new books

One of the new letter press printed gray labels in a lavender-blue book.

the lavender-blue book with matching beads on the spine.

new rusty red book with multi colored beading on the spine.

Here is one of my labels for this years books. I printed it at Pyramid Atlantic and cut and sewed it into the first signature of each new book after setting cold metal type and inking it up and printing about 40 of them on the Vandercook proofing press.

These are Light in October show flyers and two of my 8.5 by 5 inch books.

This week I cut two large pieces of davey board into numerous smaller book covers using the massive board shearer which is part of Linda Rollins binding studio at Pyramid Atlantic. The blade is amazing to pull down and cut through thick boards smooth as cutting butter. Many thanks to Linda and all the folks at Pyramid Atlantic Arts.

West Virginia

narcissus in the woods

 

waiting on the photographer to get in the SUV....

I guess someone made a joke about leaving him behind? 

rainy day view of new studio barn 

The barn studio isn't quite done. They just got the keys and will be adding some stone to the bottom & landscaping this summer. 

fire in a rusty pot warms the chilly evening air

porch sitters rocking in time to bird songs

wild service berry blossoms

view of the green studio barn and the cabin in the distance

Keith coming past the studio to see what is in the woods

diminutive yellow tete-a-tete narcissus 

We had the pleasure of a brief trip to West Virginia recently. Peter and Tom have a handsome cabin up there and they have just added a studio barn to the compound. Trees leaves are still not out yet but the gray bark and moss covered grounds made a soft backdrop for the white service berry blossoms and yellow narcissus. We spent down time rocking on the front porch and a later around a bonfire in a rusty kettle under a moon lit  sky watching stars and the passing clouds. It was fun chatting with the hosts and the next door neighbors who are building their cabin house themselves who dropped by to visit.  

We heard stories and earlier in the day inspected  the site where neighboring French kids with matches set fire to a hollow tree and the leaves on the lee side of the hill the day before we arrived. There was lots of excitement about fire and the crew come miles up into the back country for a children's' forest fire. Their old hollow tree had to be cut down and divided into sections to extinguish all the embers burning inside of the natural made chimney. Someone's daddy is going to get a bill for that handy service, so we hear. Rain came the third day of our visit and brought some much needed wet to the mossy forest floor. 

The flowering service berry trees are lower story tree and remain short and kind of delicate in the shade of the taller hardwood trees much like dogwoods and redbuds in the wild which bloom later. The white blooms are named to mark the return of the traveling ministers that long ago visited once a month during  fair traveling weather to small mountain communities cut off by winter storms and snow. Visiting West Virginia always reminds me of my family's Appalachian mountain roots and my visits there as a child. WETA one of our Public Television stations  in Washington, DC has been showing a four part series of programs on Monday evenings at 10:30 PM which I have enjoyed the past two weeks. Keith and I are both learning things we didn't know and refreshing some we did know. Cherokee Indians are featured a lot in the stories about Indian peoples who inhabited the forest before and after white men came. They say everyone up in the hills is related to the Indians including my father's family so whites didn't get rid of them entirely but they sure misused them and their environment.

I took a 30 second 360º view video from the driveway while I was there. 

Click this link to see it play on the weblog. 

You will be notice lots of rusty metal stuff around the artist's retreat because my friend and host Peter Wood is a metal sculptor who specializes in making his art works rusty! Visit his website  http://www.rustymetal.com/

to learn more about his work. We are discussing a two day event this October to show and sell our work together again called Light In October. More about that to come as time draws nearer. 

We all visited charming Berkley Springs on the last day we were in West VA where I really enjoyed a rare Book and Paper exhibition at the Ice House. The last time I visited the Ice House they had a show of quilts. Peter has large and small works available there year round. Then we went to the bird seed store and got our very own House Wren House which can be reused year after year. It has a trap door in the bottom to remove the small twigs every season so the male will be happy to come back and show off his skills to the discerning females who judge him on his song and nest building skills. It now hangs in our short lilac tree where the gourds have been for the past few years. 

Finally a fireside video... "dueling cameras" are me and Keith both shooting pictures of the fire at the same time. It is such a rare treat for us to see one, we both had the same reaction, "take a picture!"

done for this year

Homer Ailstock's raku pots got the best Oct. light

my book and print table 

small and large they came

rusty metal artist Peter Wood's table top sculptures

 

The Light in October show was great fun with good weather and light. We had a good turnout and the arts and crafts flew out the door. To heck with the recession and the economic crisis we have great stuff made by real Americans. I took a few pictures at our show and visited with lots of people. So much so that I  had a hoarse voice by the second hour from telling my book stories. We carried it forward for 8 hours. For those who want to see all the photos I took  at Light in Oct. I loaded them on Flickr under Light in October 2008 in a set. Click here: Light in October 2008

4 more books

one left to sew at the show

This shows you a book cover, fly sheets and signatures of white and some green backing and then the inside marble paper which will come together to make a little pocket sized book. 4.5 x 5.75 inches 

pink and red together

red wave large and small

pink blue lavender trims

The papers from last weekend's supply shopping are now in the final form! I am off to the show first thing in the morning with a stiff neck but happily holding a box full of books. 

L I O final preparations

red, white and Florence books

another view of them

close up of the spines on the pocket sized books

stamp size - full size 8.5 x 11"books

books 

Today is Friday the 17th of October and the big show is tomorrow morning. I have plenty of books completed. Five more are on my desk waiting for me to get back in there and sew them up. Bookbinding is fun but the self imposed pressure to have all that I want on the show table remains. I have to do other things today besides sew books to get ready. Things like put gas in the car and buy cream for our coffee tomorrow morning. Yet the day has arrived where I feel like I have a good collection of my books to show at Light in October V. I took some snap shots the other day of the collection as it was completed on Wednesday when Keith was finishing up his flower photography on the back steps I took the set up and did these shots of my completed books.

I have used  most of the red wave paper and it turns out a lovely book cover or end page. There are two beautiful blue and pink waxed paper books in the works and the large white journal. I got a small one done with a red wave and a special one from the Italian paper that Doug Kingsbury brought to me printed in Florence Italy with a special woodblock two color design which includes birds in burnt orange and foliage in green on a cream back ground. I got a gold and black satin cover and a green& rusty brown marble paper pocket size waiting to be sewn up. So in short I have a treasure box full of beautiful things I made this month. Hope some of my friends will find their way over to the Light in October show to see them. Next chance would be a personal visit or at the Plan b Gallery in November. Now time to get back to the studio and sew up those remaining books. 

 

the newest books

books 1

books that fit in my hand

books 2

Lavender blue, hot pink, grass green and soft gray are a few of the colors in my newest handmade coptic bound books. Last night at the BAWA poetry reading of curses, rants and revenge of the poet a great theme for poems, I was telling my poet friend and young neighbor Dan  Vera     about my newest book and the colors I chose to use.  It is always fun to select the textures prints and colors: lavender-blue two tone taffeta cover cloth, navy blue and purple print end pages,  hot pink fly pages and a softer pink spine paper instead of beads. These are all pulled together with a dark blue bee's waxed linen thread. I soon found I had quite a pretty little hip pocket sized book.  I am waiting for some poet to take one of the smallest books 2"x3" to write a poem in for a rare, one of a kind, book. Meanwhile I wanted to show the book selection is growing each day. These will all be available at the Light in October show I am doing on Saturday Oct. 18th. 12-8:00 PM in Arlington, Virginia. 

national book festival

photo from library of congress on Flicker.com

boys in Brooklyn NY from library of congress photos on Flickr.com

 National Book Fair 2008

applause for the writers films will be online of the speakers

Capitol view in a puddle

computers for searching in the LOC tent

I went to the 8th National Book Festival on the mall Saturday the 27th in rainy muggy warm weather. I have been trying to go for the past 8 years since I first heard about it on the news. This year finally I made it and discovered an enthusiastic  crowd of book people. There were lots of cool activities for children to do. Adults were treated to book signings, and lectures by writers on their published books. I went to hear Geraldine Brooks talk about her work. I read her first novel and am currently working on her third. She was a hard core news reporter in Sarajevo during the war and when she switched to fiction she wrote this story about a Hebrew illuminated book that was a rare treasure and has been saved from the fires of hate several times over the last 700 years.  She told us she got the idea in a bar in Sarajevo during the war when reporters gathered at night to discuss the days news in the dark with no electricity. Title: People of the Book tells you one reason why I was interested in this book. The combination of book history and book binding was clearly targeted at me. The story is told by a fictional book conservator who is repairing the damaged manuscript. It is a story of a real book but the fiction she added to expand the people who's hands it passed through over the centuries. At the book fair I had no trouble to find Geraldine and heard her speak and enjoyed it a great deal, but the crowd was so large that there was no  seating and then the line to get her autograph in my copy of the book was over one hour's wait in the sprinkles that fell. I carried a small umbrella but what a drag to have valuable hard backed books in the rain. Eventually I got my autograph and a complement on my folk life festival thunder dragon shirt from Ms. Brooks.

I really enjoyed the Library of Congress Tent. They had computers set up with big screens to explore their programs. One program I knew about already is on Flickr.com of old photos that are being viewed and comments are helping the librarians develop histories to go with the old images. I recommend everyone take a look and see if you know anything about their pictures. The librarian showed me one photo of a "three sisters diner" in Massachusetts which had no information with it at the library and over Flickr.com they got the daughter of this 1940's era diner to write a two page story about her father's moving to small town Massachusetts from Greece and opening that diner, so it is clearly working for some of the photos. The librarian says it is a favorite project at the Library of Congress( LOC ) to edit the comments and fact check them and I can see why. Reading the comments is at least as much fun as looking at the old pictures. LOC on Flickr.com  There is a link to the front page for the LOC project. I spent a whole afternoon just viewing and downloading my favorites picturess from the 1910's collection (see two above). I thanked the librarian for putting those photos on flickr. She told me that LOC has 14 million photographs and over one million of them digitalized. Luckily not that many are on Flickr. My Dutch pen pal says that the name Flickr makes him smile every time he sees it in my emails. In Dutch slang the word flikker means fag or queer. I wonder if the owners of Flickr know that about the word? It doesn't bother me to be associated with that name anymore like it did years ago.

This month and next I am working on my hand made books for my own fair. It is an arts and crafts fair my pal Peter Wood started 7 years ago. I have joined them two times, I think this year is my third Light in October. 

No one knows what that name means in case you were going to ask...

Light in October 

Saturday October 18th

at the Barcroft Community House 

Noon to 8:00 PM

800 South Buchanan St. Arlington, VA 22204

Maybe some of you can drop by to see the results of my binding work.