A Life in the Book Arts

Susan is a reader, writer, maker, designer, collector, and teacher of the book. Starting with a love of reading as a child, she studied English Literature in college. Her early fascination with words led her to the study of their component parts (letters) in calligraphy and then their containers (books). She has made books with words and books without, created community installations, led workshops for children in schools and libraries, and shared her knowledge and experience globally through her website (makingbooks.com) and blog. In A Life in the Book Arts, Susan shares her work in the book arts and her growth and development as an artist.

Friday, February 3, 7 P.M.
Helen DeVitt Jones Auditorium, Museum of Texas Tech University, Lubbock, TX

Saturday, February 4, 1-4 P.M.

Free public events in conjunction with the exhibition Speaking Volumes—Books and Ideas from 1250-1862.

Book Arts Tuesday- Charlotte Brontë Book

I heard about these amazing miniature books in December when they were being auctioned at Sotheby’s in London. The Brontë Parsonage Museum in Haworth, West Yorkshire was working to raise money to purchase the books.

Here is what Director Andrew McCarthy wrote on the parsonage blog on November 15, 2011:

The manuscript, previously untraced and unpublished, is expected to fetch between £200,000 - £300,000 and contains three works by the young Charlotte Brontë, produced in September 1830 when she was 14 years old. It is part of a series of manuscripts known as ‘The Young Men’s Magazines’ which were inspired by a box of toy soldiers bought for Branwell Brontë by his father in 1826.

The soldiers sparked a remarkable burst of creativity from the young Brontës who began creating stories which were handwritten into tiny books intended for the toy soldiers to ‘read’. Their minute scale and miniature details, such as title pages and advertisements, were modelled on a popular publication of the time, Blackwood’s Magazine. The Brontë Museum has the largest collection of these little manuscript books in the world and they are amongst the most popular exhibits with visitors and have also been the subject of much scholarly research in recent years.

The little books chart Charlotte Brontë’s development as a writer and reveal how many of her early themes carry over into her published novels. The first piece in the manuscript to be sold at Sotheby’s recounts how a murderer is driven to madness after being haunted by his victims, and how ‘an immense fire’ burning in his head causes his bed curtains to set alight, prefiguring the well-known scene in Charlotte’s novel, Jane Eyre, in which Rochester’s insane wife sets light to his bed curtains.

This manuscript is currently in a private collection and has never previously been published. It’s certainly the most significant Brontë manuscript to come to light in decades, but we should also see this as a national treasure with significance to our broader literary heritage. It would be very sad indeed if this wonderful manuscript were not repatriated or was again lost to a private collection. We feel very strongly that it belongs here in Haworth and we’re appealing for people to get in touch if they can help us raise the funds to make sure it does return, so that visitors can enjoy it, either here at the museum or through our on-line resources.

The books did in fact go to another buyer—La Musée des Lettres et Manuscrits in Paris. The museum intends to put the book on display.

View images of the book at the Houghton Library website.

Zut alors! Here's the Daily Mail's take on a British national treasure going to France.

Reading about this reminded me of a children's book I had read in high school when I became fascinated by the Brontë clan—Return of the Twelves (first published in England as The Twelve and the Genii) by Pauline Clarke. After moving into a house in Yorkshire where the Brontës had lived, eight-year-old Max finds toy soldiers who come to life. He discovers they are in fact Branwell's and the plot involves word getting out a buyer wanting to take them to the United States. The little books are mentioned in the story. I reread it and found it delightful yet again.

Studio Sunday-Cartridge Pens

Recently I've been having the urge to play around with edged pens after years of working only with my Pentel brush and color brushes. I'm basically pretty lazy and don't want to have to clean pens or brushes. I collected a few markers but wanted the metal edge of a pen. I purchased a Lamy Joy cartridge pen set on our pre-Christmas trip to Montreal, ordered a replacement pen from John Neal when I thought I lost it, and included the Pilot Plumix in the order. I love them both. I'm using the Pilot Plumix as my carry-around pen (the long shaft of the Lamy makes it easy to tumble from a bag) and the Lamy Joy here in the studio. John Neal sells both and although I prefer to get my supplies from him, I wanted to feel connected to the romance of Montreal and purchased it there. I was experimenting with the title page of the Bhutanese-Nepali folktale project, The Story of a Pumpkin.

Lettering the Walls of Hawthorne's Birthplace

These days unexpected opportunities usually come by email but this one started with a phone call from Alan Collachicco, the Deputy Director and Curator of The House of the Seven Gables in Salem, MA. He was looking for someone to letter quotes by Nathaniel Hawthorne on the walls of writer's birthplace and had been given my name by Vicki Hendrickson, Director of Newburyport Adult and Community Education and founder and co-chair of the Newburyport Literary Festival.

Four rooms in the house are being transformed from period rooms to galleries about the life of Hawthorne containing the desk he wrote The House of the Seven Gables, his couch, a painting by his wife Sophia, and display cases of smaller items. My task would be to write five quotes, each a sentence long. Although I hadn't done a calligraphic commission in many years, I jumped at the opportunity. As I told Alan, I had been wanting to write on a wall for some time.

The plan was to do the lettering the following week. I paid a visit to the house to see the space, meet Alan, and get the quotes which were a bit of a surprise. With his liberal use semi-colons, commas, and dashes, Hawthorne wrote some pretty long sentences. It was helpful to get a feel for the spaces and to see the walls where the quotes would go.

The next step was to find the appropriate paint. I decided on Golden Fluid Acrylic thinned with a little bit of Acrylic Flow Release. I knew I would use my Windsor & Newton Sceptre Gold brushes, but it took me some experimentation to settle on the 1/4" one. I knew I was taking on a challenge as most of the lettering I have done lately has been done with brush pens or markers and scanned into the computer where I can make adjustments in photoshop. I also knew that the setting required a more formal look than my recent work and that I would have to make guidelines.

I can blithely commit to all kinds of things that require work and thinking beyond the art process because I know my husband Charlie will take care of the logistics. We knew we would need a level as the walls in the old house were not straight. We ended up using a 4' level. It took two of us holding it, Charlie with a flashlight to see the bubble clearly and me with a pencil for making the lines. I tested making pencil marks on our wall and they erased easily. I couldn't do my practicing on the walls of our house so I used rolls of brown kraft paper taped to the wall. My big studio wall had been taken over by my new giant get-organized white board so the only available space was in the house at the base of the stairs.

After some experimentation I decided that a centered layout was best. I knew I wasn't confident enough to write directly on the wall with paint so I planned to write first with two pencils held together with an elastic and use them as a guide when I used brush and paint. Writing the letters first in pencil enabled me to know the line lengths. After writing a few of the quotes out completely, I started writing one line on top of the next so we didn't have to make as many lines in the practice phase.

We then ruled out each brown paper piece and I did the letters first in pencil and then with brush and paint.

After I left out a word in the practice version of one of the quotes, we came up with a strict policy of multiple proofreads of the pencil version. Here's a picture Charlie took of me reenacting my discovery of the missing word. I'm not sure you can tell what word I was saying but it wasn't a nice one.

The following day we loaded the car and began our trip to Hawthorne's House. When we arrived, we met with Alan and used our brown paper versions to decide on the placement.

We had planned ahead to do the work in phases and it worked beautifully. First we went through each room and put the lines on the walls. We had a center vertical line and two lines 1 3/4" apart for the letters with 3" in between. Then we went through and I wrote the quotes on the walls with my two-part pencil.

After a short walk, some water and some seltzer, some deep breaths, and tuning in Mozart on my iphone, I started on the lettering with paint. I was surprised at how calm I was. I felt peaceful as I worked with Charlie's lights counteracting the fading light of the day.

In the last room, I kept thinking Charlie was behind me but it was in fact an image of Nathaniel Hawthorne himself keeping me company.

With two things left to do, lettering on the attributions (already lined and sketched in) and erasing the lines, we left for the evening. We returned the following day and started by erasing the lines. The pencil that seemed to come off so easily on the wall at home took a lot of elbow grease to remove here. After both of us working for four and a half hours, we finally finished the task. A different soundtrack was in order and we chose the Beatles.

The last step was to add the attributions. I had written them on brown paper and tried them in different places. I think this is one of the hardest parts. That last bit of information—the source of the quote— is often not part of the overall design process and it is so easy to place it poorly and throw the whole thing off at the end. I made them quite small and placed them six inches below the last line and to the right and was pleased with the arrangement.

As I look at the finished work, I see lots of flaws—letters that could be better formed and spacing that could be tighter or not so tight—but overall I am pleased. After years of pointing out exactly what is wrong with my work, I have taken Julia Child's advice of never apologizing. From My Life in France:

“We ate the lunch with painful politeness and avoided discussing its taste. I made sure not to apologize for it. This was a rule of mine.

I don’t believe in twisting yourself into knots of excuses and explanations over the food you make. When one’s hostess starts in with self-deprecations such as, “Oh, I don’t know how to cook…” or “Poor little me…” or “This may taste awful…” it is so dreadful to have to reassure her that everything is delicious and fine, whether it is or not. Besides, such admissions only draw attentions to one’s shortcomings (or self-perceived shortcomings), and make the other person think, ‘Yes, you’re right, this really is an awful meal!”

It was a gratifying project to do. I love the way it put me back in touch with calligraphy and gave me a chance to write on a wall. And it taught me something about myself. My experience in teaching large groups, giving talks, doing installations, and generally throwing myself into unknown territory on a fairly frequent basis has made me a much more flexible and confident person than I used to be. While I was much more practiced in the art of calligraphy twenty-five years ago, I would have been a quivering bundle of nerves. Thanks to Alan and Vicki for this opportunity to grow.

from The Letters 1843-1853, letter to Sophia Hawthorne, July 13, 1847

from the Blithedale Romance 1852

from the Marble Faun 1860

from The Letters 1843-1853, letter from Sophia and Nathaniel Hawthorne to Horatio Bridge

from The Marble Faun 1860

Book Arts Tuesday-Bonefolder

Today's post celebrates the last issue of Bonefolder: an e-journal for the bookbinder and book artist. Bonefolder is yet another accomplishment and contribution of Peter Verheyen who founded and maintains the Book-Arts List that does so much to keep the book arts community together. He has said what a difficult decision it was. Here is what Peter wrote on the Book-Arts L:

On January 13, 2012, Volume 8, the largest (and regrettably last) issue of The Bonefolder was published online. What started as an experiment in open-access online-only publishing “way back” in 2004 grew into perhaps the most widely read publication in the book arts with over a quarter million downloads for all issues combined since we began with a global readership. Listing of the The Bonefolder in the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) placed us in just about every research library’s online catalog, and participation in LOCKSS will ensure long-term access to all issues (as do Syracuse University Library’s and the Internet Archive’s servers). This growth, however, also brought with it ever increasing workloads for the small and incredibly dedicated editorial staff who solicited articles, worked with authors, and much more. With the 2011 issue we switched to an annual format (something catalogers curse publishers for) in the hopes that it would allow us to streamline processes and spread the work out as it came in. Alas, that did not happen in the way we had hoped and the process became unsustainable… When we began we knew it would be a challenge, albeit a fun one inspired by other independent publications such as Fine Print and Bookways, but also membership publications such as The New Bookbinder and The Guild of Book Workers Journal. Since we started other publications in the book arts other sprung up but ours remains the only freely accessible journal in the field.

Looking back, I think we more than surpassed our initial goals, and while I have deep regrets about “closing the book” I feel it is far better to leave the field at the zenith when we all still have energy for other pursuits (that we all know will come) rather than forcing ourselves to continue. So, it is with an intense sense of pride that I thank all those who have worked to make this publication the success it became – Donia Conn who encouraged me to start things in 2004, Pamela Barrios, Chela Metzger and Don Rash who formed the original core, Karen Hanmer who soon joined the team, and finally Ann Carroll Kearney who was a very welcome addition with this issue. To Samantha Quell, a long-time student of mine, our thanks for indexing our 14 issues thereby enhancing access. All of you contributed greatly to our success. Finally though, we would have not been able to exist at all if not for our authors, some established, some new, who filled our issues with articles that covered the full spectrum of the book arts.

Here is the Table of Contents from Issue 8:

Publisher’s Note
Evolution of an Artist’s Book – Sarah Bryant
John DePol Digital Archive at The University of Alabama – Amanda Haldy, Sara Parkel, & Dan Albertson
Reinventing the Flag Book – Jeff Tong
Bookbinding in Estonia – Illu Erma, translated by Silja Oja
Modern Portuguese Bookbindings – Sam Ellenport
A Tale of Two Boards: A Study of A Bookbinding – Sidney F. Huttner
Book Conservation at West Dean College – Abigail Uhteg
“How Do I Make It Stick?” Adhesives For Use In Conservation and Book Arts – Tish Brewer
A Bookbinder’s Gamble – Gavin Dovey
Reliquary for a Book – Florian Wolper
Towards practice: The Art of Bookbinding Used to Instill Craft in Graphic Design – Law Alsobrook
Durante and Wallace-Crabbe: LIMES – Perle Besserman
Of the Bookbinder (London, 1761)
Bind-O-Rama 2011– Artistically Reversible: Where Conservation and Art Meet
Book Reviews
Abbott, Kathy. Bookbinding: A Step by Step Guide. Review by Anna Embree
Banik, Gerhard and Brückle, Irene. Paper and Water: A Guide for Conservators.
 Review by Abigail Uhteg
Marks, PJM. Beautiful Bookbindings, A Thousand Years of the Bookbinder’s Art. Review by Beth Doyle.
Miller, Julia. Books Will Speak Plain: A Handbook for Identifying and Describing Historical Bindings. Review by Chela Metzger
Minsky, Richard. The Book Art of Richard Minsky. Review by Miriam Schaer
Starling, Belinda. The Journal of Dora Damage. Review by John Nove
Wallace, Eileen. Masters: Book Arts. Review by Jules Siegel

What a rich treasure of material! Thank you Peter.

Download your copy of Bonefolder 8.

Studio Sunday-Organizing the New Year + Giveaway

I am no longer teaching workshops in schools and I had always thought that when I stopped, I would focus completely on my own artwork. It turns out that teaching and sharing are in my bones. The time I am not spending in schools has given me the opportunity to get involved in interesting community-building projects like Lowell Women's Week Public Art Project and the NH Humanities Council Bhutanese-Nepali Book Project. Instead of this one wall free of shelves being used for display of my work, it is the place where I will try to keep myself together and on track.

As I find myself doing a wider range of projects, I have been having trouble with two things: keeping the details straight and committing to multiple things that take place pretty much at the same time. I had been using the google calendar which I like because I could keep track of other family members' schedules easily. However I have decided to go back to tried and true paper for keeping track of things—a big wall calendar and a pad and pen in my purse instead of notes on the iphone.

I did keep a running log of tasks to do in a binder on my desk but felt that I needed something bigger and bolder and constantly in my face so I can always see what I need to do both long and short term. I am trying a big white board on the wall behind my computer. When I am sending an email or talking on the phone, I can turn around and look at it and hopefully not agree to that one more thing that just might put me over the edge. Of course, it's an exciting opportunity I can always take it on but at least I'll have a clearer sense of what I am getting into. We'll see how it works.

Giveaway!
Leave a comment sharing one of your techniques for organizing your time and be entered into a random drawing for a copy of Art & Fear: Observations on the Perils (and Rewards) of Artmaking by David Bayles and Ted Orland, one of the books on my Artist's Journey Reading List. I do need your email address to let you know if you've won, so please include it. To avoid having it picked up by spammers. you can use (at) instead of the symbol. The Giveaway closes Wednesday, January 18 at midnight.

Book Arts Tuesday-Born from Books

Courtney Lee Weida has published an article, "Born from Books: Digital Spaces of Adolescent Art and Echoes of Artists’ Books" in Media: Culture: Pedagogy. I learned of it when she asked permission to use an image of mine. She kindly mentions the web presence of makingbooks.com.

Here is the abstract:

Many adolescents interact with text in a digital fashion via Kindle, the Gutenberg Project, and/or Google Books with greater frequency than traditional books. This article explores artists' books and bookwork as structural and conceptual metaphors for digital spaces of art created and/or utilized by teenagers. Artists’ books can be categorized as art and artifact—as materials of historical record, commentary, and personal expression. While book arts often engage in self-conscious reconceptualizations of text and image, digital media such as wikis, blogs, and online social networks dovetail, extend and/or reflect/are reflected by questionings of the book format as well. This article examines digital spaces (places?) of youth culture and artistic expression such as Myspace, Facebook, deviantART, and others. Artists' books often challenge traditional forms of publishing and codex, addressing questions of media and message parallel to ongoing issues of technology in our digital age. Digital spaces of art utilized by adolescents take on a similar autonomy, marginality, and liminality to limited edition and/or self-published artists' books. At the same time, both artists’ books and young artists’ websites contain a certain element of awareness of the viewer/spectator within narratives and documentary structures, serving as uniquely interactively engaging contexts of art education.

So we made our own computer
Out of macaroni pieces
And it did our thinking
While we lived our lives
—Musician Regina Spektor, in “The Calculation”



You can read the article online: Born from Books