After a long period of house renovation, I’m slowly starting to think about bookmaking. I’ve been running across various how-to posts that I’ve marked as interesting ideas and thought I’d post them here — my latest find: how to make a hollowed-out book.
When I left Vermont almost a month ago, a few trees had already turned orange & red. I certainly wasn’t ready then for summer to be over and I’m a bit sad that trees here at home are now starting to turn. My aspens are still green, but when they turn yellow I know it’s really autumn.
Since I spent so much time this summer away from home, as well as getting ready to leave and recovering from being gone, I wasn’t going to make a calendar. But then I started doodling around my haikus while I was away — I didn’t know about haiga yet, but I was interested in seeing if I could make some visual poetry. The upshot is I have a calendar designed, the paper is cut, and I’m just waiting for my plates to arrive in order to start printing. I should have some pages to show later this week.
Dartmouth College has a web version of their A Simple Book Repair Manual. It goes through the tools you’ll need as well as repairs such as tipping in a page and spine repair.
It’s been a long time since I posted a book in my artist’s book collection. Then the other day I read that the poet Kay Ryan had gotten a MacArthur Fellow Genius award. I have a broadside from a reading she did at the SF Center for the Book in 2001 hanging near my own press (that’s it to the left — click on it to get a larger image and read the poem). Ryan had allowed the Center to use her poetry in a book produced by a year-long letterpress class — the text is in Centaur, set by hand, and the drawings, by Michelle Geiger, were done in photopolymer. I also have a copy of that book, which I happily re-read. The title page is shown below.
There wasn’t a library in the town where I went to elementary school. Instead we would use the book mobile — a library inside a bus that periodically came to town. It was exciting when the city eventually built a library, and it became a hub for the community, providing a place for meetings and studying as well as reading and reference material.
The Uni Project is an attempt to create communities by “temporarily transform(ing) almost any available urban space into a public reading room and venue for learning. We start with the conviction that books and learning should be prominent, accessible, and part of what we expect at street-level in our cities.” They want to augment what libraries do
Materials in the Uni are for browsing only and do not circulate. Areas of focus are children’s picture books, poetry, short works, art books, and reference titles. Special “curated” collections rely on the physical constraint of the 16″ cubes to provide concise, in-depth looks at various ideas or topics. Whenever possible, these cubes are curated by an individual who loves books and is deeply knowledgeable and passionate about a particular subject. For example, one curator is working on a cube dedicated to the origins, history, and use of knots—this cube will include a rope and cleat board for practicing basic bends, cleats, and hitches. Another is developing a cube on deafness and sound. Cubes may also be curated by an organization. Curated collections convey a sense of passion and depth too often missing from content chosen for public space. They also serve to include different “voices” in the collection, reflecting the communities where the Uni operates.
They’ve deployed one example in lower Manhattan. You can find out more about the project here, see their kickstarter campaign here. The idea for the Uni Project came out of Street Lab.
One Hundred Thousand Poets for Change is a worldwide poetry gathering and reading — happening today (Sep 24). 700 events in 95 countries are planned. The organizers say
The first order of change is for poets, writers, artists, anybody, to actually get together to create and perform, educate and demonstrate, simultaneously, with other communities around the world. This will change how we see our local community and the global community. We have all become incredibly alienated in recent years. We hardly know our neighbors down the street let alone our creative allies who live and share our concerns in other countries. We need to feel this kind of global solidarity. I think it will be empowering.
Look here to see if there’s an event in your city.