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!

New local book arts group -- Triangle, NC

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

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

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

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

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

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.