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Last Car Over…Peter Orner's New Book of Stories
I drifted about the house after finishing Peter Orner's latest book Last Car Over the Sagamore Bridge mulling over the stories, and Joni Mitchell songs started playing in my head from the album Court...
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Sgraffito Across Media
Techniques can cross genres. You can do sgraffito (scratching through layers) in a variety of media. For one, with acrylic inks and gesso. See pages 67-69 in Painted Paper for instructions. I usually...
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Earth Without Art Is Just…
My dad sent me this. The sign is posted on the door to an art room at a school in Los Angeles. I like the reference to both art and language through word play.
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Make a Paper Address Booklet from iPhone/iPad App
A new app has just been released that can format your iPhone or iPad contacts list into an address booklet to print out and bind. Even though I have a contacts list in my phone and on my computer I...
View ArticleStar 82 Review 1.3 Is Live!
The third issue of Star 82 Review is now live online and you can read it! Star 82 (*82) is the art and literary magazine I began last March. I receive between 100-300 submissions per month and choose...
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Family Book Lab in Berkeley
I finally caught up with Coriander (a.k.a. Cory) Reisbord, my longtime colleague in the book arts world (and at California College of the Arts). She told me that she had the opportunity to teach at...
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Save This Bag at the University of Iowa
I've been lucky to have a standing order with the Special Collections Department at the University of Iowa Library, and they have a copy of all of my editioned books (about one hundred). In 2009, the...
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Instructions: Tips for the Brush Book
The beauty of the Brush Book is that almost all of the folding patterns are the same: the pages are folded in half; the binding strip is folded in half, and then has several repeated steps; and the...
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The Sgraffito Process for Ceramics on a Bowl
Here is the sgraffito process for the bowl of Mixed Knots I made as a wedding present. Starting with the bisqueware and some drawings to work fromPainting three coats of the dark color (in this case,...
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A Crazy Little Thing Called Competition
Do you want to get better at your craft? Do you want your art and name to be recognized and do you want to be paid for your work? Sounds like the beginning of a self-help book. The problem is that...
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A Carpet Sample Meets a Two-Piece Box
Came home last week to find a door hanger ad for a carpet company that featured an actual sample of the carpet. We liked it, couldn't throw it out, so for fun I made this box celebrating the carpet...
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Secret Belgian Binding Goes Sculptural
The Secret Belgian Binding (originally named Crisscross by its creator, Anne Goy), is a versatile structure that begs to be experimented with. You can change the colors of the threads in the weaving...
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Everything Is…
I really don't know what more to say about this other than this mantra is giving me hope right about now. Of course, we could look at it as depressing, too, but in either case, we can find a way to be...
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A Visit to the San Francisco Public Library
Field trip! Took my CCA class to the top floor of the San Francisco Public Library to taste the Book Arts & Special Collections department. Special Collections Librarian Andrea Grimes was our guide...
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Jess and Poltroon Press
Critical Dreams, printed and published by Poltroon Press in 1986, is the only known published book of Jess’s writing. The dreams themselves (from the 1950s and 60s) were previously published in two...
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Grimoire: Spell That
On the Halloween special for the radio program Says You, one of the questions was "In which room would a witch keep a grimoire?" The contestants were slightly baffled. One said "the bat room."...
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Peer Pleasure: Robert Duncan, Jess, and Friends
A composer I know occasionally begins to write a musical piece and later realizes that she has heard it before: someone else has already written it. On the opposite creative end, I met a woman who had...
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Artist's Book from the Past: Cut, 1982-84
I'm walking down memory lane today, thinking about the mail art with the picture of Alice and Gertrude that Wallace Berman sent to Jess and Robert Duncan (shown in this post). It brought me back to...
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Speaking of Tongues in Boxes: A Tip
The Book Arts ListServe recently served up a nice course of instructions by way of a link to the Guild of Book Workers: The National Organization for All the Book Arts. Members of the group are...
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Mills College Journal Project for Jamaica
What are our responsibilities as artists? I wondered about this in the previous post, "Just Ruminating: Art to Change the World," but I didn't have any specific projects in mind. I've been seeing how...
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