Book Arts on a Snow Day in Tennessee

Professor Kathleen O’Connell teaches the book arts classes at Middle Tennessee State University in Murfreesboro, TN. She invited us to MTSU as visiting (wandering book) artists to make a collaborative artists’ book while working with all three of her classes: Bookbinding 2, Letterpress 1 and Book Arts. We discussed structure and content ideas with Kathy by email, but decided to leave final decisions until we met with the classes.

Donna woke up the morning before the first class (inspired by an email we just received from a friend, Stephen Flanagan, that had real care given to the composition and a depth of content to match the quality found in old handwritten letters) with the idea to explore the interplay between letter as a shape and letter as a narrative.

The bookbinding class determined the structure, conceiving a simple binding that would convey the idea of letters being sent, a pleated spine with postcard-like pages attached.

The letterpress class met next and they determined a direction for the content, printing the letters of the alphabet on the 26 postcard pages, to represent the letters, or to imagine the stories that might have been told by letters or to letters. Students from the other classes also created letter postcards, using ink jet printers and hand inked flexi-cut stamps.

The book arts class pulled the whole collaboration together by titling the book “Letters”, creating a postcard-like title page, and envelope-like slip case to hold the book.

Working late into the night on the third day of classes, we finished ten of the 45 copies even though technically school was closed due to snow and ice. We have observed a trend these days to use a superlative like, "the oldest, farthest, biggest, etc. when trying to impress someone. Get ready to be impressed! During this collaboration we set two personal records. With a total of 32 students in the three classes, this was the most collaborators we have worked with on a single edition, and it was also the first time in our "California born and bred" lives that we have had a “snow day” while in school. We've always wanted a snow day!

Thanks to Jackee for taking the photos of the book collaboration.