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.

Encaustic Collage Workshop

This was my first workshop of the year at Random Arts in Saluda: an encaustic collage class with Janet Lasher. Janet is a textile and fiber artist primarily, but also works with encaustic medium. She was knowledgeable and a good teacher, and I felt comfortable from the start. Could it be that I'm finally relaxing about making art? Possibly. I know a little more about the process -- not necessarily the process of making an encaustic collage -- but about the creative process. And/or maybe I'm developing confidence in my abilities (what a concept, eh?). I was really pleased with the results, which I think is the first time I've ever experienced that after a first-time effort at any art activity. There are things I'd change if I were doing it over again, but overall, I'm happy with how things turned out.

It's fairly monochromatic in tone -- an aged amber color contrasted with brown and black ink and a bit of gold accent; what little color I used was much softened by layers of wax. I used tissue paper, silk organza fabric and rubber stamps (script stamps along with one of the set of Alice in Wonderland stamps that I'd been looking forward to using -- I really do need to start posting images of my work here). I haven't decided whether this technique lends itself to book covers; perhaps to a book that wasn't meant to be handled much -- more an object than what I usually think of as a book, something to be handled.

The basics of encaustic collage are fairly simple, but as with most simple things in art, the mastery is in refining the basics. To keep things simple, we worked with white encaustic medium, so we didn't have to deal with incorporating pigments into the wax. We used clayboard as a substrate, but Janet said her favorite substrate is 3/4" plywood. Since you don't want flexibility in your substrate, paper is a viable foundation only at a 300-400 lb weight. Some students painted their substrate completely before applying their first coat of wax; others liked the look of the white of the substrate peeking through; and yet others, like me, made a background of papers and fabric.

For me, the most difficult part of the process was maintaining evenness of texture/depth. Since to apply each new layer you have to heat/melt the wax, you can melt through the layers of wax you've already laid down, displacing it to other parts of the collage. You don't want to find that you've removed most of the wax from a certain spot, since what keeps the collage material in place is the fusing of each subsequent layer of wax to the layer below. I used a craft iron throughout rather than a heat gun, and I may try the latter next time so that I can compare the two.

A great day learning new things. It's always fun spending time with the Random Arts folks. Jane Powell, who owns the shop with her husband Paul, is a fount of creative enthusiasm. One of the students is a member of my book club at Malaprop's, and another student will be in the Secret Belgian Binding workshop I'll be taking at BookWorks in May. Small (creative) world.

Good Advice On Advice About Reading

"The only advice, indeed, that one person can give to another is to take no advice, to follow your own instincts, to take your own reason, to come to your own conclusions...After all, what laws can be laid down about books? The Battle of Waterloo was certainly fought on a certain day, but is Hamlet a better play than Lear? Nobody can say. Each must decide that question for himself. To admit authorities, however heavily furred and gowned, into our libraries and let them tell us how to read, what to read, what value to place upon what we read, is to destroy the spirit of freedom which is the breath of those sanctuaries. Everywhere else we may be bound by laws and conventions -- there we have none. "

Virginia Woolf, How Should One Read a Book?

Summing Up the Week

Well, I didn't get into the Hedi Kyle workshop at Penland, but did get into Laura Wait's workshop. I don't know where I fell in the lottery, so I have no idea how far down on the waiting list I am for the former. I'm disappointed about not getting to study with "the book goddess (my term for her)," but looking forward to the class with Laura Wait. We'll be doing at least one case-bound book, so I expect it will be very different from what I might have done in Kyle's class. I am hopeful -- and the workshop description seems to indicate -- that we'll spend a fair amount of time on content as well. I'd be more disappointed if I weren't scheduled to take a class at Arrowmont in August with Carol Barton, who is known for her pop-up and tunnel book structures. That will balance out my summer's work nicely.

I started my classes at UNCA: 'Women in the Short Story' class and 'The Art of Watching Film.' They're both very good (the teacher for the film class is particularly dynamic), and I'm only sorry that I'll be missing of one each of them, as I have a HandMade in America Board retreat that I'm scheduled to attend (and looking forward to) in a few weeks. We read Irwin Shaw's 'The Girls in Their Summer Dresses' for the first short story class, a little gem of a piece. Luckily, there are no wallflowers in the class, so we had a voluble, spirited discussion. Our film session focused on using literary analysis tools to analyze film, and we watched clips from Blue Velvet, Apocalypse Now, and City Lights, and Buster Keaton's Sherlock Jr. in its entirety. Almost every class will include one entire movie, to illustrate a theme. To start the class, each student was asked to introduce himself/herself and mention a favorite film. An impossible task. It was a great ice breaker and a good way to get a sense of people through their choices (or at least to delude myself that I was). I simply mentioned two films that I love: Days of Heaven and Bringing up Baby. According to my film-choice disclosure theory, I wonder what that said about me?

Friday, which was to be my Studio Day, turned out to be a play date in Asheville with my friend Carol. We cruised a couple of galleries (including Ariel, where we saw some of Dan Essig's latest work), stopped in at Early Girl for lunch, Malaprop's for coffee, and True Blue for art supplies. I haven't done that in quite a while, and it felt great. The splendid spring day felt as lighthearted as we. Oh, and we located Eaties, the cereal bar, for future reference.

One-a-Day, Sort Of

I've amassed quite a collection of books about making books. My friend Tess, a fellow bookmaker, taught herself to make books by working her way through one of Keith Smith's books, making small models of each of his bindings. I'm wildly impressed by her accomplishment and her discipline, and often wonder whether I would have the same dedication were I to find myself, as she did, without the support of a community of book artists or a place that offered classes in bookmaking.

Now that I'm scheduling "studio days" for myself, I decided to borrow a page from Tess's book (duh, that's a bookmaker's joke, right?) and work through some models. I'm using Gabrielle Fox's The Essential Guide to Making Handmade Books, since in spite of all the books I have at home to choose from, I insist on borrowing other books from the library, and this one's due shortly. Anyway, the idea is to start from the beginning and work my way through. I think there are about a dozen books of increasing difficulty. The idea is to keep the books as models for future reference. So far I've made the first two. The second, a no-adhesive accordion (or concertina) book, is a form I learned in my very first bookmaking class, with Joyce Sievers at the John C. Campbell Folk School, a few years back, but I'd forgotten about it until I made it again. It's a pretty neat little structure, should you ever find yourself on a desert island with book board, paper, card stock, and scissors, but no glue...

Oh, and as for this week's "studio day," the best laid plans of mice and men, etc. I planned it for Friday, but a friend called with whom I've been talking about checking out Eaties, a new cereal bar downtown (my kind of bar) , so we'll be doing that, having lunch and generally poking around. Well, there's always the weekend.

Blue Arabesque

I seem to be on reading jag lately, and so while I haven't stopped making books, I've been busier reading them. just finished Patricia Hampl's Blue Arabesque: A Search for the Sublime. I knew nothing about it before I picked it up from the "new books" shelf at the library. It's considered a memoir, but it's really something we don't see much of these days: a long essay. The jumping-off point is Hampl's viewing at the Chicago Art Institute of a painting by Matisse, Woman Before an Aquarium. The painting stops her cold (she's rushing to lunch with a friend at the museum's cafeteria). She's only 17 at the time, and the painting becomes a lasting icon for her. Here's a little of what she says about it:

"I knew that the woman in the painting, whoever, whatever she was, held in the quality of her gaze the clairvoyant image of a future I wanted, a way of believing in the world that it would be very good to achieve -- if it could be achieved.

"And what was that? What was she? A woman regarding a glass globe: in the fishbowl, several aloof residents, glinting dimly from their distorting medium, hypotic but of no particular use. This modern woman looks, unblinking, at the impersonal floating world. Detached, private, her integrity steeped not in declarative authority but in an ancient lyric relation to the world. Something of eternity touched her. She was effortless. Or, as the deep language of my old faith would have said, she was blessed. That was it. Like the English major I was, I had my metaphor. Or at least I had my icon."

By now I knew I'd enjoy the book, but this, a little later, won me over:

."..I seemed to possess a memory trace, something imprinted not from my own experience but from instinct, of how life should be. It should be filed with the clean light of that gaze, uninterrupted. Looking and musing were the job description I sought.

"Isn't that why I'd majored in English to begin with, without knowing it? Not to teach, not to be a librarian, not for a job. To be left alone to read an endless novel, looking up from time to time for whole minutes out the window, letting the story impress itself not only on my mind, but on the world out there, letting the words and world get all mixed up together. To gaze at the world and make sentences from its passing images. That was eternity, it was time as it should be, moving like clouds, the forms changing into story."

Hampl laments the modern standard that sees something "illicit" in wasted time, in "the empty hours of contemplation when a thought unfurls,...letting time get the better of us. Just taking our time, as we say. That is, letting time take us."

Taking her time, Hampl shares her curiosity about and her search for those moments of true contemplation, that state of being that she saw, and still sees, in the painting. She moves to Matisse's other paintings, particularly his odalisques, and the south of France, to which Matisse moved as a young man and where he lived for the rest of his life. This leads her to other artists who sought the same sun and light: Jerome Hill, scion of a wealthy St. Paul, Minnesota family (Hampl was born and lives in St. Paul), the writer Katherine Mansfield, and F. Scott Fitzgerald (another St. Paul native). She considers Mansfield and Fitzgerald two of her heroes (her "saints"), and the section on Mansfield, "a writer who could bare her soul and write with detached authority," is particularly lovely.

Hampl's story is as much about seeing as about art. Like Matisse, she believes that perception is "not simply about what was seen, but how seeing was experienced." In art, she says, what separates the modern from what came before, is the century's demand for the artists' attitude, not simply their skills: "a painting must depict the act of seeing, not the object seen."

Blue Arabesque is the kind of book that doesn't come around often. I liked it because of Hampl's beautiful sentences and paragraphs, her intelligent and intuitive perspective, and because it slowed me down and reminded me how wonderful it is to have time to reflect.

The Word

I recently read Elizabeth Gilbert's book, Eat, Pray, Love. I liked it, and recommend it. Following a messy divorce and a difficult love affair, Gilbert, a writer, decided get out of town (NYC) and do what she likes best: travel. She spent several months in Italy, followed by several months at an ashram in India, and the last few months of her trip in Bali. It wasn't until I'd finished the book and was Googling her to see if I could learn what she's been doing since she wrote the book that I realized I'd read her (prize-winning) novel -- Stern Men -- a few years ago when I was vacationing in Maine and wanted to read someting with "local color." I recommend that book too, but that's another story (literally).

Anyway, Gilbert makes tons of friends in Italy (making friends is one of her talents, the one I envy her most for; the other is her total lack of fear about heading anywhere in the world with no planning whatsoever), including one who recounts his theory that every city and every person has a Word. For example, he says, the Word for Rome is "sex." Gilbert doesn't know what her Word is then, although she figures it out by the end of the book. You can't read this without starting to wonder what your own Word is. I did, of course, but nothing came immediately to mind (you should know that I'm the type of person who would find it extremely difficult to commit to an answer even if I thought I knew what it was, because I might not have considered ALL the possibilities and, thus, chosen the wrong Word -- the horror!). So, so far, I was Wordless.

I told my husband the story, and without skipping a beat, he said "I bet I know what your Word is." "Okay," I said, "what is it?," not telling him that I had no clue. "Learn," he said. Not one to be floored, or to describe myself as being floored, I was nevertheless floored. He was right! That is my Word! Not only did it feel right, but not for a minute did I consider thinking about it further because of all the potential Words I was casting aside.

This is only the precursor to the original intent of this post, which is to say that I've been thinking about making an artist's book with that as a theme or subject -- not the specificity of my own Word, but the broader concept of there being such a thing as a Word. I don't know where it will go, but I'll be rolling it around in my mind to see where it takes me.

Ann Baldwin and Using Literature in Painting and Collage

I'll be taking a class -- Collaging with Words and Paint: Text and Texture -- with artist Ann Baldwin at Art and Soul in May. Art and Soul is a week-long "art retreat" to which students (hobbyists, mostly) come to create, play and learn from a variety of artists. I've never been to anything like this, so chalk it up to another new experience. I thought it would help me explore forms, such as collage, and techniques, such as working exclusively with black-and-white media, that I might be able to use in my work with books.

But back to Ann. I was attracted by the subject of the class and by her background. She began painting seriously in 1991, following a career teaching literature. Her first collages were inspired by her love of theater. She layered images from old programs, incorporated excerpts from scripts, and used strips of fabric and wallpaper. She also used French literature, and the works of Marcel Proust in particular, as a jumping-off point for collage focusing on memory and time. Her Artist's Statement (below) struck a note of recognition for me. We seem to share a love of literature, theater, books and reading, and want to make art that incorporates those passions. I'm very much looking forward to her class.

"In my mixed media abstract paintings I have set out to explore both the visual effects of text and its tendency to carry meaning whether intended or not. Although I often present words, letters, and symbols merely as shapes and patterns, so accustomed are we to interpreting these as narrative that it is sometimes impossible to see the forms alone. Color, too, gives added connotations to the words. Some pieces have been deliberately engineered to appear theatrical and, in fact, include pages from Shakespeare's plays. sone have the glow or patina of old manuscripts, while nevertheless containing mre mechanical reproductions of calligraphy. As I paint, I also write annotations 'in the margins,' commenting on a particular text or simply expressing separate thoughts and ideas.

"As a teacher of literature, an avid reader and writer, books have shaped my identity and given direction to my ideas. Each novel I encounter affects the meaning of subsequent novels. Hand annotations in the margins of used books give a clue to the reactions of other readers before me, often very different from my own. In theatres in London, where I lived for most of my life, the words of well-known plays were constantly being reinterpreted from one production of a play to the next.

"I have adopted a method of painting with multiple transparent veils of paint through which collaged images or words appear and disappear, representing layers of memory and understanding. Lately I have been painting in encaustic (hot wax), a method which involves etching and incising. Often the process itself takes over from intention and I find myself erasing or covering messages which originaly I intended to use to communicate an idea more directly. Thoughts get buried as others surface. Almost like the act of reading itself."

Studio Days

So here's the plan: to spend one full day in my studio every week. Now that I have a functional and comfortable space, I have no excuse (except fear and anxiety and piled-up unwatched episodes of House on Tivo) not to do this. So that's what I did today. I spent the morning tearing paper and gluing covers for two coptic-stitch books I plan to sew tomorrow (at a meeting of the ad hoc Book GeekSewing Circle) and the afternoon playing with techniques for making ATCs (artist trading cards). All this, and I made it through 5 CDs worth of The Piano Tuner. Note: I've decided that books-on-tape -- or books-on-cds in this case -- are a terrific complement to the mindless parts of making books. I've also come to the conclusion that it's better to listen to non-fiction or to light fiction under these circumstances. The Piano Tuner is neither (one reviewer on amazon.com referred to is as "Heart of Darkness meets Fitzcarraldo," which is fairly apt), and trying to take it in to it while I'm doing something else has reminded me that I'd rather have the book in hand if I'm reading something serious, unless it's a favorite that I've already read and enjoyed, and to which I'm listening simply for the pleasure of hearing the words out loud (Jane Austen's novels are great for this).

That aside aside, I decided to try making ATCs because they struck me as the least threatening way to approach the blank page. You can't get much smaller than 2 1/2" x 3 1/2," which is the standard ATC size -- although I understand people out there (who ARE these "people"?) are now making things called "inchies" (people with very good eyesight, I expect). Working on the smaller canvas of an ATC is nowhere near as daunting to me as filling up a PAGE. Along the way, I tell myself, I'll exercise my creativity muscles, explore new techniques, and see what I move toward and away from. To prepare for the journaling class I'll be taking in the spring, I've decided to start keeping a visual journal, which will give me the opportunity to make the ATC goodies part of that process.

For the curious, which includes me, here is what's considered the original ATC web site. The first public introduction of ATCs is attributed to a Swedish artist, m.vänçi stirnemann, who mounted an exhibition in 1997. Visitors to the exhibit were invited to take one of the cards from the exhibit in exchange for leaving one of theirs.

Joan Lyons

A few days ago I read an interview with Joan Lyons from 2005. She was the founding coordinator of the seminal Visual Arts Workshop (VSA), an influential publisher of books by artists and photographers, which she founded in the early 70s. Through VSA, she collaborated in the design and production of over 400 artists' books. Reading this was another learning experience for me, since all I knew of Lyons was what I'd gathered from seeing her work in the recent artists' books exhibition at the National Women of Women in the Arts. She's now pursuing her own new work in digital media through photographic works that examine "the evolution of archetypes and myth in contemporary culture." This sounds fascinating -- an example of how the field of book arts (and, in her case, photography too) -- continually expands through technology. I'll keep Googling to see where she's going with it. Here are some of her books.

She's teaching at Penland this summer. Ah, so many classes, so little time (and so few funds with which to pay for them).

Christening the Table

My worktable arrived yesterday morning, and Bill Bennert, who delivered it himself, re-assembled it in my studio. He'd taken off the top and the casters, figuring that the assembled table wouldn't make it around the corners, and through the doorways, into my studio. Smart move.

What can I say: it's Gorgeous! Bill's craftmanship really stands out. I spent a few afternoon hours moving things around again into what seems a good, functional arrangement (different from what I had before), and sorting my text and cover papers and arranging them on the table's shelves. I no longer have to roll up larger decorative papers and can stop keeping my Velata paper in its original box, leaning it against whatever's handy. That in itself made a big difference in how the space looks. An old counter stool that was stored in the garage turns out to be the perfect height for the table, for those times when I'm doing close work other than tearing and gluing. I "christened" the table this morning by starting a new book.

Book Geeks

The worktable is ready; Bill asked if I wanted to visit it at his workshop, since it won't arrive before Monday. Steven and I have a busy weekend, including a visit to Penland (School of Crafs) tomorrow, and we couldn't find a delivery time that worked all around. It's difficult to take classes without wanting to start immediately on a new book afer getting home.

Yesterday I learned two different forms of long-stitch. One, a criss-cross, or "x" form, is quite pretty, and I expect I'll be using it often, perhaps for a series of small leather books. Besides the opportunity to learn new things, I enjoy going to Annie Fain Liden's sewing circles, which is how I've come to think of her classes. The group that attends varies a bit from session to session, but it's always compatible and supportive. Annie Fain creates a lively, warm environment, and she's a patient and encouraging teacher. She's off to Penland for two months as an assistant to one of the weaving instructors for the Spring program, so we've assembled the ad hoc Book Geeks, and we'll meet at one another's houses to practice our stitches and egg each other on.

Windows & Closures

This past weekend I took Dan Essig's 'Windows and Closures' class at BookWorks. I heard that students who had taken classes from his last year suggested the topic because there wasn't enough time in those classes to cover closures and windows in any depth. We spent Saturday making several types of windows and bases for insets. On Sunday we learned at least half-a-dozen styles of closures, using braided leather, twisted linen thread, and wire.

Dan makes mostly wooden books, but pointed out that most of the techniques could be applied to books made of other material. To illustrate, he brought a book whose covers were made of many, many sheets of papyrus laminated together, thick enough for him to cut a window through; sheets of book board can also be laminated to allow enough thickness for a window. There are ways to adapt the closures as well. I plan to re-create some of these this week to keep them fresh in my mind.

Although it wasn't on the agenda, we ended up binding our "practice" covers into a book. Dan provided the text blocks, threads and needles, and graciously gave us an extra hour at the end of the day to sew. The coptic stitch he teaches is one I know; the variation is in how the covers are prepared (we drilled both straight and diagonal holes) and attached. Our text block was made up of 12 signatures, four sheets per signature. Having more signatures, it seems, gives a better look overall to the stitching, since the greater the number of signatures, the greater the number of links, which creates a nicer display overall.

I love learning new techniques, and I enjoy learning from a range of instructors. Whatever the specific subject matter, I always pick up tips that may seem only peripherally related to the topic, but that make my bookmaking life easier. Dan, for example, uses straight needles rather than curved ones for his coptic bindings, which I thought would make working with the inside portion of a pair a nightmare. But he simplifies things by bringing the needle in point down, then with his non-sewing hand separating the signatures that the needle has just gone between, he immediately brings the needle up on the other side of the link head up. In other words, he doesn't try to curve the needle around the link. (Clear as a bell, huh?) Anyway, complex as I make it seem -- I have more respect all the time for instruction writers -- it's quite easy and quick.

Taking classes from different teachers can also give you a new perspective on something you thought you'd already nailed down. From Annie Fain Liden I learned how to create the effect of hand-torn edges at the head and tail of my text block while keeping the height uniform. Prior to that, I'd resigned myself either to text blocks with hand-torn edges at the head and tail but whose height was uniform only if I'd gotten lucky in my tearing, or to ones with a uniform height, but achieved by using a paper cutter. Who knew? This might be widespread knowledge among all bookmakers but me, but it's not something I'd learned from earlier instruction. And what I find most exciting is that there are probably other options out there that I've still to learn and will pick up from someone else down the road.

The Worktable Cometh

Well, the worktable will indeed be more than I expected -- considerably more -- but I gave the go-ahead. It's a long-term purchase and a crucial part of my studio. Having made the decision, this is the most excited I can remember ever feeling about furniture. I spent two days moving things around so that I can use the space to its best advantage with the new addition.

I was at BookWorks yesterday taking a class and met Bill, who's building the table. It was a happy surprise to find that he was in his shop on a Saturday working on it. And it was lucky that I was at BookWorks, because I realized that I'd set the table too high. It'll be 36 1/2" rather than 38." And the shelves originally planned to have 12" of storage space each, will now have 8" and 10", respectively. Bill said he's decided to construct it so that it can be taken apart. I think the 30" doorways the table will have to get through may have made him think twice.

Designing A Worktable

It's time to give up whatever illusions I might have had about using my standard desk as a worktable for bookmaking, and spring for a proper table. After an afternoon of cutting paper for signatures, and/or folding, and/or gluing covers, my lower back is begging for mercy. I've tracked down the name of the carpenter who constructed the tables for BookWorks. After speaking with him and hearing that "it wouldn't be fair to quote me a price until he had a better idea of what I needed" (no doubt true, but always anxiety-inducing), I made some notes and a drawing and faxed them off to him yesterday.

I'd invited a friend to come by to help me think through my needs and how best to configure the space in my small studio (approximateloy 14 x 11 1/2 feet). It was time well spent. We agreed that the best place for the table would be against a wall that has glass doors, which I never use, to our back deck. At right angles to the worktable will be my old desk, raised to approximately the same height as the table. Thirty-eight inches seems to be the optimum height for me (I'm about 5' 5" tall). We decided the table should be 6 feet long and 3 feet wide, which will give me enough room for separate cutting and gluing stations. Like the tables at BookWorks, it will have a Formica top, which makes for a tough and an easy-clean surface. There will be two shelves below the surface that I can use for paper storage and to store some supplies (I have a cabinet with deep, wide shelves that already houses some of my decorative and text papers).

To start the process -- once I have an idea, I like to get going as soon as possible -- I headed to my local Lowe's (North Carolina-based -- as opposed to Home Depot -- for those to whom such things matter) to check out their Formica and learned that white Formica is pretty much always in stock, but other colors have to be special ordered, which drives up the cost. I would have preferred 'Mission White,' a creamy off-white that would match my desk, but white it is. I also picked up some large pavers. I needed them to be either eight inches, since my desk is 30" high. I couldn't find bricks or anything similar of that height, so I ended up with 4"-high pavers, which I'll stack, 2 under each leg of the desk. I'm actually thinking of covering them in felt or canvas or some other strong rough fabric, which should be a fairly painless task. With 8 of those babies in the trunk of my small two-seater, I felt as low to the ground as I've ever felt in that car.

Bill, the man who's going to make my table (I hope), had some questions and suggestions. Although I'll usually be standing at the table, I may sit from time to time, so he suggested that we make the table surface larger than the table base. Six inches is the standard overhang for that purpose, so the table surface will now be 42". Since it will be against the wall, he will put supports on the back, which will keep him from having to include legs in the center. Also because of the table's position, the overhang will be only on the front of the table (rather than on all four sides, as would be the case if, for example, several people would be sitting around it). The table will have casters, so that I can move it fairly easily if needed, and he tells me that the locks on the casters will keep the table immobile when I want it to be. The 38" height will, of course, include the casters. I won't need the metal devices that the BookWorks tables have to adjust their height, because mine will stay permanently at 38".

He tells me that the tabletop will be very heavy. This is not because of the Formica, which is fairly light, but because of the substrate (?) to which the Formica is affixed: two layes of MDF. Bill says that I will have lots of material left over for shelving, should I need it, since the construction for the table is, I think he said, "inherently inefficient" (gee, that's encouraging). He did a great job of answering my questions and walking me through what's entailed. He obviously knows what he's doing, and has been a pleasure to deal with. My sense is that I'll be happy working with him and he'll deliver a quality product on time. Nevertheless, my heart sank a bit when he closed our conversation by saying: "I hope you won't have sticker shock when I call you with the quote."

Travel Saga

The past 7 days feel like many more. Steven, my husband, was scheduled to speak at a conference in New York City, so we planned a long weekend of theater around his business trip. On the agenda: a just-opened new production of Brian Friel's Translations; A Spanish Play, a new play by Yasmina Reza starring Zoe Wannamaker; Grey Gardens, with Christine Ebersole; the Roundabout Theatre's new production of The Apple Tree, with Kristin Chenoweth (whom Steven loves and I enjoy); and the latest revival of Stephen Sondheim's Company, starring Raul Esparza, whom I fell for when I saw him during the Kennedy Center's Sondheim Celebration in Merrily We Roll Along. All this to say that I was very much looking forward to our mini theater-fest.

We set off from Charlotte (a two-hour drive from Asheville) last Tuesday morning and arrived at Washington, D.C.'s Dulles airport on time. "Weather" -- the snow storm that was coming in from the Midwest -- caused United Airlines to cancel our flight. Then they canceled the next, then the next, and so on and so on. We spent the night at an airport hotel. Unfortunately, the next morning's story was much the same. It was particularly frustrating to be stuck in D.C. since the weather wasn't all that bad there and, we heard later, not as miserable in New York as we'd been led to believe.

In light of my fairly aggressive travel schedule over the past few years, I've become a pretty hardy traveler, and would probaby have stuck it out in D.C. for a while longer, hoping for the best. But Steven needed to get back to work, since it was highly unlikely that he would get to his speaking engagement on time. So we rented a car and drove (yes, drove) from Washington to Charlotte, where we picked up our car and headed for Asheville. Some of the agencies from whom I'd purchased our theater tickets were understanding and reversed the charges, but others refused to do so. Sigh.

What should I find in my inbox the morning after our road trip but my weekly US Airways "e-saver" email, touting a $158 round-trip airfare direct from Greenville to NY LaGuardia that weekend. The flight originated in Greenville, SC, an easy hour-and-a-half drive from Asheville. How could I see this as anything over than an omen! At least that's how I presented it to Steven, who, understandably, was loathe to head back in the direction we'd come back from. "But we have theater tickets waiting for us that'll go to waste! I implored ("implored" is exactly the right word). He knew how much I'd been looking forward to seeing Company, for which we had excellent seats that I'd bought months before, so he agreed, and we got up at 3 a.m. on Saturday morning to catch a 7 a.m. flight in Greenville.

This travel experience was a 360-degree turn from our earlier one. We took off and landed on time going and coming; the weather was cold but sunny in New York; and we thoroughly enjoyed our whirlwind visit. Company was terrific, as expected, and The Apple Tree, although not great theater, is exactly the type of star-vehicle made for someone with Kristin Chenoweth's star presence. The piece de resistance for me was getting to spend several hours on Sunday morning at the 57th St. branch of Kate's Paperie, satisfying my paper lust. I brought back enough paper to keep me happily making books for half a year. To help me when it comes time to re-order -- and that time will come -- the sales clerk, who was patience itself while I made her trawl through dozens of flat-file drawers as I passed judgment on papers -- left the bar codes on the sheets of paper, rather than remove them as they usually do, so that I could refer to the appropriate numbers when I call. We'd bonded over our mutual awe over the books in the catalogue of the recent artists' books exhibition at the National Museum of Women in the Arts (see February 10 post).

The moral(s) to this story? No doubt Steven's would be different, but mine are: sign up for email on last-minute air fare deals, and always write down the locations of Kate's Paperie stores before you travel to New York City.

Weekend Art Sojourn

I did a fairly impulsive thing this past weekend, flying to Washington, D.C. to catch the last day of the exhibition "20 Years of Artists' Books" at the National Museum of Women in the Arts. I was there when the Museum opened at noon, and walked out at 4:30 pm, inspired and delighted by the experience. In fact, NMWA has a collection of more than 800 artists' books by women artists (108 of them were on view in the exhibition) and is a leader in the promotion of artists' books as an art form. The type and range of books and "book objects" was impressive and instructive (not to mention utterly delicious). I'm waiting for the exhibition catalogue to arrive so that I can savor my favorites again.

In typical student mode, I took notes describing particularly interesting bindings that I might try to replicate, jotted down facts and quotes that intrigued me, and noted the names of artists whose work I'd like to explore further. One irony of the exhibition was that the books on view -- works that are often meant to be touched, as in pages turned -- were either under glass or guarded by "do not touch" signs. Understandable, of course, but also frustrating.

Monday morning I braved the excruciatingly cold weather (the kind of cold that makes you feel like your face is going to crack and fall off) to see the Jasper Johns exhibit at the East Wing of the National Gallery of Art. I was lucky, since it had gone up just a few days earlier. The curators took an interesting approach. They selected four motifs that Johns had used regularly in the first decade of his career (1955-1965) and proposed to show how these motifs (for example, the target and what Johns called the mechanical "device") had evolved and interrelated over this period. I knew very little about Johns' work during this time and I was very glad that I'd trekked in the cold from the Archives Metro Station to the East Wing to see it. I had a feeling at the time that there was a link between what I was seeing and what I'd seen the previous day at the NMWA, and although the feeling has lingered, the connection hasn't declared itself. When the bulb lights up over my head, I'll share the news.

An excellent weekend overall. Not only did I get to indulge my art "jones," but I got to spend time with a dear friend and catch up with a colleague whom I've missed seeing. What more could a BookGirl want in a mini-vacation?

Left-Brainers and Art

This morning a new friend and I were talking about our belief that engaging in art is important and necessary for personal development. This led us to the art forms that we initially chose to start us on this road. For her, it's calligraphy; for me, book arts. Each of us admitted that much of our lives have been governed by left-brain activity. I wondered whether that wasn't what first drew me to bookmaking. The craft of making books was, in fact, what attracted me first: My interest in artists' books -- my knowledge of artists' books, frankly) -- and in creating content, came later. Making forms is, in effect, a left-brain activity. It has specific rules -- and at least until you start creating forms that ARE content in themselves -- fairly standardized approaches. It's as you move from creating a standard structure to making artistic decisions, starting simply with choosing papers for blank books, then moving to content as a starting place and then weaving together content and form, that the right brain kicks into gear. So it seems I took my artistic plunge in a relative safe pond.

Which is not to say that I didn't fall passionately in love with book arts; just that, as my new friend said, interests tend to pick us, not us them. And if starting "safely" helps us transition to the less "safe" (the more right-brained), all the better.

I realize, I told her, that my way of "doing art" in the past has consisted of reading all I could about it, then doing nothing. So very very left-brain, no? She responded by telling me about Pema Chodron, the Buddhist nun, who says --and I'm paraphrasing wildly-- that we should use the time spent reading about meditation, meditating instead. Sound advice.