TRAVELING IN A TINY HOME THAT IS REALLY AN ARTISTS' BOOK ON WHEELS

Peter and Donna Thomas have been making fine press and artist's books for over 40 years. When they started, as craftspeople at Renaissance Faires, they fell in love with the graceful beauty of "gypsy wagon" caravans that other vendors had made to sleep in or use as booths for selling their wares. In 2009 Peter and Donna built their own tiny home on wheels, designed after a typical late 19th century Redding Wagon. This blog documents their trips around the country, taken to sell their artists' books, teach book arts workshops, and talk about making books as art; as well as to seek out and experience the beauty of the many different landscapes found across the USA.

Peter and Donna started their business in 1977 and made their first book in 1978, so from 2017-18 are traveling to celebrate 40 years of making books with shows in a dozen libraries across the country. See the schedule on the side bar to find if they are coming to a town near you....

Follow the Wandering Book Artists on Facebook and Instagram!
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Click here to see a digital exhibit of all the books Peter and Donna have made since 1977.


Wednesday, August 18, 2010

Time for an OPEN CARAVAN

We are going to be having "open caravan" on Thursday in Boston area.
Stop by Lee McDonald's house at 31 Madoc St in Newton, MA between 5 - 7 pm. We show books, Peter plays songs and we generally have a good time...



We left the Catskill Mts with their picture-perfect pastoral villages on Monday morning, and reached New Haven, CT for a meeting with librarians in the afternoon. Yikes it was hard driving in the city....
AND THEN, a thrown-together open-caravan with Book Arts enthusiasts headed up by Paulette Rosen met us at the Eli Whitney Museum Park that evening for books, wine and song....
This very happy group had fun on the tour...
Spent one night with our friends Liz and Jim Beloff near New Haven. They are the proprietors of Flea Market Music, a ukulele concern. We are very excited about their new ukulele book coming out very soon, The Daily Ukulele, with 365 songs you are going to WANT to play!!

We spent one day swimming in the Long Island Sound. Camping in Connecticut. Playing ukes. Singing the song, California Stars, I started crying thinking about my California...
I miss the California air mostly. Please, if you are there now, go backpacking in the Sierra and look at the stars for me!

But onward! Wednesday: Providence has very tiny streets with lots of cars. Luckily the park had 4 spaces in a row to pull into. Peter kept an eye on the meters and again we had a successful meeting with librarians Laurie Whitehill Chong from RISD and her assistant Ariel in the caravan.

Peter parallel parked in front of the John Hay Library at Brown University. Well, he couldn't get in place very close to the curb, so I stayed outside and sat on the back porch to make sure we didn't get a ticket for sticking out in the road and entertained all the passersby with tours and talk. He went in and showed (and sold some too) our work to the special collections librarian, Rosemary Cullen.
Hope to see some of you soon,
The Wandering Book Artists.



at 6:34 PM

1 comment:

Tanya Cothran said...

I saw the most amazing stars in eastern Oregon last week. It was so dark and clear, with no moon, so that I could almost see all the individual stars in the far away Milky Way! Wow!

August 19, 2010 at 1:29 PM

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