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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.
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.
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.
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.
Over the past couple of years I’ve become a little fanatical about collecting books about making books. Since I’ve always been pretty energetic about adding to my personal library, this new interest isn’t a departure from usual behavior; it’s just a new category. I’m an equal opportunity buyer: I frequent the local independent bookstore, the big chain bookseller, and the online purveyor, along with bookstores in any town I travel to, and, in a pinch, the airport storefront.
To kick off the year, I’ve decided to systematically start making prototypes of the books that catch my eye in these publications. A lifelong project, I expect. For the past couple of weeks, I’ve been looking through book artist Alisa Golden’s publications on creating handmade books. In her first, Creating Handmade Books (1998/2000), she relates that she always thought she’d have to choose between writing and art, both of which she loved. Then in college she discovered that she could merge words and images and make books. She goes on to describe what it’s like for her as she writes this book, fifteen years after she created her first book:
“I don’t think of merging writing and art anymore; I think: ‘book,’ and an organic, whole piece evolves. I think about the reader who will interact with my book. I think about how the pace sets a tone: how one page leads to another, briskly, with physical movement, or slowly and thoughtfully. The writing, the art, the paper and structure each add a layer to the book to create a mood or clarify a meaning. Sometimes what I thought I was making turns into something else, something ‘the book wanted.’”
I’d like to think that eventually I’ll start hearing “what the book wants.”
Golden’s other books are Unique Handmade Books (2001/2003) and Expressive Handmade Books (2006). The instructions in the first book are less clear than those in the subsequent ones, but all three are worth adding to a collection, particularly since she writes about book forms in the context of the book content.
