Bookmaking – Page 49 – Green Chair Press Blog

Poetry Inspiration

Last week I went to the opening of a show called “Odes & Offerings” at the Community Gallery here in Santa Fe. Our current Poet Laureate had selected 36 poems by local poets, then artists applied to make a piece using a line or phrase from one of the poems as inspiration. Many of the artists incorporated the text of the phrase into their finished piece, and it was quite wonderful to see a gallery so full of words!
One of the pieces I particularly admired was by Joy Campbell, a sculpture that had small books in it. Turns out I had run across Joy’s work a few months ago at another gallery here (one with a small side room labelled “book arts!”) She makes altered books, and they are quite wonderful. You can see many of them here. And below is the piece I saw at the opening, The Yellowwood Tree, from poem by Lauren Camp. On her blog, Lauren says “Joy told me, ‘Your lines Decades ago, she planted the book of life and added daily to its chapters and Now, the many pages of her story grow around her are the words that inspired me to do the art piece.’”

Ingrid Dijkers’ Tunnel Books

While looking at tunnel books this past week, I ran across some marvelous work by Ingrid Dijkers. Her tunnel books aren’t bound on two sides, but only one as a regular book. But using cutouts in the pages, she gets a tunnel effect, both forward and backward! There’s a story to go along with the illustrations, so they are good examples of incorporating text into the structure. The one below is called “Though the Rabbit-Hole.” Her blog has several more examples. She also has a website with a gallery of her journals, tunnel books and altered books.

How To: Tunnel Books

After making a tunnel book for my last prompt challenge word, I spent some time looking at other tunnel books as well as directions. Here’s some of what I found:
A tunnel or peephole book is a set of pages bound into accordions on two sides and viewed through a central opening. Scenery or shapes are cut out of the pages and then assembled in layers. Inspired by theatrical stage sets, this book form dates from the mid-eighteenth century and continues to be popular.
The photo is of Kara Russo’s Tibet as I Remember It — I especially liked this one as it uses color and shape in much the way I tried to use them in my own recent model.
I made my book using an accordion spine on the left and right, made out of thin white Japanese paper so light would come through the sides. The National Museum of Women in the Arts has PDF directions for this sort of structure.
Ed Hutchins has instructions for a slightly more involved, one sheet tunnel book. On his website, his article Exploring Tunnel Books includes a history of tunnel books and a photo gallery of example books. There are good discussions of what makes the structure a book, rather than a novelty piece, how various artists have adapted the form, and how one might incorporate text.
Book artist and teacher Carol Barton has been instrumental in popularizing tunnel books with book artists. She has a gallery of tunnel books on her website.
Beth Lee has a nice list of links to tunnel books she likes.
Rand Huebsch wrote an article for the Bone Folder on tunnel books.
And lastly, click here to see all the tunnel book images Google has collected.

Prompt Challenge: Profluent

profluent, adj; Flowing smoothly or abundantly forth.

The arroyo in front of my house One of the usage examples for this week’s word was from Caitlin L. Gannon’s Southwestern Women: New Voices:

In southern Arizona, it rains in summer, and I’m impatient for the monsoon torrents of August, for an indulgence of water, a baptism that will roister over rocks and swell profluent down the mountainside, roll through the rubble of the canyon floor…

This immediately brought to mind an August afternoon in our first summer in Santa Fe, and our introduction to “monsoon season.” The sky got dark very quickly, followed by cracks of lightening and thunder, followed by a 30 minute torrential downpour. The rain came down so hard we ran inside and watched from the porch as the arroyo running along one side of our house filled almost to the brim. And as soon as the rain calmed, we donned rain jackets, pants and boots to see if there was any damage. Luckily not.
It’s winter now, so the arroyos are dry. But I took some pictures (that’s one above — the water came almost to the top of the stones in the lower left of the picture that August two summers ago), printed a few and propped them up next to my computer to look at. I also took pictures of arroyos around town.
What I love about the southwest are the muted colors, especially the browns of adobe houses, against the brilliant blue sky. The paintings below, all by Georgia O’Keeffe, give you an idea of that contrast of brown and blue.
Besides brown, the other prevalent color is green — the dark green of pinon pines and the sage-gray-green of chamisa. After looking at my photos for a week, I wanted a structure that would mimic the pictures I had taking of arroyos, but emphasize the shapes and colors. So I made a tunnel book, trying to use the layers to show the depth in the photos.

Next word: carp, n; a peevish complaint.

Joy Serwylo’s Turkish Map Fold Book

As I continue looking at artist’s book on Etsy, I found Australian Joy Serwylo’s Willo Press where she makes miniature books. The one I liked best, given my recent obsession with the Turkish Map Fold, is her maps of the ancient world, below. The book has 6 pages, all with the map fold. See all her miniature books, including a cook book, here.

The Palace Press and Stories of O’Keeffe

Here in Santa Fe there’s a working press & bindery affiliated with the New Mexico History Museum, at the Palace of the Governors. They print collections of poetry for the state & city Poet Laureates and design & print really lovely broadsides. Currently they are printing and binding 100 copies of a special edition of a book about Georgia O’Keeffe (who lived in New Mexico much of her life). There’s a nice article and video in the local newspaper this morning about printing the book. The photo to the left is Tom Leech, curator of the Palace Press, printing pages for the book on their Vandercook.