Book-a-Day: Day 3

We made a book with mica covers on the third day of Dan Essig's Book-a-Day class at BookWorks. This may have been my favorite book of the week. One reason is the binding, called a french link stitch. It's the same binding I've used in Secret Belgian Binding books. The difference is that in the latter, it's hidden by the spine that's added to the book before binding the spine and the covers to the book. The french link is a gorgeous stitch, and it's good to see it recognized here for its aesthetic qualities as well as its functional ones. The book is fairly delicate -- you wouldn't want to throw it into your backpack -- but stronger than it looks.

We used large sheets of mica, a bit thicker than the usual mica I've used in the past. Dan buys it in large quantities locally from a company that supplies large corporations with huge amounts of the stuff. We sewed over Tyvek tapes (which we'd painted with acrylics first). We sandwiched images in between each cover (each cover made up of two sheets of mica) and tucked the ends of the tapes in between the images, gluing them in.

a better view of the french link binding

a sample book Dan made for another of his mica-book classes

One of Dan's books, showing another way to use mica. Here it helps encapsulate an object.

Bookmaking Field Day

To my mind, one of the real joys in life is spending time with people you like engaged in activity all of you enjoy. So I'd been looking forward to getting together with my friends Priscilla and Cheryl to make books. By the time I arrived at Priscilla's she and Cheryl had been experimenting for a while; they love art supplies as much as I do, but are way more prolific than I am.

Priscilla's cats, Chloe and Ginger, kept us company. I was fascinated by Chloe, a very fluffy calico, with a face the spitting image of Garfield's. On her own, she hopped into a bag that Cheryl had placed on the floor and we caught her in the act (below).

I spent most of the time day cutting book board (with an exacto knife, no less -- tedious but meditative) for several books than I plan to make over the next couple of weeks. One of these will be a gatefolk book, like the one in the photo below; the others are straightforward coptic journals. I thoroughly enjoyed dedicating a whole days to book projects. Sharing it with like-minded friends made it all the better.

One of Priscilla's books. Part of the fun is show-and-tell.

Cheryl's card -- using texture paste and a stencil.

Cheryl is making these as gifts -- using the covers of the recipients' favorite childhood books (and a Scrabble board for a Scrabble lover)

Cheryl stitching

A book cover Priscilla made using silver duct tape (!)

A few photos of my gatefold book. The hanging threads are from strips of papers I sewed onto some of the pages.

Chloe feeling snug in Cheryl's bag.

The view from Priscilla's living room -- my photo doesn't do it justice.

Balance

I can't remember how long it's been since I've posted less often than once a week. Not since I started my blog, I think. But I've taken on a fairly large, time-intensive project -- well, it's not so much the size of the project as it is that I have a tendency to fill up my life, so that when a new project comes along, it's not easy to keep all the balls in the air. That's what's happening now. Something has to give, and sometimes the "something" are things that I enjoy. So I'll likely be blogging less frequently over the next few months. Sigh.

Bookmaking is one of those balls that I'm trying to keep in the air. I'm trying to be as disciplined about making time for book arts as I am about my new project. It's all about balance, right? Unfortunately, balance is something I've never been very good at it. I've decided that it's as good a time as any to practice.

I haven't been so busy, 'though, as to miss the splendor of the changing leaves in our mountains. We've suffered a severe drought this year, along with much of the country, so it seemed a little touch and go as to whether we would see much color this fall. Luckily, although the drought delayed the colors, it didn't stop them. The photos give just a tiny inkling of the wondrous displays on the mountainsides.

This is my favorite time of year here, and the visual display is just one of the many reasons. The beginning of a new season is a good reminder that nature keeps its balance, whatever the challenges that try to interfere. It's a good lesson for to remember right now.

The view from my studio

Looking out beyond our back yard.

Now I know what "sun-dappled" means.

It amazes me that the gerbera daisy plant is still blooming.

A pumpkin sale!

Book Collaborations in Cuba

Last Thursday, BookWorks, our excellent resource center for book arts, hosted a fascinating lecture by Steve Miller, head of the MFA program in Book Arts at the University of Alabama. Steve is on a semester's sabbatical and is teaching a letterpress class at the nearby Penland School of Crafts this fall. The class is being held in the school's new letterpress and print studio, in whose development Steve had considerable input. His presentation was on the trips he and his students from UA have been making to Cuba since 2004 to collaborate with Cuban artists -- printmakers, poets, papermakers and bookbinders -- on handmade book projects.

The first project (2004) was Diseno/Design (see top right and first image below), a bilingual limited edition book of poems by poet and former U.S. poet laureate Billy Collins. After their return to Alabama, Steve and his students finished an expanded edition of the same book. (Note: there's a tilde over the "n" in the word "diseno," which Blogger doesn't have the capacity to insert, but which creates a separate additional consonant in Spanish and alters the sound of the word). In 2005 they followed a similar process with the bilingual Illegal Use of the Soul, with poems by Cuban poet Luis Francisco Diaz Sanchez and linocuts by Julio Cesar Pena Peralta (there's that missing tilde over the "n" again, in "Pena").

Steve shared an interesting difference in the Cubans' approach to printmaking. In marked contrast to the method with which we're familiar, in which the printmaker is in control of the entire process, in Cuba there are separate roles for "printmaker" and "printer": the "printmaker" prepares the plate, then hands it over to the "printer," who works the press.

In all, there have been eight working trips to Cuba under the auspices of UA to work on various collaborative books. From the start, Steve has approached the project as a genuine collaboration, in spite of the fact that the equipment and resources available to his Cuban counterparts are severely limited. To date, at least half (and often more) of the editions have been distributed in Cuba.

Steve brought copies of the editions for us to see. Laurie Corral, BookWorks' director, supplemented these with several books by Cuban artists from the studio's collection. The latter (the last two book images below) were created using paper bags.

On a related note, you'll want to check out the podcasts of interviews that Steve has done, and continues to conduct, with book artists, papermakers, poets, and other "book people. Check out the Podcast link on the UA Book Arts page here.

Design/Diseno, Billy Collins (poetry), Carlos Ayress Moreno (linocuts), translated by Maria Vargas

Uso Ilegal del Alma/Illegal Use of the Soul, Luis Francisco Diaz Sanchez (poetry), Julio Cesar Pena Peralta (illustrations), translated by Maria Vargas

La Caida del Cielo, Cristina Garcia

Ana Mendieta, Nancy Morejon

Steve Miler, right, and book artist Annie Cicale, at BookWorks

Caterpillar, Centipede

My book arts posts seem to be living in a twilight zone that moves much more slowly than real time. This post is about a three-day class I took more than a month ago with book artist Dan Essig at BookWorks. The avowed purpose of the class was to learn the centipede stitch (a/k/a the caterpillar stitch), but the stitch was only the final touch in the thoroughly enjoyable process of creating our books. (That's one of Dan's books at top right.)

We spent the first morning learning the stitch and making a sewing card. We were working with wood, and for the next day-and-a-half we drilled, distressed, painted (with milk paint) and sanded and burnished our mahogany covers. On the final day of class, we sewed our books with a Greek Coptic binding. We finished by drilling our holes for the centipede, and stitching it in. The Greek Coptic binding is one I hadn't done before, and it's quite beautiful, adding real strength and stability to the book.

Dan demonstrated the techniques with both hand tools and small power tools. He's incredibly precise about techniques and measurements in everything he does, and he explains why he's doing what he's doing. I always appreciate this, because understanding the reasons behind the actions helps me decide what I might change to make the book more my own. I gravitated to the hand tools, which I felt gave me greater control. No doubt, with practice, the power tools would feel just as comfortable and prove faster and more efficient, but since I'll be making wooden books only occasionally, I'll opt for the simplicity and lower cost of the hand tools.

This is the third class I've taken with Dan, and I'll be taking another in October -- we'll make a papyrus book in that one. You may have seen some of his work in the The Penland Book of Handmade Books (that's Dan's book on the cover, right), which if you don't have, you must buy immediately. His books are true works of art. In addition to these, he creates sculptural pieces that incorporate books and paper, but as a secondary rather than a primary element. Locally, he exhibits lat Ariel Gallery (check out some of his work at Ariel here).

Drilling holes in the covers

Various hand tools

Painting covers with milk paint -- outside!

Couldn't resist the colors of waxed linen thread

The Greek Coptic binding on my book, almost done

The painted, sanded, burnished, bound book, minus the centipede

Drilling the hole to insert the peg that will be part of the closure

One of my classmates using the electric drill press to fashion a peg for the closure

My finished book. You can see that I've fudged a bit. If you look at Dan's book at the top of the post, you'll notice that his centipede runs across the spine. Because I was short on time, I chose to stop my centipede at the spine after the front cover and resume it on the back cover. I have a set of wooden covers awaiting my next effort.

Another of Dan's books, this one with headbands over and around the covers at the top and bottom

My friend Priscilla with her almost-finished book

Doing and Starting

I've been working for the last couple of days on a mock-up of a book that I hoped to make by Friday for an upcoming exhibit at BookWorks. I absolutely, positively needed to do a prototype because I wanted to use some new techniques with photos and acrylics that I'd never tried before. I didn't like how my experiment turned out, although now I have a much better idea of what NOT to do and how to get a better result next time. But making the "real" book the right way is going to take considerably longer than the couple of days I'd allocated, so I'm going to turn in a book for the exhibit that I made earlier this summer.

So now there's nothing that I HAVE to do in the studio over the next couple of days. But since I'd left that time open, I thought: "Well, I could start the new book, or finish the one I started last month or try that new structure I've been looking at..." To which I replied: "Ha!"

A little later, I saw a quote on Roben-Marie Smith's blog, Every Life Has a Story:

"We should be taught not to wait for inspiration to start a thing. Action always generates inspiration. Inspiration seldom generates action." -- Frank Tibolt

and stopped to think how often I stay out of my studio because I have no pressing idea for a specific project and no looming deadline. I know that, as Woody Allen said, "80% of success is showing up" (not quite as good as what most people think he said: "90% of life is showing up."), but it's still difficult to get my foot in the (studio) door, so to speak.

My lonely worktable in my empty studio

Now, deadlines -- real deadlines are great, and I'm good at rallying to the cause. But I'm not one of those who can use artificial deadlines as a motivator. "Whom are you kidding?" , I always wonder when someone suggests this to me. You know it's a fake deadline, so why would you take it seriously? (actually, I say "Who are you kidding?," but BookGirl, an English major, always knows when she's speaking ungrammatically.)

A better approach, I think, if you have no actual deadlines in sight, is to get your friends to agree to exchange stuff: handmade books, ATCs, prints -- whatever. And set a deadline. This usually does the trick, since I'm embarrassed to be the one who doesn't hold up her end of the bargain. The larger the number of people participating, the more embarrassing it is opt out. It doesn't work for me to do this with only one other person, since it's too easy to call on that one person's sympathy with sad tale about one's dog (BookPuppy) having eaten one's book.

The other thing you can do is to take a class. Somehow paying good money to have someone assign for homework exactly what I should have been doing on my own in the first place works wonders. Of course, it's depressing to think that I have such little self-discipline (and less money for art supplies after paying for the class), but BookGirl never expects life to be perfect.

Coincidentally, this wasn't the first quote I saw today about "doing" and "starting." Here's the other one:

"In fact, the ability to start out upon your own impulse is fundamental to the gift of keeping going upon your own terms, not to mention the further and more fulfilling gift of getting started all over again -- never resting upon the oars of success or in the doldrums of disappointment...Getting started, keeping going, getting started again -- in art and life, it seems to me this is the essential rhythm." -- Seamus Heaney

I'm beginning to think that someone is trying to tell me something (insert theme from The Twilight Zone here). All in all, this is not a bad thing to be told, and certainly something I need to hear. Often. Maybe I'll go back into the studio tomorrow after all.

Arrowmont - Part 2

My class at Arrowmont with Carol Barton (at right) was on pop-up structures and movable books (the larger category of which pop-ups are a part). We spent a portion of each day on pop-ups; the rest on books. Some in our class seemed to have a natural talent for the former and created some fairly elaborate scenes. I was satisfied to learn the mechanics and spent more time on book structures. I'm reminded of something Dan Essig, in the class I took with him last recently, said about his and his brother's different talents. As kids, his brother (now a historian) did well on tests that involved reading and comprehension; Dan (now a book artist) did well on tests that involved objects revolving in space. Pop-ups, I think, benefit from a mind that's good at visualizing objects revolving in space.

The pop-ups were great fun, and some of them were surprisingly simple. The great talent, of course, is in combining the various techniques to create the type of work that we see in sophisticated commercial pop-up books -- for example, Robert Sabuda's Alice in Wonderland.

As to books, we worked on four book structures during the week: an accordion book, a blizzard book (developed and so named by Hedi Kyle), a carousel book, and a tunnel book. For all but the blizzard book, where the content is pretty much the structure itself, we were expected to develop our own content, and most of us spent our evening work-hours on that.

I've mentioned before that Carol is a very good teacher, and she did a great job of putting the work we were doing in context. Before she presented each of the book structures -- the blizzard book excepted -- we viewed a slide show containing examples of that particular form, created by a variety of artists. Carol has done a good deal of research on early examples of movable books, so the presentations were both inspirational and good history lessons.

Most of us didn't complete the tunnel book, which was our last project, since the carousel book took longer than we expected. But many of us were able to develop a prototype for the book, which helped us work out the issues raised by tunnel book construction. It was a very full week.

Class projects

Pop-up and small accordion book by Sandy C., one of the students in our class

Pop-up by another student. The photo doesn't do a good job of capturing the dimension.

My accordion book, Pattern

A not-particularly-good photo of the same accordion book, which includes a poem by Dorothy Parker.

The cover of the whimsical accordion book by a student, an Arrowmont work-study artist

The same book's contents, depicting the work-study kitchen staff

My carousel book, Nesting

Another view of the book

A detail of one of the 5 panels

Baskets from the paper basketry students

Cloth in the Text & Textiles class

Dyed fabric drying

One of the works in progress