40 Years of Work: Peter and Donna Thomas
Peter and Donna, book artists from Santa Cruz, California, started their
business in 1977. They completed their first book, “The Three Cedars,” in
1978. 2017-18 marks their 40th anniversary, which will be celebrated in
libraries across the country with retrospective shows displaying from those
libraries own holdings. (A list of those libraries is below.)
In addition, the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee’s Golda Meir
Library is producing a bibliography and catalog to accompany the shows. UWM
will also host a digital exhibit, with descriptions and images of each of the
more than 175 edition books and 350 one-of-a-kind books that Donna and Peter
have made since 1977.
For those unfamiliar with their artistic practice, Donna and Peter make
their own paper, letterpress print or hand render the texts, illustrate, and
hand-bind their books themselves. They make both edition and one-of-a-kind
books that combine the precision of the fine press aesthetic with the structural
exploration and artistic creativity found in contemporary artists' books.
Beginning in August of 2017 Donna and Peter will be traveling to visit
those shows as "Wandering Book Artists”. They will also be meeting with
community-based and academic book arts classes, teaching book arts workshops,
and working with fellow book and paper artists to create collaborative
artworks.
Peter and Donna have written this about their past trips:
“We drive a pickup truck pulling a “Tiny Home on Wheels” (which is featured
in a book by the same name published in 2014 by Shelter Books). Our tiny
rolling home is a finely crafted wooden travel trailer, built in 2009 using
local sustainably harvested woods, and decorated with Donna’s colorful folk art
painted designs. Although the trailer is our home while on the road, more
esoterically it is a physical artwork, and metaphorically it embodies our ideas
about the changing nature of the physical book in the digital age.
People always stop us, wondering what it is, and if they can look
inside. When conversation turns to what we are doing and what exactly is an
artists’ book, we use our rolling home as a metaphor saying, “When people see,
or look inside regular RV what do they think? Usually nothing, or, “How
practical.” But when people see our caravan they get excited, curious, inspired
- something magical always happens. Commercially produced books are like
regular RVs, practical and full of information. Artists’ books are like our tiny
home on wheels. They inspire imagination, wonder, excitement and do the many
wonderful things that art works do.
On campuses we open the door and invite in visitors. The
conversations often are about living in small spaces and making do with less,
what it means and takes to live a creative life, what or who is an artist, and
what is a "book artist"? We keep a blog documenting our travels and
conversations as wandering book artists which you can find at: http://www.wanderingbookartists.blogspot.com/
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| Resting at home, new paint! See you soon. |
