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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.
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.
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).
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?
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.
I’ve been looking forward to being an Ashevillian for many years — since the ’80s — and finally managed to get myself here via a combination of wish fulfillment and fortunate circumstance. Two-and-a-half years ago, I took my first book arts class, with Joyce Sievers at the John C. Campbell Folk School, and immediately fell in love with the craft of bookmaking and with the art of artists’ books.
We have a wonderful books arts learning center in Asheville, BookWorks, that offers workshops, artist studio space and artist-group meeting space. This and individual teachers I’ve met in the area have introduced me to a talented community of artists whose interests intersect in the combination of art and the book. It’s becoming impossible to separate what I’m learning formally through organized classes and informally from conversations with others who share this same passion.
I don’t think it’s surprising that someone who loves the written word as much as I do, and the feel of a book in my hand, would gravitate to book arts and to artists’ books as an art form. The more I explore, the more astonished I am by the history and by the phenomenal work of artists in the field. How could I not have been aware of all this?
