45,000 miles of Book Arts

We’ve left behind the snow of the north and the humidity of the south, and now have entered the hot and dry west. We are staying in an RV campground in Texas, where the hardwoods shine in the last light of day with the new bright green leaves of spring. Just as we arrived the host rushed over to us asking if she could take a few quick promotional shots for "divine diva adventures" at the campground. We agreed and had hardly turned our backs when they had two beautiful white clad “divas” posing in the doorway of our wagon...

Meadowmere Park in Dallas, Texas

We have now driven more than 45,000 miles on our three trips across the country as wandering book artists. We have wanted to celebrate with a book arts cheer: “sew it, glue it, rah rah rah!” but really there aren’t any good book arts cheers yet, so this little celebration of what happens on trips will just have to do instead. Well first off we have given lots of tours of the wagon. Everyone wants to check it out and see inside. When they ask, "What is that?" We say, "Its a tiny home on wheels, an artist's interpretation of a RV trailer."

Parked at Oil and Cotton, Dallas

Students by wagon at Baylor Unibersity

Before we left home, we arranged to visit a number of special collection libraries at universities across the country, both to show them our recent work and to encourage them, in general, to collect artists’ books. The books always look so beautiful when spread out on the wooden tables of these library reading rooms:...

Books on display at Vanderbilt U in Nashville, TN

We have also been doing research on the history of Jug Band Music for a future project.

Peter with the giant disks in Memphis

We have taught bookbinding workshops where students learn how to make some of the binding structures we have developed and described in the book we wrote for Quarry Books titled “More Making Books By Hand."

When visiting universities Peter often has given talks to students about the history and future of the book as art. We have also taught papermaking workshops. 

Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge

Leslie Koptcho's Papermaking class 

Demonstration of hand papermaking at Baylor University

Iphone sized sheets of paper made during demonstration at Baylor University

Each lecture comes with musical entertainment as Peter sings a couple of book arts folk songs with his ukulele book!