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.

New Beginnings

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?