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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 top 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.
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.
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.
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.
