Odyssey

 My 6th grade English teacher spent half the year having us read the Odyssey aloud. As we learned Greek and Roman mythology, I never realized it would be such a big part of every aspect of my life. From the names of planets, cities, and cars(!) to psychology... and archetypes and references in literature, movies and real life. When our Odyssey recitation was done, we wrote and acted out one story of the poem. My role was Athena, goddess of wisdom, handicraft and war. Looking back all those 50+ years, it seems to be a role I am comfortable with. Drawn to words, craft, and sometimes a bit bellicose.. this artist is also fascinated with the idea of life as one long Odyssey. 

Odyssey in some Wonderland...

My nightmares are always a variation of being on some endless labyrinth:  hallways, pathways, tracks, avenues, streets, railways, doorways, mazes, twists and turns, an endless moving forward in one direction or another.. never able to backtrack, or retrace the steps.. because they change with each moment. In 2015,  I spent one year making (and posting on this blog) a book-a-week based on the word "map". The books are about labyrinths, pathways, tracks, avenues, streets, railways, doorways, mazes, twists and turns. I realized mid-way through the year the theme was also challenging for me personally as those nightmares were revisited in many of my books. Yet, I still love the prospect of journey, travel, and returning to familiar places but with a whole new experience ahead.

Looking through the green tunnel at Le Pin...

This past May I returned to Gray Bear Lodge in Hohenwald, TN (graybear.org) to teach a books and box class titled "A Book is a Space." The title is taken from a poem I wrote about my perception of what is a book.

A book is a space…

the container

in which lives

a narration

a lesson

an image

an idea

a feeling

a communing with

You

The five days were spent on a 300-acre woods in rural southwest Tennessee. Giant beech, oaks, maples, poplars and pines towered above; while ferns, moss and a million tiny wildflowers carpeted the landscape.  The peace and beauty of Gray Bear is like some Eden on earth.

Prayer Flags across the road to Gray Bear

Each morning we took the board path through the woods for yoga practice in the skylit chapel-like yoga room. Then the 40 or so of us silently trekked back through the mist to breakfast.  

Path of Light

Then it was no holes barred as we donned our aprons, cranked up the music, and began our book arts class of pastepaper, box-making, and book making in our makeshift studio in the toolshed!

Showing off my paste paper and my nearly finished box

Enveloped in the art we were making, the world receded and we were in a Wonderland of book art creativity...

Checking that our handmade books fit in their newly made boxes..

But art isn't always just crafting objects. It can be just experiencing life. At Gray Bear we had delicious meals, beautiful surroundings, healing body work, and an incredible community of friends.

The Eden-like pool for Adam's Wasu Massage

My favorite of several waterfalls at Gray Bear

The outdoor sink ...for when we dined outside

This odyssey of time was an unbelievable gift to each of us who were able to be there in those moments at Gray Bear. So many wondrous things happened... to retell in a book or photo is impossible. 

You just had to be there.

Sunset over Gray Bear

A Beginning... Again

    A new year rings in and one cycle of time passes to reveal an open path. 2024 is here! I have been thinking about paths lately.. About the archetypical heroes journey, and where each of us stand on that path. As one chapter ends it's common to think back to all that has happened. 2023 was a year of great change for this artist. Significant loss.. with the passing of many dear friends. How does an artist (or anyone) deal with that? It's different for everyone. For my friend Alice (who supported my first teaching gigs and so many others in a thousand ways) we had a gathering under a shelter at a local park where 100 of us made handmade pamphlet books, collaged cards and tiny boxes, while listening to a mix her favorite (cool) music, watching a slideshow of photos of her 75 years on this earth,  and sharing our own Alice Stories.. To each who have lost someone this past year, may your memories be sweet and comforting with many of your own loved one's stories.

Paper flowers made for Alice's Celebration of Life, May 2023

   As the new year rings in, new book classes are on the slate at Blam! studio here in Raleigh. We've already spent 2 weeks immersed in the marbling baths (in some cases...literally!), moved the furniture all around, spread out plastic drop cloths, strung lines all across the studio... since warm but windy North Carolina didn't make it possible to hang our newly marbled papers outside... Frankly, this 7-person shared artist space was ALL ABOUT THE MARBLING for 2 weeks and I am grateful to my fellow studio mates (photographers, printers, painters, glass artists, and writers...) for their generosity and patience...

The walls at Blam during a marbling class this January 

What's coming up in the next few months?? As I explore the theme of journey I will have a series of classes based on the structure of a door titled the Double Door Series. The first class will be making Tunnel books with a double door on the front of the case. 

'The Art of Living' birthday card tunnel book... for Cynthia, March '23

"The Doors of the Castle" tunnel book, June '23

The next in the series will be 'The Book of Doors' class. Where students will include imagery and text in a stiff leaf book with double door fold-outs on each page.. Tranfers, collage, sketching, stamping, and paints will be included in the creativity for this class, but imagine the fun in viewing the final results!

page from "A Poem" using letterpress, acrylic paints, Citrisolve® transfers... as specified by the drawing of Julie Chen and Barbra Tetenbaum Book Artists Ideation Cards

The next in the series will be 'A Double Gatefold Book'. This delightful folded structure was shown to me by a fellow book artist who had received one with her grandson's burger meal at a certain fast food restaurant several years ago. We took it apart to see how we could make it as a book, and Voila! it became a new favorite book structure. The transformation aspect of this book is perfect for what happens in all heroes' journeys. The example below is a silly ditty that goes around and around, with a never ending quest: 

"Welcome to the City!

Have you lost your way? 

This Way! That Way!

Don't ever give up! Just Follow the signs!

Go Right Go Left

Welcome to the City!   

Have you lost your way?...."

Fold down, fold up...

rotate and fold in... 

rotate and fold again.... and repeat.. and repeat...
Letterpress, stamps, and a map were used to create the story about being lost...

    The last class in the series is a box structure based on a cigar box I had for years and was using as my traveling bookmaking tool box. The box had a unique locking board clasp which my teacher Julie Chen noticed and brought to my attention. Eventually I took the cigar box apart to figure out how to make the unusual clasp. Now it is a favorite box structure ..and many boxes later has also become a favorite class too.

The Double-Door box with a board clasp (silk book cloth & Kathy's marbled paper)

Peeking in...

In every heroes' journey there is always some unexpected surprise, some pot of gold that was hidden until just the right moment. Despite the work and struggles along the way, it's these unexpected treasures that always make me love this style of story.

I hope your year is full of a thousand unexpected treasures!

 The Definition of Summer.... studio time, garden time, kitchen time, family and friends time, beaches,  rainbows, travel, flowers, fruits, vegetables, heat ....long days that somehow are lazy and also full.

A tunnel book and lino block of a house on Geer St. Durham, NC

Bread and Butter pickles from extra cucumbers

Harvesting oregano and cucumbers from the garden

A book teaching gig at Emerald Isle, NC starts with a rainbow

A trip to see friends in the mountains at Penland

Zinnias in bloom by the studio

Finished a piece, 'The Bowl, the Book, and the Box' for the October show at Campbell House in  Southern Pines, NC

Quiches and casseroles... still trying to use up all the squash from the garden..

A morning coffee with mug from one of my favorite potters;
RIP Marsha Owen, Sept. 1954-July 7, 2023
We love you!

Edition watercoloring of woodblock prints: The Bowl and the Book

The garden out back just gets wilder and wilder... beans, tomatoes, squash, onions, peppers, kale, okra, cucumbers, rosemary, oregano, thyme, and chives, and milkweed, butterflies, bees, weeds, mosquitos

Hallie's Garden, paste paper painting for the Campbell House show
A wild garden of my past, my Great Aunt Hallie always planted her garden by the phases of the moon... and was said to be able to remove warts.. which she did for my Mom the summer I was eleven...

Diary

I found out in December that I will be teaching a Journal Making workshop in May '23 at Gray Bear Lodge in Hohenwald, Tennessee. The immediate reaction to the news was total elation. What had recently become a scary path of medical diagnoses, tests, more diagnoses, more tests, and uncertain findings was sidetracked buy the anticipation of gathering around the book arts table with a group of likeminded bookartists making our own unique handmade journals. I imagined being at the paste-painting table, dollops of colored paste-paint moving around the paper as we joyfully brushed, stamped, combed and scraped patterns and images onto large once-blank sheets of drawing paper. Folding and assembling the variety of colorful pastepapers around more blank pages for the text blocks. And then the meditative piercing of the sewing holes in the coverboards and text blocks. Then, the final step... an ancient style of sewing the binding.. poking the needles in and out of the sewing holes, criss-crossing inside each section, then linking each section to the last in a beautiful waxed-linen-thread chain of symetry and strength.

Journals bound with the exposed ancient Coptic chainstitch binding are wonderful journals, sketchbooks, and registers because each page opens flat so there is no skewed markmaking due to an uneven page. When things are smooth with no bumps, sometimes it's just easier.

But life is always filled with bumps, curves, dips, dives... from the first breath to the last gasp. In May, I'll tell my students that journals are a wonderful way to record a tiny bit of their life. Not much of a journaler myself, I usually like making the journals more than writing in them. But this past November, with the recent unexpected news of a new health concern I began a new journal. These are a few pages from that journal...

 

 Dec. 13:

 "normal"

 "normal" 

 “low” 

 “intermediate” 

 “abnormal”

 ........... 

 Korean dramas in bed all day 

 'drink water' (as if that will help) 

 'be positive' (I don’t feel like it)  

 Jan 13, 2023:

 

Red String Game

 a skein 

 of red yarn 

 spun out over time 

 and draped 

 across chairs and tables, 

 beds... 

 through doors 

 around corners 

 down paths. 

 crossing over 

 and under itself 

 wrapping like a

 misshapen package 

 or some mummy 

 what is 

a life.

I first played The String Game at my 7th birthday party. A surprise party, I opened the door to a room of my friends and a criss-crossed tangle of red yarn. Each child had a piece of yarn with their own name at one end and a surprise gift hidden at the other end. All of the strings were taped to a spot on the floor near the entry. The game began with each child finding their string, then winding it up inch-by-inch... following it over and under chairs, tables and all the other tangle of strings, slowly and carefully rewinding it into a ball without separating it from the anticipated prize... until the end was found and the prize revealed. I don't have any memory of what prize I found that day, but I will never forget the image of all those criss-crossed red strings and a dozen 2nd graders carefully navigating the maze of threads as they wound up their own balls of Red String...

Art is Everywhere...

"Sam's Art For Sale...$5"

 It's been a busy Fall. The window frames inside Blam! and the trees outside are strung with lines to hang all sorts of artwork, marbled papers, paste papers... Students have been busy learning all sorts of book arts...

Romanesque Binding books...

Nag Hammadi Books...

Carousel Books...

Stiff Leaf books...with windows and pockets..

Coptic Books...and Belgian Binding books..

Books with weaving warps in the pages...

One page.. what should I weave in it???

Traditional Cord-bound and Sewn on Tapes books...

Marbling...Marbling... Marbling!

     At home, the family came together from near and far on a warm sunny day in mid October. As we cooked a Brunswick Stew in a big black iron pot over an open fire in the backyard we played flag football, roasted oysters on the extra coals, played dolls in the treehouse, sat in the fall sunshine and reminisced of the old folks who started the tradition 70 years ago... Here is an excerpt from the 'zine' I wrote that includes that story...and the recipe my mom gave me in 1977 for our family's version of Brunswick Stew.

The Brunswick Stew

Back in the 60’s my parents didn’t have a lot of extra money to entertain their many friends, so Mom & Dad began making a yearly Brunswick stew using the free vegetables Mom got from her parents’ farm in Caswell County. Mom would spend days doing the prep work for the stew: shelling butterbeans, steaming & pealing tomatoes, shucking and cutting corn off the cob, and precooking the beef & chicken. Then, in the early hours of the day of the party, Dad would start a fire in the backyard to have hot coals for cooking the stew. He’d dig a pit beside the wood fire and build a simple brick structure to set the big black iron pot and the charcoals he'd made in the big wood fire. As the day passed, he’d take turns feeding the charcoal fire under the pot with small sticks while stirring the stew simmering in the big black pot. This would take about 5 or 6 hours. Below is the recipe that Mom wrote for me in 1977. It has been changed over the years to reflect the tastes of the eaters or the availability of ingredients... as it also was done was during those early years. For me, this thick, tasty stew is full of the love of family and friends...

Bob Carver’s Brunswick Stew

Precook Meat: Boil, and skin, debone, & discard fat and gristle. 5-6 pounds chuck roast
5-6 pounds chicken
Vegetables:

15 pounds white potatoes: pealed (or not) and cubed 1 1/2 bushel butter beans (or 14 pounds): shelled
18-24 ears corn, cut off ear (or 4 qt. cans)
5 pounds onions, chopped

1/2 bushel tomatoes, chopped (or ten 32 oz cans)
5 pods hot pepper (remove before eating)
1 can pork & beans; 1 pound okra (optional)
*Add corn in the last hour. Use 3 parts tomatoes/potatoes to 1 part corn,butter beans,

Seasoning: 1 cup sugar
3/4 cup salt (too salty! reduce to 1/2 cup)

black pepper to taste (Taste for additional)

Cook in 10-12 gallon iron pot on charcoals until thick and done. Will take 4-6 hours cooking on VERY LOW fire with CONSTANT watching and stirring. Cool before eating (or not!)

Sammy stirs the stew.. almost done!

Lily says, "No Georgia, no oysters for you"

At Blam! Studio... 

Headlines: Artist Studio Explodes! Lost Paint Set and Precious Earrings Found! For Sale: Artistic Masterpieces, $5 each!

A tornado passed through Raleigh today! It only hit this table...

...

It's Labor Day at Blam! studio. This book artist was busy working on an order of 10 handmade boxes for the Raleigh Arts Commission... After the first 10 boxes were finished last week, it was discovered that the measurements were one inch too small... A week later, Set Two is almost complete. The work table at Blam! at mid-day today was a jumble of papers, boxes, tools, and a few unfinished books from earlier days. Actually, though it looks like a tornado went through, many artists create this way.. in all the chaos there is an order.. but step too far away and it all becomes a shifting mass of black holes in which all sorts of things get lost.  

The For Sale corner

Beside the work table are a series of book shelves, cupboards, and cobbled-together shelves where this book artist displays many of the artist books, boxes, letterpress editions, and assorted ephemera that are FOR SALE.  Though many guests are immediately drawn to this corner of the workspace.. not that many works are sold actually... oh well. When taking the photographs for this blog, the artist suddenly saw her long missing round portable watercolor paint kit! There it was!.. right beside the tiny tea set and apothecary bottles and the snow-globe (made last summer when the grandkids came to the studio for a Blam!-Camp day). Can you see it? There are also a pair of missing pearl earrings.. What was the book artist thinking that day?... leaving that stuff around like that... Anyway, it's a relief they're found.

What doesn't belong here????

Across the studio there is a window of drawings by the young grandson of this book artist. On that day, earlier in the summer, while spending the day with his grandma, the 8-year-old finished his third drawing and on hearing they were 'very wonderful!' he asked if he could sell them. The answer was "Sure...?" The next question was, "How much will they pay?" A price was decided and a bunch more drawings were quickly completed. They are now hanging in the window awaiting an avid collector. 

Artwork for Sale: by artists Sam and Lily, $5 each

The young man's Aunt Rachel has already purchased one to hang in her new house. It's a pair of cheetahs.

Cheetahs in a Red Desert, by Sam 2022