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I
got into bookbinding while studying photography at the University
of South Illinois at Carbondale. One of my professors, Chuck
Swedlund, hired me as his graduate assistant on his photographic
caving expeditions. I carried equipment, held strobes, and
fired off flash
bulbs for Chuck and other cave photographers. For several
months we
worked almost every day underground. During the long stretches
of
inactivity, I searched for fossils and cave life and took
photographs
of my own. I also spent a lot of time wandering above ground,
collecting images of melting ice, weathered rocks, eroding
soil, and
rotting trees. I found myself gravitating towards the colors
of decay,
the beauty of aging. I kept an eye out for Native American
petroglyphs,
abstract designs or images of footprints or animals and became
good at
finding them. These places seemed sacred to me.
One of the first books I made- this was before I knew how
to bind-
was an altered book, printed in Greek. I glued the pages together,
and
they were so brittle that I could scrape out a Native American
rock
painting that I often saw in Southern Illinois. Another time
I found
a little newt, a red eft, that had been flattened by a car
on the road.
He was dry, curled up, and so paper-thin that I preserved
him
between two sheets of handmade paper and mounted him in a
book. It
was my version of a petroglyph.
Rather than mounting my photographs on gallery walls, I decided
to
place them in boxes or books so that the viewer had to explore
them
actively, rather than just wandering past. Around this time
I
visited my sister Mary in Iowa City and met a friend of hers
named Al
Buck, who was making wooden-covered Coptic books. The binding
was
first used around the fourth century, in Ethiopia or North
Africa, or
perhaps this is just the area where the books were best preserved.
Al sent me a book that he had made, along with hand-written
instructions. Since I knew nothing about bookmaking or sewing
or
paper or woodworking, it was a challenge. The books had holes
drilled vertically through the board, but other holes were
drilled at
angles from the edge of the board to both the inside and outside
face. This perplexed me, because I didn't know whether to
use a
drill press or hold the board in a vice at an angle. Al told
me to
clamp the board to the inside of a drawer and then drill the
hole
with a hand-powered drill, just eyeballing it. I was happy
to learn
that it was easiest to drill the holes with a simple tool
that my
grandfather might have used. (Bowing to convenience, I now
use a
metalsmith's power drill called a flex shaft, but I still
eyeball the
angle.) Once I mastered the drilling, the rest of the process
fell
into place. Still, it took me nearly two years to make a book
I was
satisfied with.
What first appealed to me about Coptic books was that, unlike
most
hand-bound books, they open completely flat. When I put images
on
the pages, you could see the whole image without struggling
with the
binding.
My first book arts mentor was Frances Lloyd Swedlund. At the
time she
was a cinema and photography graduate student at Carbondale,
but she
also made exquisitely crafted books. A lot of people were
impressed
with the first boxes and books that I made, but Frances was
not. The
others liked the simple fact that I was making boxes and books;
she
saw that they were sloppily made, with no sense of craftsmanship.
Frances, who had studied at the Penland School of Crafts,
knew it
was the place for me to learn bookmaking, and she urged Chuck
(who had taught at Penland himself) to send me there. Chuck
was
reluctant to lose his assistant, somebody had to haul his
equipment
through
the cave muck, but ultimately he agreed.
As I finished my degree at Carbondale, I spent my summers
as a work
scholarship student at Penland, and later I became a core
student
there. It was at Penland that I began to concentrate exclusively
on
Ethiopian Coptic books.
Dolph Smith helped push me beyond the simple Ethiopian book.
He was
making sculptural books by hanging paper from wooden structures,
and
I tracked him down and ultimately studied with him. Under
his
influence I developed my bridge books, which use the same
Coptic
binding but exaggerate each of the elements: the covers become
elongated into two-foot-long towers that stand on a tabletop,
and
rather than 10 or 12 signatures in the text block, I use 100
to
200, well over 1000 pages. I can't afford that much new paper,
so to
make the bridges I return to the idea of the altered book.
I find
books that have mangled spines and covers but good quality
paper, and
I use that paper in my work. Often I use old Bibles with
exceptionally thin paper, which has a nice drape and flow.
I like to
listen to bookbinders try to justify tearing up old books,
because it
sometimes makes them feel a little guilty. I don't have much
of a
problem with the practice, because the books I alter are not
rare,
and they've already lived their lives. Bookbinders have been
recycling books for 2000 years. In some of the first Coptic
books,
wood was scarce, and the binders would take old papyrus scrolls
and
laminate many layers together to make thick book covers.
One of the first people I met at Penland was Julie Leonard,
who was a
resident artist there at the time. I assisted in her classes,
and
she helped me learn how to make a living by making production
journals. These are still one-of-a-kind books, but I can make
them
fairly quickly and sell them for a reasonable price at shows.
I've
made hundreds over the years, and I can't imagine stopping
now. I
spend so much of my time sewing books that the process is
meditative.
It gives me an opportunity to think about the structure of
the
book, and how to stretch the limits of the Coptic form.
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