Book Arts Tuesday-Literacy Projects

From the Staff Writers of Online University is an article about 25 Inspiring Literacy Projects Around the World. They describe it like this:

A literate, educated society is a safer, healthier, and more prosperous society. So promoting reading, writing, and other academic subjects stands as crucial to keeping humanity from wrecking itself before it checks itself. Local, national, and global initiatives lead the way in keeping the peace and promoting prosperity through knowledge. Whether wanting to start one up or to join in an organization or event already in progress, the following organizations can certainly inspire one’s sense of social justice and equality.

The links cover a wide range from an internet archive to incorporating canine companions into literacy lessons, from Braille to poetry to the "book famine" in Africa. Lots of interesting projects and ideas to inspire us.

Studio Sunday-Writing on Roses

This little bowl of dried rosebuds have made their way through the house. At Christmas, the roses were accompanied by a bell. Eventually the bowl made its way to my desk with the addition of a miniature rose bud from Easter. After looking at one petal which had separated from the bud for several weeks, I wrote the word "rose petal" on it with my brush fountain pen. Today I wrote on a few more petals starting Gertrude Stein's famous line and pinned them to the wall. We'll see if this goes anywhere. I have always been attracted to art without permanence.

Book Arts Tuesday-Poetry Fence

The "Poetry Fence" has just come down. Part of the Newburyport Literary Festival, it was in front of the Newburyport Public Library for two weeks. The project began last fall after I installed my piece at Outdoor Sculpture at Maudslay. I had purchased a large roll of tyvek for the project and had lots left over, including pre-cut pieces just ready to be made into books. I knew that the Newburyport Literary Festival would be focusing on poetry in 2012 and remembered the PoeTree Project I had done with students when poetry was previously the focus. Then, the students wrote poems on strips of tyvek which hung from trees around town.

We got permission from the library to use the fence and then I contacted Pat Levitt, one of the fourth grade teachers at the Molin Upper Elementary School in Newburyport. I knew that the fourth grades spent a lot of time on poetry throughout the year as I had made books with them a few years ago. They were interested and it all began.

I visited the Molin in late March and spent three hours working with the 8 fourth grade classes in four groups of two with the help of Nancy Smith, a fellow Festival volunteer. We made a practice Hot Dog Booklet from recycled paper that they could use for a draft copy and then a larger one from tyvek to withstand the outdoors. We spent a few minutes talking about the books. I suggested that each book should contain one poem and some simple illustrations. Waterproof Sharpie markers were left for the students to use to write and draw in their books. Two and a half weeks later, a bag of colorful books arrived at my door.

More Festival volunteers (Nancy again and Lucia Greene and Linda Harding) joined me for a morning of attaching a string to each book for hanging on the fence. Lucia and I then spent a morning installing the books. With Lucia on her knees on the ground and me in a crouch, it was beginning to get painful. Luckily I got the idea to borrow a few library stools—what a relief!

The poems were well-received. I got reports of young and old reading the poems and many positive comments about the quality of the poetry and the presentation. Thanks to all who made it happen. And to Alyson Aiello who interviewed me for a blog post about Poetry, Art and Children at Newburyport Today.

May Day Book Variation

Susan Marsh, a reader of this blog, shared this variation on the May Day Book. She made the book to welcome her mother home from the hospital on May Day. Her mother loved it so much, they used it as a model for a thank you card to the hospital staff. Her mother had carefully kept track of everyone's names and included them in her card. One of my favorite things about making books is that they are so easy to vary and adapt. As I wrote shortly after I discovered the wonderful world of making books: "Books have depth; they are rich with the possibilities of endless variation."

Thanks so much to Susan for sharing her adaptation.

Studio Sunday-May Basket

Sometimes things can be easy and simple, especially if you let them. I found the basket in a leftover free yard sale box on the street and did the lettering with a brush and my liquid acrylic and acrylic flow mix from the Hawthorne house—no planning ahead. Writing on the surface was uneven, the lines ended and started any which place, and some of the letters are just plain not good but it was fun and looks presentable. Strawberry, sweet woodruff, and lamium from the garden inside along with a few goodies and a Unite and Unite Book.

Books in Bloom-The Gift

This is my arrangement for the Books in Bloom event at the Newburyport Public Library tomorrow evening. A fundraiser for the Friends of the Library and the Newburyport Horticultural Society, it pairs flower arrangements with books. I first heard about it at a Horticultural Society meeting and immediately knew that I would base my arrangement on The Gift by Lewis Hyde and that it would include seed pods and the words of the medieval mystic Meister Eckhart that were quoted in the book.

The Gift has been an important book to me. Here is what I said about it in my Artist's Journey Reading List:

The Gift is the most recent book of influence I have read. At this point, I am particularly interested in the intersection of my work and the larger world. Hyde draws distinctions between gift and commodity economies and addresses the difficult place of art, which is fundamentally a gift, in the world of commerce. He draws on fairy tales, anthropology, and literature in an enlightening but sometimes dense conversation.

Lewis Hyde describes art in the creation stage as a gift in two ways—the natural talents of the artist and the gift of inspiration. He sees a third stage, when the art leaves its maker's hands.

The art that matters to us—which moves the heart, or revives the soul, or delights the senses, or offers courage for living, however we choose to describe the experience—that work is received by us as a gift received.

And in relation to the Meister Eckhart quote:

Our generosity may leave us empty, but our emptiness then pulls gently at the whole until the thing in motion returns to replenish us. Social nature abhors a vacuum. Counsels Meister Eckhart, the mystic: "Let us borrow empty vessels."

It is hard to summarize everything in this book. For a casual reader, there may be pages to skip. A wide range of subjects, including usury in the Middle Ages, is presented. However, I believe what Lewis Hyde says to say about the gift has great value not just to artists but to the creative impulse that is within us all. He is such an eloquent writer that it seems best to let him speak for himself.

...we are sojourners with our gifts, not their owners; even our creations—especially our creations—do not belong to us. As Gary Snyder says, "You get a good poem and you don't know where it came from. 'Did I say that?' And so all you feel is: you feel humility and you feel gratitude."

The arrangement of pods, both local—horse chestnut, rose of sharon, sweet gum, hosta, wild cucumber, dawn redwood, beech—and from my travels—southern magnolia from South Carolina and cotton from Texas, rests on a piece of bark which rests on a piece of papyrus. The quote was written with a Pentel brush pen on Lokta paper from Nepal.

Book Arts Tuesday-Medieval & Earlier Manuscripts Blog

The British Library has a great blog about medieval and earlier manuscripts. Today's post is about calendar pages for May from the Hours of Joanna of Castile, made in Bruges between 1496 and 1506.

"Courting and hunting are the themes for the month of May, in this calendar and many others. On the left-hand folio is a miniature of a gentleman and two ladies on a pleasure trip. They carry musical instruments, and their boat is piloted by two figures that bear a strong resemblance to grotesques. On the facing folio, beneath the two nude figures of Gemini, is another scene of courting, with a gentleman kneeling before his lady. This lady bears a strong resemblance to the woman on horseback in the April miniature, but in the intervening month she has apparently found a new admirer. At the far right are two men, with hounds and birds of prey, presumably about to join the hunting party that can be seen in the fields above."

Do take a look at the top navigation bar with links to Royal manuscripts, Digitized manuscripts, and Illuminated manuscripts. A wealth of treasures await.