blue bluer books

Blank books just in time for the holidays!

2011-12-14T21:44:00.008-05:00

We've switched gears a little bit in the studio recently -- slowed down on production of the two editions of stitching speechless and started binding more blank books for the holidays. Earlier this week I dropped off a batch to go on sale at Vespertine in Carrboro.

They come in different sizes, binding styles, and a variety of materials for a variety of purposes. Many in this batch are made with a multi-media paper that's ideal for artists working in a range of media -- from pencil to pen-and-ink to watercolor. The sketchbooks also include fold-out pages, so the artist can have different sizes and shapes of page to work on.

The covers on the sketchbook below feature one of my favorite recent paper discoveries -- a gorgeous screenprinted Japanese yuzen paper that we found at the Paper Source store in Charlotte.

Margarite has been helping out as an apprentice in the studio. On Sunday she took a quick break from tearing and folding paper to take some action photos instead. Here she caught me with my thinking face on while sewing a Coptic-bound sketchbook.

Now that's a look of total concentration.

Hope you'll stop by Vespertine to take a look at these new books, not to mention all their other beautifully crafted offerings. Happy holidays!

stitching speechless: new photos

2011-11-10T22:26:00.003-05:00

Our biggest project here at blue bluer books for a while now has been stitching speechless, an artist's book based on haiku by Zen art scholar Stephen Addiss. We're publishing it in two separate editions: a deluxe edition printed on handmade Japanese kozo paper and using other traditional Japanese book materials and techniques; and a facsimile edition printed using the self-publishing website Lulu.com. For the facsimile edition, I buy the copies directly from Lulu and then rebind them myself with some handmade touches and a special cover.

Copies of both editions are on exhibit now at the Ackland Museum Store in Chapel Hill, NC until Dec. 18th as part of their "Books and Broadsides" show. stitching speechless will also soon be available through Vamp and Tramp Booksellers.

If you're in the Chapel Hill area and would like to learn more about it, I'll be giving a talk about the whole publishing process next Thursday, Nov. 17th at 7:00 at the Ackland Store.

In the meantime, here are some more photos of copies of the facsimile edition:

"Books and broadsides" at the Ackland Museum Store: 10/21 through 12/18

2011-10-26T22:50:00.004-04:00

Busy times here at blue bluer books. Been working on 2 different editions of stitching speechless as well as a number of custom blank book projects.

I'll be posting more about those soon, but for now I just wanted to encourage anyone in the Chapel Hill area to check out a new show at the Ackland Museum Store: "Books and Broadsides." It features work by 18 different local book artists, myself included.

They will be hosting a series of artists' talks on Thursday evenings throughout November. I'll be giving one on November 17th, called From concept to codex: Creating an editioned artist's book.

Regardless of the exhibit it's a great little store. Check them out on Facebook for updates on exhibits and events!

Update: Here is a gallery of photos from the exhibit opening last Friday night...

New artist's book!: "Stitching speechless"

2011-07-04T15:57:00.011-04:00

I've just finished the first copy of the new artist's book from blue bluer books:

stitching speechless

It's been at least 3 years in the making, so I'm thrilled to finally have a finished copy to feature here.

Stitching speechless features 17 haiku by Zen art and haiku scholar Stephen Addiss. I'll post more information about the process of creating it soon, but for now I will just share some photos.

If you'd like to learn more about stitching speechless and see it in person, I'll be talking about it at Frank Gallery in Chapel Hill this Thursday evening, July 7th. The event will feature two fantastic fellow local book artists talking about their work as well: John Davis and Ariel Rudolph. Refreshments will start around 6 p.m.; the talk will begin around 6:30 or so.

In the meantime, here are some more photos:

New blank books for sale!

2011-06-18T16:58:00.005-04:00

I'm very excited to say that Vespertine in Carrboro is now carrying my handmade blank books.

Margarite & I fell in love with the Vespertine location in Pittsboro when we were first considering moving there. We were exploring the downtown area and found this narrow little storefront selling local handmade jewelry, soaps, screenprinted t-shirts, prints, knitted goods, etc. Quirky stuff in exactly our style. I won't say that it was the reason we decided Pittsboro was the place for us, but combined with delicious lunch and beers at The City Tap... well, PBO started to look pretty darn good.

In the meantime a second Vespertine location has opened in Carrboro, and that's where you'll find my books. It's a small selection so far, but I'll be adding more all the time. There are a few small coptic-bound journals like the ones shown above, some Japanese stab-bound ones, and one weirdo that I invented myself that I just call the "star journal":

When the materials and the inspiration come together just right for a special book, I like to honor that by giving it a name. This one is called 'Rodanthe Pier dawn patrol':

The color of the book cloth and the wave pattern on the endsheets take me back to summer morning surf sessions in the Outer Banks when the rising sun turns pitching waves translucent green, and the dark blue ocean is corduroyed to the horizon...

In any case, stop by Vespertine in Carrboro to check the books out for yourself. Even if it's not one of my books, I guarantee you'll find SOMEthing there you'll like!

New local book arts group -- Triangle, NC

2011-06-05T21:52:00.005-04:00

I've been an absent blogger for a while, but not for lack of activity and news to report. The past couple of months have seen some exciting developments. For one, I'm finally making progress on a new artist's book project with Steve Addiss that's been in the planning stages for several years now. I'll have a new post about that soon, with photos.

The other most exciting thing has been the founding of a new local book arts group in the area -- the Triangle Area Book Arts Group.

Last year when my library helped to host a series of book arts events at UNC and Duke, two themes kept coming up. First: there was a ton of local interest in book arts and a multitude of practitioners. Second: we were all working individually, with only sporadic contact with each other and no network for sharing news, questions, or expertise.

After the series of events wrapped up, I stayed in contact with the people who expressed an interest and together we have started this group. There are several components. First we have a Google group which serves as an email listserv for all members to share news and plan events. Second, we've been meeting monthly to discuss the direction of the group and follow up on event planning. And third, we've been planning workshops and other activities outside of the monthly meetings. In April Lisa Gilbert taught a workshop on how to create the mysterious Secret Belgian Binding. And last month Mary Yordy and Bryant Holsenbeck taught the group techniques for making paste paper.

Along with the meetings and workshops, we are planning more public presentations to raise awareness of book arts in the local community -- demonstrations, exhibits of our work, etc. It looks like our first foray into that area will be at Frank Gallery in Chapel Hill, where three of us will discuss our work at one of their TGI Thursday artist talks in July. It's tentatively scheduled for Thursday, July 7th from 5-8 p.m. -- I'll post the details when it's 100% certain.

In the meantime, if you're in the area and are curious about the book arts scene, please feel free to check out the Google group and get in touch! We're a very friendly group open to all areas of book arts interest and skill levels.

And if you've read this far, here's a glimpse of the new book:

More soon!

A rougher kind of book beauty

2011-01-23T10:32:00.013-05:00

Instead of saying "I'm making something 365", that header should say "I'm trying and failing to make something every single day, but even so I've been way more productive than if I weren't taking part"...

Take a quick look at the date of my last blog post and it's obvious that I haven't been keeping up with that part of my schedule (one blog entry per week). Here's one example of what I have been up to, though. A blank book I gave to a friend as a Christmas gift.

Lately I've been trying to capture a rougher look in my books -- like the straightforward, simple aesthetic of haiku. There's something poetic there, but it's under the surface. Part of the appeal of handmade books can be their imperfection, and too often I've fought that by focusing on extravagant materials. My two most recent blank books have been an attempt to bring a wabi-sabi feel to go along with the Japanese binding style.

For this one, I had some papers in mind that were decorated with a brilliant gold chrysanthemum pattern. I had sheets of the paper in different colors -- white, black, fuchsia and yellow. As I planned it out, though, I also knew that those papers shouldn't be the first thing you noticed about the book when you picked it up. I wanted the focus to be on the texture and feel of it. At the same time I wanted to include hints that there was something more inside.

To get that effect I used the white version of the chrysanthemum paper for the book's covers. I folded the paper so that the bright gold pattern is hidden on the inside, though. You can see the bleed-through of the gold on the outside, so you suspect something is there -- but it's much more subdued. On the outside the book looks a little bland -- maybe even stained or moldy.

For the front and back flyleaves (the first and last pages inside the covers) I used the fuchsia and black versions of the same paper. For full impact I folded those so that the gold pattern shows in its full beauty. After the plain, rough off-white of the covers, the flyleaf papers really jump out.

For the internal pages of the book I used a couple of different kinds of Japanese mulberry paper, each one with just a tinge of color that's hardly noticeable -- light green, blue and beige. It's not enough color to clash with the decorative flyleaves, but enough that if you look closely each page is a little bit different.

Finally, maybe my favorite thing about these two recent blank books is what happens when you tear the mulberry paper by hand instead of cutting the paper down to size for pages. The mulberry fibers along the torn edge are incredibly soft. When you put together a stack of pages that are torn like that, the edges of the book are almost furry -- the top and bottom edges feel like a rabbit's fur. Unfortunately that's not something I've been able to capture in a photo -- you'll just have to take my word for it or try it yourself.

I haven't had a chance to give the second book to its recipient, so I'm not leaking photos yet. Hopefully soon, though.

Happy New Year!

Making Something 365

2010-11-08T20:22:00.003-05:00

All right -- the studio is finally functional! To celebrate that, I'm committing to a productive streak of unprecedented proportions (for me, at least).

A couple of years ago, my friend Noah had the idea that he would create a different skull image every day for a year. Out of that idea was born Skull-a-day, which blossomed from being a record of his creations from day to day, to a book published by Lark Books, to a continuing site featuring reader-submitted skull art projects. It's been inspiring to see what consistent productivity (coupled with Noah's singular energy and talent) can result in.

Well, Noah has a new book and blog in the works now, encouraging people to take up their own year-long creative projects. It's called Make Something 365. With our studio renovation mostly complete, it feels like a great time to take up the challenge.

I'm tailoring the Make Something 365 idea to my own situation. Instead of making one thing 365 times over the course of the year, I'm interpreting it as "[At least] Make SOMEthing 365... ANYTHING".

If you're reading this, you're probably familiar with my work with handmade books and artists' books. That will be a big part of my Make Something 365 year. But I also write haiku, poetry of other kinds, short fiction, and translate the same from Spanish. If I stay on any one thing for too long, I get antsy to be producing in another genre or form. My Make Something 365 mission is to be productive in the full range of them. That will keep it interesting and fresh, and I won't feel like I'm neglecting any particular area.

I do have a rough schedule to give myself some structure:

Monday: new poem
Tuesday: new haiku
Wednesday: new page for an ongoing artist's book project
Thursday: new translation
Friday: new flash fiction piece
Saturday: anything goes
Sunday: blog entry

But those are just suggestions to serve as spurs if I'm stuck on any given day. If I'm rolling on a book project one week, I'll stick to that. If Margarite and I have the urge to collaborate on something for a month, we'll do it. To keep it going, I think I'm going to need to find the right combination of freedom and the whip.

I'll be sharing some of the results here -- probably not everything, since a good bit of what I produce in such a time frame will be... um... rough. Wish me luck, bon voyage, break a leg or what have you -- and I hope you're finding time to make what you've always wanted to make.

Feathered Houseguests and a Reading

2010-10-09T21:27:00.010-04:00

Last night we were putting up some Halloween decorations when we found these 2 house guests sleeping on the front porch. We have a beautiful little birdhouse set up for them just a few feet away, but apparently they prefer to sleep out in the open... It was hard to tell, but I think they may be Carolina wrens. Margarite was able to get the camera within 2 feet of them, take photos with the flash on, and they slept right through it. Hope they were more alert if any predators prowled around later in the night!

In book news, a couple of exciting developments lately.

Several weeks ago we had an artists' book reading at the UNC art library. 4 of us read from and discussed our work -- Beth Grabowski, Susan Leeb, Lisa Beth Robinson and myself. It was a multimedia presentation, as we had a camera and laptop hooked up to a projector for the whole event. Beth and Lisa Beth used the camera to show their work on a large screen so the audience could easily see details of their books. I read from the Googled English Frontier Deedbook. While I read phrases from the project, I did Google searches on the spot to see if they still fit the project's criteria. The results were interesting, but I'll leave them a mystery if you weren't there...

The reading was part of the Book + Art series we've been doing in collaboration with the good folks at Duke. Special thanks to Heather at the art library for letting us take the rough idea for the event and run with it! And thanks to David Parisi and his colleagues in AMLISS for making it a complete success.

I know some photos were taken -- I'll track them down and post them here soon.

On the home front, we're finishing the studio space in fits and starts. We're down to painting and arranging the furniture. Painting is a much bigger deal than expected -- especially with the very high ceilings in there. We made huge progress today and plan to make more tomorrow. Here's a 'before' photo, when we had it all cleared out and prepped for painting. Hopefully we'll be in a position to post some 'after' photos soon!

UPDATE re: artists' book exhibit at UNC

2010-08-20T15:06:00.003-04:00

If you won't have a chance to see the exhibit in person, check out the photos the library has posted on Flickr.

Artists' book exhibit at UNC

2010-08-18T21:57:00.004-04:00

This week marks the opening of an artists' book exhibit I've curated at UNC -- "Art in Books' Clothing: Artists' books from the Sloane Art Library."

If you're in the Chapel Hill area, come by to check it out. It's in the hallway gallery on the first floor of the Hanes Art Center, and will be up until Sept. 17th. If you can't see it in person, below are some photos to enjoy.

The exhibit kicks off a series of exhibits and events we're organizing along with the Sallie Bingham Center at Duke University. You can see the list of events and info here.

The next event to be aware of is an artists' book reading at the Sloane Art Library. Four book artists will be reading and discussing our books: Beth Grabowski, Susan Leeb, Lisa Beth Robinson and myself. That will be on Tuesday, Sept. 14th at 7 p.m.

Studio Progress

2010-08-18T21:29:00.007-04:00

Wanted to share some photos from our in-progress garage-to-studio conversion.

One of the keys to our decision to buy this house was that we would convert the 1-car garage into a studio for both me (books) and Margarite (sewing & fiber arts). The keys would be climate control and good light to work by.

We worked with a friend and his family's construction company, Will Johnson Building Co. Together we worked out that the most important first steps would be 1). to put in a wall unit A/C & heating unit; 2). to insulate the walls; and 3). to add another window for more natural light.

In the photo above, the window to the left is newly installed and framed -- matching the one on the right which was original to the house. (You can also see some of the 60 holes that we needed to punch in the walls in order to blow in insulation. More on that below.)

And here you can see the A/C & heating unit, which they framed securely into the wall.

And finally, the holes for insulation. It turned out that out of the whole project, patching the holes was going to be the most expensive part. So Margarite & I looked up instructions on This Old House.com, modified them for our particular situation, and stocked up on drywall and joint compound at Lowe's. With practically no prior experience, we're becoming a master & mistress of drywall patching. (Or at least good enough to do the studio wall -- not sure I'd be comfortable doing it in our living room...)

We're tackling them in batches of 15 -- big enough to feel like we're making progress when we finish a batch, but small enough not to be overwhelming. Sure it's taken longer than if we'd paid to have it done, but it's good experience, comparatively cheap, and now we both feel a lot more invested in the work and the space.

We're halfway through the final batch of 15. Then, a little sanding, a little painting, and our dream studio is one giant step closer.

On a totally different note, check out this big guy that was on our lawn when we got home from work a while ago! We'd seen huge luna moths at night at our previous house out in the country, but this was right after work, on our lawn in the middle of town. They are really striking creatures.

Latest blank book project

2010-06-27T15:17:00.009-04:00

Super-busy couple of months here at blue bluer headquarters. House-hunting, then a 2-week hiatus in Spain visiting friends, followed by the successful conclusion to house-hunting, house-buying, moving house, and settling into house. This Friday marked one month in our new home, and while there are still plenty of piles of boxes, there are also plenty of signs of progress.

In the midst of all that, I did manage to finish one book project. It was a blank book commissioned by a friend’s company, for the retirement of one of their longstanding designers. It’s a chocolate company, and they ordered a blank book to be displayed at a trade show for the employee’s colleagues to sign and wish her well.

Their one design request was for me to incorporate some of the company's classic advertisements into it. I ended up featuring two of the ads on the front & back covers, and then added the remaining ten or so onto pages inside the book. A problem with blank books like this - meant to be signed by co-workers or wedding guests or whomever – is that they end up looking empty. When you create the book you have to give it enough pages for it to feel substantial, but there’s really only so much that people are going to write in it. So you often end up with a 48-page book that only has writing on the first 4 pages. For this particular one, I could alleviate the problem by including the extra advertisements on alternating pages inside. It gave visual interest to an otherwise blank book, but still left plenty of room for peoples’ contributions.

Overall I was pleased with the final product, especially considering it was done during the chaos of packing & moving. This was the last book I made in our previous home at Roads End – a truly special place deep in the woods of North Chatham County. Even as we enjoy the start of our experience as first-time homeowners, and we enjoy being back in town within walking distance of groceries and beer, we definitely miss it.

But back to the book. I loved the way the cover paper performed. It was a fairly heavy, stiff lokta paper, so I was concerned that it would overreact to the moisture in the glue and warp the covers. To compensate for that (and the overall heft of the book), I doubled the thickness of the boards. In the end it worked fine, and the rich brown paper gave the book an appropriately chocolaty feel. A complementary bright red lokta paper served to frame the cover images nicely, and also made a good wrapper for the book as a finishing touch.

The paper I used for the inner pages was also heavier than what I usually use. Instead of Mohawk Superfine I used a medium weight Arches paper, which was a little thicker and less likely to let ink bleed through. The weight & texture gave the book a much more luxurious feel. Also to that end, I tore the paper for all of the pages by hand, giving them a satisfying ragged edge.

Next week we get serious about converting our new garage into a studio. Before and after photos will be coming soon, and after that, many new books!

An old book for the New Year

2010-03-11T23:43:00.001-05:00

The theme for today's post is "Things I haven't done in a while." Obviously the first of those is to write a blog entry. The second was to repair a book.

The last book a friend gave to me to repair ended up looking like this. After working full-time for seven years on book preservation in the library, I've been using my studio time more recently to make artists' books, or blank books as gifts. At the end of last year, though, I went back to my repair roots in order to fix a book for my friend Alan, and learned some new techniques in the process.

The book itself was an anthology of literature and essays published in 1942 by New Directions. Alan is a friend from college -- a fellow passionate reader with whom I still share any new favorite book or literary discovery, almost 20 years later. The work in the book represents the same period and movements whose discovery challenged and changed us during those college years, so repairing it was more than a simple act of doing a favor for a friend. On another level it was an attempt to restore some of the impossible sheen that literature held for me (us) at the time, maybe to extend this one book's life toward the immortality all books promised.

Well I've been guts-deep in enough old, decaying books now to know that that promise is about as realistic as finding the Fountain of Youth in our septic tank, but obviously some of the old romantic notion still lingers.

When Alan sent the book to me, its spine was torn and tattered but otherwise it was pretty well intact. I could have done a simple repair to replace the spine and the book would've been whole and usable again. There were obviously some problems with the materials, though. Not only was the spine torn, but it was badly discolored. The endsheets, too, had browned worse than the inner pages over the years. That seemed to indicate that the boards themselves were degrading badly. So I decided to do a much more extensive overhaul.

Sure enough, when I disbound the book and got down to the boards, they were soft and crumbly. They were a danger not only to themselves, but to the rest of the book's materials, too. While I wanted to replace those boards, I also wanted to re-use as much of the original material as possible so that it would look like the original publication. I considered covering the new case with a book cloth I had in my studio that almost matched the original -- but it wasn't a perfect match, plus the original had a New Directions emblem on the front cover that I couldn't reproduce.

In the end I decided to construct a new case to cover the book, using new boards but covered with the carefully salvaged original cloth. That way the visible material (the cloth) would be original while the material underneath would be newer and more chemically stable. The original spine was unsalvageable, so I had to compromise and make the spine of the new case with the nearly-matching cloth mentioned above.

The most interesting complication that came up was that the original cloth was frayed a little bit at the corners and edges from normal wear and tear. In order not to see dark book board peeking out from under the frayed cloth, I covered the corners of the new boards with the near-match cloth, before covering the entire case with the salvaged original cloth. The extra layer of new cloth underneath could have added bulk or created unsightly lines (think panty-lines on a book), but I inlaid the extra cloth pieces into the board just enough so that it keeps a smooth surface.

Ideally -- like most book repair flourishes -- that extra repair on the corners is invisible, or at least inconspicuous.

It's not quite dressed for immortality, but the book should be rejuvenated for many more years of loving study and rediscovery.

Given Timbuk -- on the road with Vamp and Tramp

2010-01-25T20:23:00.002-05:00

As I mentioned in a previous post, Vamp and Tramp Booksellers are representing Given Timbuk #1. They now have it featured on their New Arrivals page -- or you can go straight to their Blue Bluer Books page to see their write-up on it.

Bill & Vicky are headed out West this week on a selling trip, so here's hoping they find a receptive audience!

Holidays, babies, books, travels & more books

2009-11-29T20:30:00.000-05:00

This has been an eventful couple of weeks in blue bluer land -- as it probably has been for most people, with the holiday and all. Last weekend we drove up to DC to celebrate a friend's wedding and get some city-time. This week, we had family visiting here to celebrate Thanksgiving, which meant getting to visit with our adorable 6-month-old nephew.

The visit to Washington was a bit of culture-shock at first, since we've been living in bucolic bliss in the woods of North Carolina for the past 2+ years. Once we got our bearings, though, it was a blast to be somewhere walkable again with a convenient Metro system. It was Margarite's inaugural visit to DC, so it's only appropriate that we saw the President (speeding by in a tinted-windowed motorcade -- but cool, nonetheless). We didn't have much time, but we did manage to visit the National Gallery and the Natural History Museum (see Margarite staring down T-Rex above...).

The only book-arts related stop we made was at the Paper Source store in Georgetown, where I stocked up on their gorgeous decorative papers & other essentials.

The biggest book news here is that Vamp & Tramp Booksellers recently made their annual visit to our library. A visit from them is like the Christmas morning when you wake up to find a pony, a new bike, AND a brand new Vandercook printing press under the tree.

Vamp & Tramp represent a broad range of the best book artists working now, from the well-known and established to relative newcomers. Highlights this year included Julie Chen's incredible new book; a remarkable project from Midnight Paper Sales Press called Sylvae; and a beautiful book by Vince Koloski making use of glass & light to bring some of Jack Kerouac's haiku into a new dimension.

Those are off the top of my head, but they're just a fraction of the good work that was on display. Bill & Vicky Stewart (the Tramp & the Vamp?) have such good, eclectic taste that it's an education in artists' books just to see what they're carrying.

In that vein, I'm very pleased that they took Given Timbuk #1 along with them to show and sell. It joins one of my other books that they're currently carrying, the Googled English Frontier Deedbook. They've had a lot of success so far getting my books out into library collections around the country, so I'm thrilled that they're representing this new one.

As far as new work from the studio goes, check out these photos of a batch of blank books -- soon to be available at a local shop in Chapel Hill.

New YouTube video from Asheville BookOpolis!

2009-11-15T15:51:00.005-05:00

LeeAnne Smith and the folks at Asheville BookWorks have put together a video from this year's BookOpolis show opening. Check it out below!

In the video you'll see some of the amazing array of artists' books from the show. There were something like 140+ books on display this year. They represented the full spectrum of book arts, including fine letterpress printing, innovative binding, handmade papers, altered books, low-fi zine-style publishing -- you name it and there was a fine example on display.

There was a fantastic open, friendly vibe, and at a time when the death of the book is seen by some as a foregone conclusion, it was a thrill to be in a room humming with such deep and visceral appreciation for book-ness.

My Given Timbuk #1 makes a cameo at around the 2:35 mark.

"If a rabbit laid eggs..." -- more reader questions

2009-11-14T21:59:00.006-05:00

At the end of this week I was flattened by a Mack truck of a cold, so no new work to show from the studio.

Here's a fresh angle on Given Timbuk #1, in which you can see the dedication page. The book is dedicated to my wife, Margarite, of course, shown here as she famously posed for Botticelli's Birth of Venus.

Attached below is a scan of several more questions from G.T. #1. Again, handwritten ones were slipped into the book by readers during 2009 BookOpolis, and printed ones are slips that I placed in the book beforehand.

For the most part my intention isn't to answer these questions -- that's not the nature of the project and many of the questions are unanswerable. But there is one here that I can take a stab at: rabbit eggs are a combination of bright green, blue, red and yellow, with a very thin foil wrapper protecting their milk chocolate shells and delicious, creamy centers...

Given Timbuk -- "It's magic, damn it!"

2009-11-07T16:57:00.005-05:00

When Given Timbuk #1 was displayed at Asheville BookWorks' 2009 BookOpolis show, I was pleasantly surprised by how many people contributed their own questions. Here's a scan of some of the slips that people dropped in the book -- I'll drop a page of them into the blog now and then.

Handwritten ones are from readers; printed ones are my own questions and 'answers' that I placed in the book before the show. (My answers aren't in response to specific questions -- just interesting snippets of conversation or quotations that I've picked up along the way. The world's answers to my unasked questions...)

I think my favorite answer from a reader so far has to be: "It's magic, damn it!"

A new book of questions -- Given Timbuk? #1

2009-11-03T19:50:00.014-05:00

A couple of years ago I read Pablo Neruda's The Book of Questions for the first time. The questioning mode of it really clicked with me, and for a while I wrote nothing but question poems. Eventually I started recording answers, too, wherever I found them -- in books, in conversations overheard on the bus, in song lyrics, etc. The growing collection is called Given Timbuk?: A new book of questions. And now I have the first concrete result to share -- an altered book called Given Timbuk? #1.

I started with a copy of the 1965 edition of Marshall Lee's textbook of book design, Bookmaking: The illustrated guide to design & production. On the outside I altered the cover and spine to reflect the new title. Inside, I glued together the entire text block and hollowed it out with a slot in the top edge, like a piggy bank. When displaying the book now, I provide blank slips of paper for people to add their own questions or answers by depositing them into the book.

I added my own texts in the form of two small accordion-fold pamphlets pasted down to the inside of the book's back cover. One of the pamphlets features questions from the project; the other has answers.

Given Timbuk? #1 debuted at the 2009 BookOpolis show in Asheville. I wasn't sure how folks would respond to the interactive part, but by the end of the opening the book was packed full of handwritten slips. Some of the questions they contributed are hilarious, some of them are heartbreaking -- I'll be sharing some soon in a future post.

Now that the book has returned from Asheville we have it on display at the library where I work, open to more contributions from students and patrons.

See more photos here. Hope you enjoy!

Starting Out

2009-10-27T07:10:00.000-04:00

When I started fumbling toward making handmade books over 10 years ago, the last place I would've thought it would lead would be to a blog (if I'd even known the word then...).

I'll be using this space to post info about new and ongoing projects at blue bluer books, which is the fancy name for me making books. With several exciting projects in the works, I'm anxious to have a place to share progress & get feedback.

One project that promises to be extremely long-term is Dr. Miracle Man's Adventures in Heaven, Hell, Purgatory and Other. It'll be a collection of collages telling exactly that story. Here's a small detail shot from the first collage, featuring what a friend has dubbed the 'hippoctopus.'