft House.

Similar view from the Craft House in the evening.
The grass looks like ice, doesn't it?

Part of the ceramic "garden"

A resident llama -- another great shot by Mary

Why It's Foolish for Newspapers to Dump Book Review Sections

By now you've figured out that I'm concerned over the elimination of book criticism at several major metropolitan newspapers. As usual, I direct you to the National Book Critics Circle Campaign to Save Book Reviewing series. Here's background info and how to get involved, if you're so inclined. Of course, NBCC members have a vested interest, since they want to protect their livelihoods, but that doesn't diminish the value of the cause. If you're a Bookie, Critical Mass, the blog of the NBCC Board of Directors, is worth visiting from time to time. Currently, they're running a series of 'so-and-so'-on-what-to-read-this-summer columns.

Mark Bowden, a national correspondent for The Atlantic magazine, in a recent article in the Philadelphia Inquirer, says that there's still a place for newspapers (gee, that makes at least two of us!).

"Pictures and sound are terrific and cannot be beaten when capturing a live breaking news event, but for conveying large amounts of nuanced information, for investigation and analysis, nothing beats, or ever will beat, the written word. I have always believed that when all the superfluous reasons for buying newspapers have been stripped away, what will remain are readers.

"Which is why it is a mistake for newspapers, including this one, to do away with such things as book review sections and Sunday magazines. Our core audience is educated, well-informed, curious and generally smarter than we are - about more than a few things. Essays about books and ideas, reviews of film, theater, art and television - these are far more important for newspapers today than they ever were in the past."

Women in Art

Music Videos Like They Used to Make

I've just returned from an intense (in a good way) two-week workshop in book arts at Penland. I'll be writing about it after a brief recovery period (mostly, I plan to stare into space for a couple of days). In the meantime, here's an inventive music video for "Ankle Injuries," a song by the British band Fujiya & Miyagi. Visually, its style is part "Sledgehammer" by Peter Gabriel and part "Fell In Love With a Girl" by the White Stripes. A bit of fun eye candy for your day.



An amusing (at least to me) side note: The band identifies its members as as "Steve Lewis (Fujiya), David Best (Miyagi), and Matt Hainsby (ampersand). "

Its influences, according to its MySpace page, range from Captain Beefheart, Serge Gainsbourg, and Roxy Music to Talking Heads, Brian Eno, Kraftwerk, and Dexys Midnight Runners.

Why Should I Care What You Think?

Arts criticism has been a topic of conversation in the media recently. Richard Schickel, film critic for Time, wrote in the Los Angeles Times that expressing an opinion does not rate as criticism. Schickel was reacting to a New York Times article that intimated that shrinking book review coverage at major newspapers might not be such a terrible thing. The Times article noted that bloggers were filling the void; that one blogger, in fact, had written 95 book reviews last year on his blog; and envisioned a "more democratic literary landscape where anyone can comment on books." This made Schickel nearly apopletic. "Criticism [you can hear him trying to contain himself]...is not a democratic activity." Everyone's entitled to an opinion about a book or a movie, but that doesn't make you a certified book or film critic. Check.

BookDaddy's Jerome Weeks (former book and theater critic, etc., etc.), agrees with Schickel that opinion does not criticism make, and thinks that "much of what passes for literary criticism on the web is simply opinion, often not very enlightening opinion, unsubstantiated and poorly argued." He's more interested, 'though, on how critics derive their authority and credibility (and he believes that good criticism needn't exclude bloggers).

"...the critic earns his authority by using his knowledge, his rhetorical skills, his humor, his personal insights, maturity, modesty, bravura cleverness -- whatever it takes, in this particular instance, to convince us not only that he's right but that he's worth listening to. These are the only things that matter with a critic. Just as with a teacher, it's all about the classroom (and how he handles the homework), with a critic, it's all about what's on the page. If he can't do that, all the rest is meaningless.

"What does one need to be a critic? A critic worth listening to? He needs to have experienced a lot of the art form -- read a lot of books, seen a lot of plays. He needs to have thought about them a lot. And he needs to be able to express those thoughts vividly, lucidly, persuasively. And if he works for a newspaper, quickly, briefly and repeatedly.

"Of course, a critic may gain a cumulative authority. We're won over by one review, he turned out to be right about that sitcom. So we pick up his next review to find out what he says now. This is why it's important for newspapers and magazines to have regular critics [my emphasis]: They gain authority over time, and we get to know their sensibilities, just as we know our friends'. This, I believe, is essentially what people mean when they tell critics the other line we so often hear: I don't agree with everything you say, but .... and what they leave unsaid (although sometimes, they do say it) is that I always read your work/always enjoy reading your work/always learn something from reading your work.

"This also why the rise of the "five star" or "thumbs up/thumbs down" review mechanism, the Entertainment Weekly blurb review, the blogger's bitchy dismissal have all been pernicious developments in reviewing. In these instances, the reduce the process, they crudify it. It is just an opinion, so much amusing confetti, less than a book jacket blurb or those excited movie ad exclamations from some radio or TV (or increasingly, internet) hack you've never heard of. One can learn nothing from these so-called reviews except, perhaps at best, the cleverness of the writer in feeding the worst aspects of the corporate marketing machinery, the Zippy-the-Pinhead attention span of the web."

Major Check.

If any of this inspires you to get involved in saving book reviews, you can get the scoop at the National Book Critics Circle Campaign-to-Save-Book-Reviewing blog.

But it's not just book reviewers (and their audiences) who are getting the shaft. At the Atlanta Journal Constitution, a reorganization of staff has eliminated most positions for arts critics and editors. AJC is eliminating, among others, and in addition to that of its book editor, the posts now held by its classical music critic and its visual arts critic. Approximately 40 senior staffers, including its 30-year film critic veteran, have accepted buyout offers from the paper. And in Florida, the South Florida Sun-Sentinel will no longer be running in-house movie reviews and has thus re-assigned its film critic.

Secret Belgian Binding Books (Say That Really Fast Five Times In a Row)

A quick post to accompany the photo of the books we finished in the Secret Belgian Binding class at BookWorks (I wrote about it earlier here). It's a lovely binding with real flair. It's not a difficult binding, but it's awkward for a first-timer, mainly because you need to manage the entire text block as you're sewing through the threads in the text block while keeping the covers and spine in the correct position (the spine is held in place only by the threads passing above and below it). It's a bit of a juggling act that makes you wish you had a third hand, but it's worth the effort.

In planning to make this book, it's useful to remember that the sewing process is in two stages, since you first have to sew your text block (we did that in week two of the three-week class), then sew the text block into the covers. This binding lets you play with paper, too, since you can use up to three different coordinating or complementary papers: one paper for the outer covers, another for the inside of the covers, and a third for the spine. And the thread, which plays a fairly major role in the binding, can complement or contrast with the spine and cover papers. One of our students used a combination of papers with red, white and black for covers and spine, then sewed with yellow thread, which gave her book a particularly vibrant, modern look.

Creative Journaling

I'm coming to the end of a class I've been taking at BookWorks: Creative Journaling. It's less a class about keeping a journal than it is about being aware of the types of information that are important to you and making sure that the information stays accesssible so that you can find it when you need it. That usually means creating a variety of journals, each with a specific purpose. And it means thinking hard about what you'll house in the journal, so that the journal serves its content well.

The students are encouraged to address our "relationship to the journal," as our instructor (textile artist Heather Allen-Swarttouw) puts it, and deal with issues we've had with journals over time [The photo is of Heather (right) and Laura, one of our students, in class]. For me, a long-time, albeit intermittent, keeper of journals (I admit that I still cringe at bit at using the word journal as a verb, but I'm getting over it), it's not about getting myself to write, it's about using more images and fewer words. Heather, for example, is almost exclusively a visual journaler. Her journals are filled with sketches; some -- her "flip books," usually -- hold only images that she's particularly drawn to or that resonate for her.

So I've been working on preparing my journal pages in various ways before I write on them: painting with watercolor washes, making images with rubber stamps, applying inks, and otherwise allowing myself to "mess up" the pages. It's really a treat to write on color pages. The trick is to stay ahead of yourself by setting aside time to prepare surfaces in advance. The next step, I figure, is to doodle and find other means to create obstacles on the page so that I'm forced to write around them; anything to keep me from a constant diet of neat, text-filled, symmetrical pages.

I've ended up with a half-dozen or so journals. Initially, I thought I'd make them all myself, but in most cases I found notebooks and journals that I've collected over time that worked well. With those, I've personalized or am in the process of personalizing each cover with collage, paint or, in one case, recovering the journal using paper I'd painted in my class with Traci Bautista at Art & Soul.

Here's the rundown of specialized journals to date:

• Daily - this is the standard, smaller, carry-around-with-me-everywhere-I-go journal that I've been making for myself for at least a year now.
• Art Experiments - for trying out techniques, making mistakes and generally allowing myself to make marks on a page without judgment.
  
• Art Ideas - one-half of a larger journal (the other is for ideas on books I'd like to make). It's for jotting down my thoughts on projects I'd like to work on, techniques I'd like to try, etc.
• Book Ideas - takes up one-half of a larger journal shared with 'Art Ideas.' It's for random thoughts on books to make and for more specific plans and details as they emerge.
• Relationship with the Book - What is this journey into book arts taking me? How are my views, thoughts and process evolving? This journal isn't mean to be technique driven; rather, I'd like to focus on where the road leads and what I'm learning along the way.
• Flip Book - It's called a "flip" book because you flip through it for inspiration -- or at least that's how I'm going to use it. One side will house images I'm taken with, the other will include articles and other stories about women in (successful) transition.
• Techniques - details of techniques I've used and liked so that I don't forget them!
• Digital Art - more prosaically titled my Photoshop Elements notebook. I'm slowly, very s..l..o..w..l..y working my way through this program.
  

This is a good class to take in a group. I'm learning from other's styles and approaches to journaling and their issues with the process. Perhaps most important among these is that there ARE other styles, and that you're not doomed to walk in the same rut through eternity, by which time the rut is carved deep enough to be your grave.

Secret Belgian Binding

I'm learning a new binding in a workshop at BookWorks: Secret Belgian binding. Book artist Hedi Kyle is credited with rediscoveing this historic binding, attributed to the Belgians. It uses an exposed sewing to bind the text block to cover boards and a separate spine, with the spine held in place only by the threads passing over and under it. In addition to its beauty, it's considered a very sturdy binding. Laurie Corral, who's teaching the class (she's also BookWorks' founder and director) has paced the class well -- three evenings over three weeks -- so that the students are not rushed and can both learn and enjoy the experience. (In my photo of Laurie, she's cutting paper on BookWorks' massive guillotine, about which I lust, wishing that I could build a room simply to house such a lovely and functional object.)

This week we sewed our text block using tapes (see photo). It was the first time I'd worked with tapes, and I can see the value. It's a lovely, simple stitch, and relaxing to sew, especially in a group. We were joined by Andy Farkas (writer, printmaker and book artist), who was working in the studio, in talking a bit about the definition of an "artist's book." The $64,000 question. (Here's Wikipedia's attempt).

For me, it's a book wherein the content and the form are so closely intertwined that the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. Naturally that begs the question of how you define the "book" part of the equation, since an artist's book need not have a traditional book form, so mine is at best a partial description. Andy's definition focused on the work being created in its entirety by the artist. He agreed that content needs to be referenced in a definition, if only to suggest the artist's choice of no content. This started me thinking about whether, in fact, an artist's book can have no content. Or, can a viewer ever look at an artist's book without ascribing content to it? Or to take it further, isn't an artist's intent to omit content itself the content? Better minds than mine are no doubt wrestling -- or ignoring -- questions such as these, so BookGirl will sit it out for now.

The rest of the pix are of a book Laurie made with the SB binding, of the first signature after being sewn onto the tapes (Tyvek strips affixed to the side of the work table with adhesive tape), and of a sewing card with alternate views of the outside and the inside of the binding. I can't wait to hold my finished book in my hands.

Book Cat

My good friend, Vicki, is an adventurous traveler. She travels light, and she takes the scenic route. I've joined her on some less intrepid trips: Venice, Vancouver Island, the Dordogne region of France. Lately, she's been in Croatia and surrounding areas. I enjoyed getting her emails from the road telling me about the nuisances she'd encountered getting from here to there, not because I was glad for her trouble, but because she always finished by saying what a great time she was having and what a great trip it was. It's that quality of taking things in stride that makes a real traveler.

I whine as much as anyone (as those who know me well can attest), but when traveling, I too try to be of the school that makes the best of any situation. We all travel little enough for pleasure as it is, and if nothing else, adversities make for good stories later. The difference between me and Vicki is that I rarely use travel to test the unknown, while Vicki does it all the time, without even realizing she's doing it.

The pix of the trip are still to come, but she sent me an advance photo that, she said, had her thinking of me when she took it. Taking a nap surrounded by books is surely one of life's simple pleasures. I wonder, though: are the 2 Euros for the books or the cat?

Helvetica Turns 50

Who knew? Helvetica is a baby boomer, too, and turning 50. According to the UK's Guardian, celebrations are sprouting for the "elegant uber-font." Do your part, America, by writing all your emails tomorrow in Helvetica, then treat yourself to a chocolate cupcake. Unfortunately, I'm not offered a Helvetica option on this blog, or I'd celebrate here along with you.

The Guardian, by the way, does an excellent job covering books, all the more noticeable in light of diminishing coverage by major metropolitan US newspapers (see the latest on this issue and learn how you can get involved in saving book reviews).

Slow Reading

There's no way I could come across an article on "slow reading" and not write about it, so for those of you who still care about such things (and I hope, hope, hope that there are many), Lindsay Waters, in an article in The Chronicle of Higher Education, writes about how current society, particularly teachers of reading, conspires to get us to read more quickly. I guess my use of the word "conspires" tells a bit about my take on this, eh? Here's a bit (well, maybe more than a bit) of what Waters has to say, albeit a little pedantically :

"In departments of education, professors talk about the "fluency" that those who are learning to read need to achieve to become good readers. Unless one can digest the letters on the page fast enough, one cannot comprehend what one is reading. But once one learns how to read, there is a speed beyond which one stops reading in a truly effective way. I am convinced that most speed-reading is impaired reading, just like the sort you do when you have a fever or are tired or engaged in other tasks at the same time you are supposed to be reading. Unless you are very smart, speed-reading forces you to ignore al but one dimension of a literary work, the simplest information. What we lose is the enjoyment that made people turn to literature in the first place....

"I want to ask what reading would look life if we were to reintroduce, forcefully, the matter of time...The mighty imperative is to speed eveything up, but there might be some advantage in slowing things down. People are trying slow eating. Why not slow reading?...

"The role of literature is to mess with time, to establish its own rhythm. A new agenda for literary studies should open up the time of reading, just as it opens up how the writer establishes his or her rhythm. Instead of rushing by works so fast that we don't even muss up our hair, we should tarry, attend to the sensuousness of reading, allow ourselves to enter the experience of words."

We English majors (once an English major, always an English major, says Garrison Keillor) were taught to read this way in college. It was called close reading (it is still called that, isn't it?), and although not equivalent to slow reading, close reading requires that you read slowly, and the end result is much the same: a much richer reading experience. Wine lovers sip each glass slowly to give the wine time to reveal itself, and to give themselves time to savor the full range of its flavors. So with reading. Reading quickly doesn't lend itself to the pleasures of seeing layers of meaning in a sentence or understanding why the writer chose to use those specific words, or any of the other discoveries and joys of reading good writing. And, then, once you've found a book you truly love...well, there's always rereading.

Creative Advertising

Other than the current Apple television ads, which are funny and charming, and reinforce Apple's brand brilliantly, I don't see much creative advertising on the tube these days. American t.v. advertising doesn't seem to do "art" well -- that is, ads that work effectively from a business and marketing standpoint (since sales are, after all, the goal), AND are artistically interesting or exciting. Europe seems to do this combination better, and here's a terrific example from VW for the company's new VW Phaeton. How cool is that?!

Art & Soul

Back from Art & Soul, an arts retreat in Hampton, Virginia at which I spent four days painting, collaging, making books, and generally having a good time with art and artists. My favorites were full-day workshops in paint and collage, one each with Ann Baldwin and Traci Bautista (see pix of them in action, along with some inside pages from one of Traci's journals). Ann's and Traci's approaches and styles are very different, but each class was a terrific learning experience. Ann, in particular, is an excellent teacher, and for someone like me, who has very little experience with painting and acrylics, her class was a revelation. Although each student emerged with two "completed" pieces at the end of the day, for me, the class was all about technique and advice and an opportunity to use both. I left the workshop eager to practice Ann's process at home. I suppose that I've known it subsconsciously all along, but I love layers and texture. For me, texture in paint is the visual equivalent of touch, and it's tremendously satisfying to create it.

As to Traci's work, while her results (and process) are very spontaneous and playful, in fact she has degrees and solid experience in graphic design and typography (and high-tech marketing to boot). We painted some wild papers -- including paper towels -- to use for backgrounds and to tear up for collage, and I'll want to use her techniques again too.

The book I made, in a class with Doris Arndt (see last pix), looks to have metal covers, but in fact, it's book board covered with (silver) metallic duct tape (who knew there was such a thing?), and splashed with alcohol inks. It was the first time I'd used these, and I liked the effects. The stitch itself wasn't difficult, but needle and thread have to go through each piece of copper tubing on the spine twice -- one on the way up and once on the way down -- and that was a little thorny. I'd like to make a second book with this type of spine, substituting some other material for the copper tubing.

In a setting such as this one, the instructors make all the difference, and I was fortunate to have three whose lessons I'll take to heart and experiment with. Three out of four's not bad. I'm less focused on the social aspect of these events, which I appreciate is very important to many of the participants (and puts me in the minority), which makes doing advance homework about the instructors all the more important.

Throughout the days, I kept focusing on Ann's comment that she always does her worst work in workshops and just forged ahead. And I tried -- with limited success, but at least I was consciously aware of this when I was doing it -- to avoid the "comparison thing." It wasn't easy. There was some wonderful work being done, not just in my classes, but everywhere, and it was hard to go straight to my classroom when there was so much enticement on the way there.

So now I've gotten the "newbie" thing out of the way, and I expect I'll go back, if not to this specific event, then to the ones on the west coast, or to the several other retreats that have cropped up in the past five years or so. These programs are, at their core, craft-oriented, and I'm convinced that the main reason for their rise is -- isn't it always these days? -- baby boomers. BBs are finding themselves with more time to play: either they're retired or their kids have gone off (to college or altogether) or both. The amount of money being spent on art supplies, in comparison to, say, 10 years ago, must be astronomical, if the cases being wheeled around the convention center were any indication. And the Internet has made it possible for aspiring crafters and artists in even the most remote locations to get their fix, not to mention that it's opened up a whole world for those former full-time workers and former full-time moms who want to sell to them from the comfort of their homes.

Got back from Virginia-- a 7 1/2-hour not unplesant drive -- just in time to head off to the first of my three sessions on the Secret Belgian Binding at BookWorks. News at 11.

Who Will Run Our Arts Organizations?

Lee Rosenbaum is a cultural journalist (i.e., a journalist who writes about the arts and culture). In addition to her mainstream-media writing, she maintains a blog, CultureGrrl, which I dip into from time to time. Recently, she wrote about what she calls "the coming arts leadership brain drain." She cites a recently-published report by the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, Involving Youth in NonProfit Arts Organizations: A Call to Action (67 pages), that reminds nonprofit arts organizations that they need to be aggressive in finding ways to attract and retain new leaders to take the place of the baby boomer arts administrators who are nearing the end of their careers.

Rosenbaum cites a "glaring omission" in the report: that a major reason that smart and ambitious young people don't look to arts administration as a career is that they can make much more money elsewhere. As someone with experience as both a young and not-so-young arts administrator, I think she's right on the money (pun intended). There is a fascinating but dangerous assumption in the nonprofit community (and those who fund it) that money for programming is legitimate and money for administration, including salaries, is less so. And often, Board members and staff are apologetic when speaking about compensation. Why?

Corporate society assumes that good products and programs are the result of smart people who envision, plan, execute and manage them effectively. It recognizes that if its best people are not compensated appropriately they will leave or become disaffected (and thus less effective) or both. Why should these assumptions be different in a nonprofit environment? Sadly, there's likely something else at work: we value the contributions of nonprofit managers less than those of for-profit workers. Perhaps we think that arts administrators should be motivated by their love for the arts. Of course, many are and should be, but can Board leaders of arts organizations -- individuals who often have been asked to serve in part for their business skills -- truly believe that this is enough?

I've often been puzzled why it is that smart, market-savvy business executives and community leaders who go on nonprofit Boards set aside so many of the tried-and-true principles that serve them so well in the for-profit world. Board members should fight for budgets that pay the arts organization's best managers fairly, and expect the expertise and accountability that they demand of their own companies' employees. And arts staff should stop apologizing for the (miniscule) increases they factor into their budgets for administration each year.

Unfortunately, I think that Rosenbaum is right. I don't think today's young people will be as accepting of the inevitability of being underpaid to work in nonprofit arts organizations. They simply won't take these jobs; or they'll say 'yes,' with stars in their eyes, and exit early. The loss will be ours.

Pen and Paper

One of the side effects of the journaling class I'm currently taking at BookWorks is that I'm thinking more about paper. I've been considering the relationship of the paper to the journal's purpose, which seems pretty obvious, but which I haven't thought much about when making blank books (for which I usually use Velata text blocks). Reflecting on the types of information I'd like to collect and the journals that will hold them has led me consider each journal's specific needs. For example, it makes sense to use watercolor paper as the basis for the journal I'll set aside for my art "experiments" -- i.e., techniques I'd like to try without assurance that they'll result in anything good or pleasing or that I'll want to repeat them. (That's why it's called an art experiment journal. It's strange but true that I'll be more likely to experiment if I have a journal that's specifically designed for that purpose, rather than trying something out on a surface that might conceivably be a "keeper." -- Go figure.)

My daily journal -- the one I regularly carry with me -- should be able to withstand washes of wet media, so I'm going to try using a text block made from watercolor paper also, but lighter weight than what I'll use for the experiment book: 90 lb - 100 lb for the daily journal, 140 lb for the other. For those journals into which I'll tape or paste items -- say, my "flip book" for images that resonate or inspire me -- I plan to use standard notebooks. In this case, it's the wire binding that's most important, since I want to be able to flip easily through the pages.

I'm also more aware now of how the pen feels against the paper; I expect that I've always been conscious of this but, nevertheless, I kept buying the same kinds of pens: those extra-fine-point ones, such as the Sakura Pigma Micron pens, that graphic artists seem to favor. I suppose I didn't make the connection between the diameter of the tip of the pen and my writing experience. Then I started noticing that my most confident writing (I mean this purely from a graphic perspective; nothing to do with content) comes from pen points of at least medium thickness. I also like a bit of resistance from the paper as I write. The fine-point pens I've been writing with (and used on Velata) simply haven't done the trick.

So I'm experimenting with pens with thicker points. I recently bought a Sakura Gelly Roll Gelato retractable pen with a 0.8 mm (medium) point that I'm enjoying. I'll also be trying paper with a bit more texture for text blocks. I'll be working on a new daily journal tomorrow, using 90 lb watercolor paper. I'll let you know how the combination feels to me.

Field Trip

Tuesday was a field trip with a friend to visit the gallery in Burnsville that will be hosting the exhibition for our Book Salon for a month later this year. It's a lovely space. Coincidentally, Wendy Reid, the owner, serves with me on the Board of HandMade in America. She's brought in a wonderful selection of art at all price points. I noticed that the gallery participates in several community and philanthropic causes, usually by donating a percentage of sales of specific objects.

We stopped in at the Burnsville Town Center across the street from the gallery to see a quilt that my friend had heard about. It's amazing. The work of quilt artist Barbara Webster, it portrays key places, people and sights in the history of Yancey County, and surrounds them with representations of the four seasons. She used both old photographs and took over a thousand new ones. it's a masterpiece of design, and spans the entire lobby wall (the size is 24' x 7'). It's well worth making a trip just to see it.

After lunch (which was a delayed birthday treat for me), we traveled on to Penland School of Crafts, so that my friend could visit with a book artist friend she hadn't seen for nearly 20 years, Jana Pullman, who's been teaching a two-month class in leather bindings. I planned to visit Annie Fain Liden, who's currently a teaching assistant in Beth Ross Johnson's weaving class. Annie Fain is one of my bookmaking teachers as well as a friend, and it was a joy to catch up with her.

It was a long day, and a good one. I'm soooo looking forward to the book arts workshop I'll be taking at Penland this summer with book artist Laura Wait. I've been Googling Laura to learn more about her work and have found many examples of her books, which has made me even more enthusiastic about learning from her.

Introducing...BookPuppy!

I had a call yesterday from a delightful friend with whom I hadn't spoken for a while. We're both very attached to our dogs -- she has two rambunctious standard poodles; I have the friendliest puppy in the world. Reminiscing about this and that, including her cute new car, which has a license plate that references her puppy-love, reminded me that I'd yet to put up pix of our own pup. The first one is Twiggy when we brought him home at 3 months (yep, that's his name, no relation to the 60s supermodel of the same name); the other photo is more recent, taken at his favorite spot, the window seat in our kitchen. Sitting here lets him look out on our front yard and the street beyond, so that he can be the first to greet anyone who walks by.

Before we got Twiggy, I'd never been much of a 'dog person' -- or a 'pet person' for that matter -- but now I'm no different from the dog lovers whom I used to make fun of for speaking to their dogs in baby talk. Sigh. One of the first books I made, a very simple accordion, was , in fact, a book about Twiggy. So much for being a serious book artist, I thought at the time. Sigh again. You'll be glad to know I've made more books since then.

Choices

A book arts colleague sent me an email recently that included this quote from Viktor Frankl (from Man's Search for Meaning):

We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken away from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms -- to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way.

This immensely profound statement reminded me, yet again, that (thankfully) under very different circumstances, I can choose how I present myself to others every day, every moment. When someone asks "How are you?", I can choose to relate my latest annoyance or complaint about the state of the world, my health, the latest service foul-up(aren't our lives full of these?), or I can elect to say "I'm well," and feel fortunate that, whatever else may be going on, this statement is fundamentally true most of the time.

This is by no means an ode to denying negative feelings or being a Pollyanna in the face of major distress or sadness. We should have outlets for these, of course, and those who care about us should understand. And certainly there's a time and place for airing minor annoyances -- so much of this is about context, isn't it? But the proportion of what I've come to call "mosquito bites" to major stress is, for most of us, infinitesimally small. We're blessed that this is the case, so why not act like it?

I'm better about this than I used to be, but I have a long way to go, which is why I welcomed seeing Frankl's quote again. It's a good reminder to put things in perspective.

Handmade Book Pix

It's about time I put up images of some of my books. I took these photographs a few weeks ago, but had not gotten around to downloading them to my computer. The book to the right is one that I made in January for the purpose of doing an inset with a transparency. It worked well. The one below is one I made for a good friend. It was the first time I'd done a coptic binding in two colors. Since the colors of the thread are nearly identical to the cover paper, it creates a nice effect.

Geeks Rule!

Our small but animated group of Book Geeks reconvened this morning to give the criss-cross long-stitch another try, this time successfully. You may recall that our last effort had us actively competing for parts in the Bookbinders' version of a Marx Brothers movie. We were particularly flummoxed on that day because we were well aware that the criss-cross is one of the easier long-stitch bindings, and each of us would easily have vouched for the intelligence and accomplishment of the others in the group (if not for our own).

So we were molto/mucho/tres relieved that the stitch seemed to come more naturally to us this time. First, of course, we had to spend some time ooohing and aaahing over the ATCs that two of us exchanged; discussing book cover techniques, munching on the tasty goodies provided by our generous host, and comparing notes on our birthday celebrations (2) last week.

In spite of a gratifying session, I've decided to consider today's book purely a practice exercise and take it apart. I made the text block from ad and fashion-feature pages in W magazine, which was a nice idea in concept but not in execution, at least not for a larger book such as this one. The signatures were very hard to keep in place, since the linen thread kept slipping and sliding through the holes in the slick paper. This made it difficult keep the signatures aligned, add new signatures, and, generally, handle the book.

One of us has begun to sew pockets into the inside front cover of her books, which is not only practical, but looks quite handsome. Two of us are putting design elements on text pages to add decorative flair; another is using interesting surface techniques. I, on the other hand, if I'm brutally honest, more often than not find myself using materials that I come across the night before our sessions, since that's when I usually remember that I need to have book parts ready for the next day.... (In my defense, I'll say that of late I've been particularly attracted to the images in my fashion magazines, seeing them more as art elements than anything else.) I'll prepare more thoughtfully for our next gathering, when we'll make a piano hinge book.

Billy Collins

Here's a poem by Billy Collins that I came across a while back, enjoyed, and thought you might too. It's from Sailing Alone Around the Room: New and Selected Poems. Having just been reading about the horrific happenings at Virginia Tech yesterday, it struck a little bit closer to home this time:

The Movies

I would like to watch a movie tonight
in which a stranger rides into town
or where someone embarks on a long journey,

a movie with the promise of danger,
danger visited upon the citizens of the town
by the stranger who rides in,

or the danger that will befall the person
on his or her long hazardous journey --
it hardly matters to me

so long as I am not in danger,
and not much danger lies in watching
a movie, you might well agree.

I would prefer to watch this movie at home
than walk out in the cold to a theater
and stand on line for a ticket.

I want to watch it lying down
with the bed hitched up to the television
the way they'd hitch up a stagecoach

to a team of horses
so the movie could pull me along
the crooked, dusty road of its adventures.

I would stay out of harm's way
by identifying with the characters
like the bartender in the movie about the stranger

who rides into town,
the fellow who knows enough to duck
when a chair shatters the mirror over the bar.

Or the stationmaster
in the movie about the perilous journey,
the fellow who fishes a gold watch from his pocket,

helps a lady onto the train,
and hands up a heavy satchel
to the man with the mustache

and the dangerous eyes,
waving the all-clear to the engineer.
Then the train would pull out of the station

and the movie would continue without me,
and at the end of the day
I would hang up my oval hat on a hook

and take the shortcut home to my two dogs,
my faithful, amorous wife, and my children
Molly, Lucinda, and Harold, Jr.

Everybody's a Critic

Since I've been thinking about book criticism and discussion lately, I read this article from last Sunday's Boston Globe with interest. It's a good take on what makes a film critic. The writer says that, more than anything else, a professional film critic needs to provide "context" to his audience. The priority that he gives to "context" is reminiscent of my beliefs about the value of a liberal arts education (which, it seems, is going the way of the record album).

I've often thought that a good liberal arts college education -- with literature, history and philosophy as its mainstays -- is meant to provide "context" for our future, whatever we decide to do or become. Philosophy hands us the tools to analyze issues and dilemmas, both large and small, personal and professional; literature offers an almost inexhaustible supply of models of human behavior to consult in our dealings in society; and history assures us that virtually everything we encounter in the world has an antecedent, and that we can benefit from understanding the failures and successes of our past. If, instead, our undergraduate years are meant solely to prepare us for a job or career, we're missing some critical knowledge and skills, without which, I believe, no one can be truly successful.

But I digress.

Book Club Retreat

For the second time (our first took place last fall), one of the book clubs of which I'm a member held a weekend "retreat." Our book club was started by and is held monthly at Malaprop's bookstore, an independent bookstore that we all frequent (at right, some of our "retreaters," including, at far right, Malaprop general manager Linda Barrett Knopp). We convened late last Friday afternoon at a nearby retreat center and headed home early Sunday afternoon. In between we discussed two books and two novellas: David Oshinsky's Polio: An American Story, Haven Kimmel's She Got Up Off the Couch (ugh! -- the first book I've read for this group that I couldn't stand to finish), Tillie Olsen's Tell me a Riddle (which I loved), and The Death of Ivan Ilych by Tolstoy.

My own bias about book club reading is that fiction should rule the day, and that if non-fiction must be introduced, it should be in small doses -- say, four or five novels for every work of non-fiction. So I was disappointed to learn that most of our reading for the retreat would be non-fiction. As I said to my bookmates, fiction provides much more fertile ground for discussion. Beyond the actual topic and story, fiction, if it's good, offers many riches to mine, from the writer's style, technique, and syntax to structure, themes, and imagery, to the use of symbols, metaphor and simile (and more). It fascinated me, for example, that Tolstoy used the structure of his chapters to parallel the deterioration of Ivan Ilych's body (leading him to his spiritual birth) by making each chapter progessively shorter than the next: from approximately 300 lines in the first chapter to approximately 72 lines in the last; and that Tillie Olsen enriched Tell me a Riddle by using the voice, mouth (not just words, but coughs, screams, rasps, songs), silence, and listening in giving meaning to a story that's much about finding one's own voice. And I derived pleasure from a small thing: how Olsen helps move her protagonist from the specific to the universal by naming her Eva, as in "Eve," the Bible's first female creation.

Non-fiction can be a source of good discussion about the book's topic, particularly if that topic is controversial and/or timely, and you can certainly argue about whether the writer accomplished what she set out to do or told her story effectively. And, of course, I'm not denying that good writers of non-fiction may use literary devices to enhance the reading experience. But at the end of the day good fiction gives the curious reader much more to work with and explore. (This just cries out for a rebuttal from a non-fiction enthusiast, don't you think?)

Those issues aside, what a wonderful experience it was to again spend two days with smart and interesting women talking about BOOKS! Sheer heaven. A joy, too, to get to know each other a little better, since some of us rarely see each other outside of our book group setting. Not to mention the gratification of eating our way through the weekend, which as delightful as it is while you're doing it, is nowhere near as nourishing in its aftermath as the discussions.

Book-Love

What's in us that makes us respond positively or negatively to art? Trust me, it's not an issue that's going to be resolved by BookGirl anytime soon, but it continues to fascinate. I thought about this again last night following my Book Club meeting. Three of us, including me, loved the assigned book, James Meek's The People's Act of Love; two or three others were enthusiastic, while most either disliked the book or found it bewildering.

Here's the point in the story where I would usually say: "run, don't walk to buy this book!," but I'm trying to be more careful these days about keeping my audience in mind when recommending books. Of course, I've known for quite a while that my interests in art (particularly books and films) are not necessarily anyone else's (and, at certain times in my life, it's seemed like no one else's).

But there's more to it than that. For example, recently I realized I can't take for granted in this book club things I took for granted in my past book group in D.C. Those book pals didn't always agree about whether we liked the books we'd read, but we very rarely disagreed about which books to read. In this club, I'm less enthusiastic about the titles selected for reading (to be fair, from time to time, a book that I thought I'd dislike -- like The People's Act of Love -- turns out to be a wonder). One reason for the difference seems obvious: in the D.C. group, the members selected the books together; perhaps this group is too large to accommodate that process. And yet, if I'm honest, the democratic approach we espoused in my earlier club was more theory than practice: members put forward specific books and made a case for them, and the rest of us usually went along. Still, none of us felt that we were taking much risk, because, for some reason, we seemed to like reading the same types of books. Not always, but almost always. And, oddly enough, even those of us who didn't like a particular book were usually still glad we'd read it -- because, I surmise, we liked the type of book it was. Too, we read only fiction.

My analytical husband would say that the reason is pretty obvious: we were all either English majors or English-major "types," such as writers, or related wordsmiths, such as lawyers. I'd disagree with him on the sympathy between lawyers and English majors, but, that aside, he's probably correct that people with certain training or backgrounds are more likely to enjoy the same types of books. And since the group was started by friends, and grew by adding other friends, it's equally likely that we'd all have similar interests. My current book club, on the other hand, seems comprised of a wide range of readers, probably with a wide range of backgrounds.

But this can't be the whole story. Two very different people can love same book. Leaving aside issues of social psychology, which likely play a big role here, one possible explanation is that different people can love the same book for different reasons. In The People's Act of Love, for example, you can delight in the story alone. It's cinematic in narrative, has an intriguing and bizarre plot with a few mysteries thrown in, and has interesting characters. Someone else might fall for the language: Meek is an exceptionally evocative writer; there are sections of the book that are simply stunning, such as the pages that detail how the Czech battalion has been decimated over the five years since they left home. Another reader might prefer the tone: the black comedy style that Meek uses to indict just about everyone involved with the war. Yet another might be captivated by the artful way in which Meek weaves his themes through the novel: "love" is one of these themes, and it's defined in some strikingly contradictory ways by the main characters.

Still, this an argument that's hard for me to make. You can like a good book for the writing, OR for the story, OR for any one feature, but in a great book that you love, everything works together seamlessly to make the whole much greater than any one of its parts.

And since this is a book I love, I'll throw caution to the wind. Run, don't walk, to buy The People's Act of Love. It's a real treat.

The Discomfort Zone

I started a Creative Journaling workshop at BookWorks a couple of weeks ago. A primary objective of the class is to keep information that you collect easily accessible. That means dedicating specific journals to specific subjects. For example, our instructor (a textile artist with a penchant for organizing her thoughts and images on paper), maintains, among other journals, one for images that inspire her, as a resource for her work, and one on kelp (why kelp, I wonder?). A left-brainer in recovery, welcoming order for as long as I can remember (control issues, no doubt), I've taken to the class like a pig to mud.

Last week, we listed (aah, the joy of lists!) the types of journals that we saw in our future. I came up with a dozen (we are not surprised). Our homework over the next two weeks is to think through what they should look like and find sources for them. The journal should both match the purpose -- its content -- and also "feel right." "Don't force it," says Heather, our teacher. This will be the easy part. As an inveterate collector of notebooks/journals/datebooks, which feeds into my lust for paper and books of any kind, and my partiality to systems, I have quite a selection of potential journals of all shapes, sizes and bindings. Some I'll make myself, of course.

The more difficult part -- and a big motivator for taking the class -- will be to help me move away from the word and toward the image. My journals (or "diaries," as we used to call them before "journaling" became trendy) until now have held only words. As with much of what I'm up to this year, I'm hoping to inch closer to my "discomfort zone:" the visual, the intuitive, the instinctive and the spontaneous (by the way, did Jonathan Franzen make up the term "discomfort zone," or did he appropriate it from someone else? It doesn't sound original.). Paradoxically, I guess this means that the more uncomfortable I feel, the closer I'll be to succeeding. And since that sentence itself makes me uncomfortable, I guess I'm off to a good start.

Just to See If I Can

I spent most of yesterday -- I'm a slow learner when it comes to technology -- figuring out how to scan images for the web and uploading them to my Flickr account. Now I'm determined to get one of those images on this blog. I'd hoped to show you photos of some of the books I've made, but that assumes that I've taken good photos of the books, which is not the case. So for now we must all be satisifed with an image of an ATC that I made recently to try out new techniques. OK... I'm ready to click on the "Add Image" button... Here goes... Drum roll... Success!

What's the connection with books, you ask. Ah, I knew you'd ask that. Well, I used waxed linen thread for the stitching on the card, which as all good bookmeisters know, is used in bookmaking. Isn't that enough? If not, I refer you to the subtitle of the blog, which allows me to muse randomly on pretty much anything that strikes my fancy. Arts 'R Us, so to speak.

Simple But Not Necessarily Easy

The criss-cross long-stitch (it may well have another name, but if it does, I don't know it) is one of the easiest exposed-spine bindings around. All the more embarrassing for the Book Geeks, who met at my house last Friday and struggled mightily with it. In this long-stitch version, the linen threads form two (or more) sets of X's. It's a neat and attractive binding, and fairly intuitive, so why we developed this collective amnesia eludes me (a sugar glut from the cinnamon bun snack?). We finally finished the job, and learned a few things along the way, such as that a wider spine makes for easier stitching -- more room to place the holes stabbed horizontally in the spine (which equal the number of signatures). With a narrower spine, the holes run the risk of merging into one big slot. We'll give this stitch another go-round at another BG gathering later this month.

For me, most of these books are meant to be models, so I'm comfortable using copy paper for the text block. I made this book with a paper bag cover, which I gessoed today in advance of decorating it later.