Upcoming show in Pittsboro! Opening reception on Sunday, April 6th

I Ching #64: 'Unfinished'

After an unusually wintry winter here in North Carolina, today the air had a distinct smell of green to it. Not the green beer of St. Patrick's Day (although there may still be a whiff of that around), and not yet the visible yellow-green tinge of pine pollen in the air. Just the first, barely noticeable taste of Spring. And the much more noticeable increase in temperature to 70 degrees.

With Spring this year has come an exciting opportunity. My work and Lisa Gilbert's work will be featured in a wonderful little gallery in downtown Pittsboro called Liquidambar. Here are details:

• Where: Liquidambar Gallery and Gifts, 80 Hillsboro St., Pittsboro, NC
• When: The opening reception will be part of Pittsboro's First Sunday celebration on Sunday, April 6th, from 2-4 p.m. 
• When else: The show will be up for a nice, long, two-month run from Sunday, April 6th through Sunday, May 25th.
• When else else: There will be another reception on the First Sunday in May, too.  Sunday, May 4th, from 2-4 p.m.

I'll be showing a mix of work--old and new, artists' books and handmade blank books of different kinds. Depending on space constraints, the giant Book of Mister Miracles may make another appearance, along with his smaller cousin Doctor Mister Miracles's Guide to Miracle-Making: A Manual (Abridged).

2 copies from the 5-copy original edition of Doctor Mister Miracles's Guide
 to Miracle-Making: A Manual (Abridged)

I've also just had a larger edition of DMM'sGtM-M:AM(A) printed, which I'll be picking up from the printshop tomorrow. It consists of scans of my favorite version of each page from the original edition compiled into a new version and digitally printed. It's my first foray into publishing a larger edition (100 copies) that's neither print-on-demand nor an open-ended edition of handmade copies, and I'm excited to see how it goes.

There will be copies of Surf Book #3 at Liquidambar, too, as well as copies of I Ching #64: 'Unfinished.'

I Ching #64: 'Unfinished', open

There's other new work in the works, but it's not quite ready to be photographed yet. A scroll inspired by the flooding Haw River, painted using water from the river itself; and a new book in the I Ching series: I Ching #3: 'Difficulty.'  

I'll see if we can't post some photos of the newer work before the show opens, but if we don't, I hope you'll come out to Liquidambar and be surprised.

An angular blank book + Surf Book #1

The studio projects I'm working on continue to be pretty varied. Above is a blank book I was commissioned to make for a co-worker at the library.  The signatures are cut at progressive angles to create the effect.  I made some books in this shape about 10 years ago -- one of my first adventures away from standard book forms -- and it was a pleasure to re-visit it.  This one is 6" x 6" (if it were square), and about 3/4" thick -- a very satisfying, chunky little guy.

Here are two more looks:

* * * * * *

I'm also continuing to make progress on a new one-of-a-kind artist's book that I'm calling Surf Book #1, for lack of a better title so far.

On a recent trip to Topsail Beach, NC, I was reminded of how much I love the smells of surfing -- not just the ocean and salt air smells, but wet neoprene and sunscreen and surf wax.  More importantly, it was an example of just how powerfully smells can evoke our memories.  One whiff and I was a teenager again on surfari with my brother -- sense-memories that are especially powerful now that he's been gone for almost 20 years.

When Margarite and I got back home to Pittsboro, I started making this book out of an old wetsuit, writing the text with surf wax and magic marker.  Below you can see the first page (I don't want to give away too much yet!) and the spine, which includes the original zipper from the wetsuit.  Still a ways to go, but it's shaping up: 

 

 

Artists' books and artists' books

Usually when I talk about artists' books, I'm talking about books that are conceived of as art objects in and of themselves. [Click on the link for a thoughtful meditation by book artist Angela Lorenz on the question "what is an artist's book?"...]

Sometimes, though, I work on a different, more literal kind of "artist's book" -- blank sketchbooks for local artists to use. As fulfilling as it is to create an artist's book from the ground up, it's also extremely satisfying to make a blank book for a talented artist, anticipating the work that will fill its pages.

I want to take a moment here to point you to the work of 2 local artists for whom I've made sketchbooks. Their work is very different from each other's, but equally stunning. Most recently I made one for Phil Blank, a Hillsborough-based artist. If you check out the 'Journal' section of his website, you can see what the pages of his sketchbooks end up looking like. Another artist I've been lucky enough to make sketchbooks for is Laura Murphy Frankstone, who chronicles her work on the blog Laurelines.

The sketchbooks I've made for them aren't dazzling or innovative -- they're standard Coptic-bound books with pages of watercolor or multimedia paper. But they are a total pleasure to create, for the meditative craft of it, for the satisfaction that comes with creating any solid, real, functioning thing, and for the knowledge of what will fill their inviting, blank spaces once the artists have made them truly their -- the artists' -- books.

Blank books just in time for the holidays!

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!

New blank books for sale!

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!

A rougher kind of book beauty

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!