since when

since when does 26 degrees feel warm? since 26 below zero, that's when! we just returned from a walk in the newly falling snow, and wind, and i didn't wear long johns and i'm nicely invigorated and feel really hot indoors! imagine if we had skied.

some critters know how to spend the winter.

 in my library, between two surfaces

last night while sitting at the table my spine actually shivered, as a little group of coyotes began singing within spitting distance of my house. i couldn't spot them, but it startled me. 

this is a very small room, it used to be the toy room, then the art room, where the kids made things. before i painted it, the walls were fairly decorated.

behind the basket in front of the little medicine cabinet is where i found the spider's nest 

books. all small, by me. and carol and aimee and roberta and shanna and sarah and amanda and susan and joanne and margot and asao. a tumbler by ian and a basket by gin. cheers!

and inside the cabinet? a heron's skull!

good work

there are times when i become intrigued with someone's work, and end up reading all of, say, terry tempest williams, or looking at all of hedi kyle's inventive structures and finding one of her workshops, peruse for hours the lovely papers at cave papers, perhaps seeing the group of seven oil sketches in the national gallery. i get hooked on a voice. a vision. another way of seeing and understanding that somehow infuses mine, which i suppose is research. or, as i say (wendy!) someone who "gets it". they resonate. often that person is female, sometimes not. this internet has been a boon to hermits like me. because the bits isolated old me gets to see are now so much bigger. and i can view video right on this macbook.

yesterday i watched a book artist talk with such love about his work. awe might be a better word, but in any case timothy c. ely caught my imagination yet again. about 15 years ago i was in our wonderful local university bookstore and i found this book. which i had to buy. it was made like a fine art book crossed with a magnificent children's picture book.

it is called the flight into egypt, binding the book. it is simultaneously a book about a mysterious journey into egypt and building a book, and includes amazing drawings and marks. it is so very much more than just what i've written. it was obviously a facsimile of a book, and even though the book is lovely, it is, i know not nearly what the original was.

i recently visited the website of the planetary collage and found this book, a catalog of work from a show a few years back. i purchased it and got a fine email from tim with the purchase arrangements. he inscribed it for me, including more beautiful marks in his own writing system, with enough english to help me along.

this is, i think, one of the blessings of the internet, this connecting. in the video, tim mentions a huge difference in book art and, say, painting. the book is held in the hands, explored with the eyes, it's best if it's smelled. how right he is, how intimate and visceral this experience is! 

it is my hope that my work in textiles, papers, fibers, is becoming stories, books, that, if possible, heal.

mould

look closely. this is the cutest mould and deckle, my prize from handpapermaking's spring auction. made by the incredible lee mc donald.

and did i mention there are two of these? the paper made on these two is business card size. 

one laid, one wove. both beautiful.

every leaf is a prayer, by aimee lee. a gift coming to me the day my sister died. 

thank you. you wouldn't have known, nor did i. amazing timing. 

the last day of school (except a few days of post stuff, including some exams). i got to ride a horse today at pray road stables. just a little bit. it felt wonderful. thank you, paula.

heat and a dear friend, not a duck! well, maybe a duck.

89 degrees here in the north country. the ice is barely out of the rivers! i'm felling faint! the light is surreal as well. supposed to be in the 60s tomorrow. 

i came home today from yoga and car maintenance (removing snow tires!) to the mail and this note from carol. i met carol blinn in the 80s through the mail. i saw a review about her book: Once Upon a Time, Book Two. i knew a tiny bit about letterpress printing, and the fact that this was funny, made by a woman, and about a duck blew me away. so i ordered it.

 i read with delight the tale of sipper.

sipper is transfigured in this tale:

she becomes three dimensional. and so, over the years i bought some of carol's books and  all of the once upon a time series. and the magic that happened is that we became friends by correspondence. one day when i was traveling through massachusetts with hannah and ian, i stopped at one cottage street, and we met. she gave us the grand tour of her shop, a place not to be believed, magical, ian and hannah still talk about it. carol taught me to make paste papers at wells college, and there we also attended the summer book arts institute. 


a few years ago i wrote a narrative about making an edition of handmade paper from birds' nests. i was struggling mightily with it, my graphic arts skills are less than rudimentary. carol offered help. i sent my ideas and text to her, she liked it and gave me some ideas. i still was stuck, this job was bigger than my skills. one day she gently said she would love to publish it. i would have to let her be in charge. that was a little scary, but i decided to do it.

24 nests is the small book, a booklet actually, with text, sample of the paper, sample of my record sheet, a drawing of a nest and an afterword by carol. the book, a slim story, became much, much more with her designing, editing, and afterword. 

in the afterword carol writes about our friendship ("My file is bulging with little notes written in Velma's almost indecipherable script on her homey handmade paper. There are sheets of folded milkweed paper protecting a braid of horsehair from her beloved horse, Mist.") more beautifully than i could ever. but i can still say here in public that carol j blinn, as my students say, rocks! go take a look at her press:

www.warwickpress.com. 

the buzz

in my house there is a plentitude of cluster flies. that's right flies. they are the bane of old houses. they were joined by ladybugs several years ago, and we spend way too much time dodging their wild flights and watching them land in morning tea. they are spring and fall visitors, preferring transitional times, like me. the visiting setters are mesmerized by them, perhaps they think they're tiny little birds. wendy hunts them sometimes.


the past week has been bird-full, and about mid week i heard my first morning robin singing. this morning turkeys, robins, red wing blackbirds, crows, starlings, cardinals, chickadees the list goes on. i even think i heard a white throated sparrow. i don't know many of the voices i hear. one i haven't heard yet is woodcock, though they've been seen.


finishing up my second round of antibiotics and am finally feeling like myself. my friend once said after taking a fall from her horse, "i think i'm back in my body again". that's how i feel.


three exciting paper events this week. one is that i'm going to pbi, the paper and book intensive, this year. i'm excited to be in three wonderful classes taught by tatiana ginsberg, frank brannon, and melissa jay craig. my head will be bursting with energy and ideas after that! the second is that i have a serious inquiry about teaching, that may be a long-term event rather than a workshop, here at my mill. and the third was this:

i was comissioned to make this:

wendy's book

as some of you know, and it arrived and is being used. with positive results. more, perhaps, about that later. also one of my books, 24 nests, purchased by a friend, was given to a loved one, passing along the joy of this little book. i am reminded of the healing possibilities of art, the material objects that touch hearts. and passing it on. 

artists' books; stationers bindings

spring walk

this time last year, i began weaving together many of the threads from my different loves: smallness, dyeing, spinning, weaving, simple looms, vellum, stitching, story. the first book i made was my exemplar.

vellum exemplar

peter verheyan at syracuse university and the brodskys bring an expert in the field of library, conservation, and book arts to syracuse university library for a weekend lecture and workshop. two novembers ago chela metzger came and presented a wonderful talk about the field of library and conservation science. the workshop was on medieval and early modern stationer's bindings. working with chela was eye opening, the simple, functional, and exceedingly elegant bindings were the equivalent of ring binders today-simple, cheap, easy to make, simple to store; but mostly they did the job well, unlike a three ring binder. chela took us through the process of making a secondary tacketed binding, using paper for textblocks, vellum for the binding, tacketing the sections into the binding, and making typical closures. this teaching stewed until a first book came along, actias luna, a book made using many of these techniques, but my own sensibility. the materials are linen case paper, my overbeaten daylily paper, a beaded moth, and waxed linen thread. the text, a poem, was written in ink on white gouache applied to the pages.

actias luna

then came three small shifu books, and there are a couple more in process. the thing that ties together all of these books, artists' books, is story. each one is a narrative of an event, or a time, or a learning, or even a poem. they are ways to frame the exquisite or mundane experiences in a mechanism that provides the reader a personal glimpse, a haptic adventure into book. for me this is when spinning, weaving, dyeing, textiles meet paper, words, and books. what more could be better? 

spring walk, sewing detail

i posted this on sunday, and some of you get a notification of that. i really don't understand how that works, but i withdrew the post. then, today, i reread it. i hope i haven't shifu-booked you to tears. feel free to skip this-