Pilgrimage on the way to Lexington: Roycroft Campus and Mountain House.

In the last post we left you in Buffalo at the WNY Book Arts Center. The talk was at 6 and the class lasted till 9. One of the folks in the class offered to let us park in front of her house. We never drive at night and as we started to follow her home we realized the parking/running lights were not working, so spent a half hour getting red cellophane flashlights clamped to the bumper and lighting the license plate. We were off, and then we realized we were out of gas. Well, we could go 27 miles according to the car's computer thing. We headed for a nearby gas station, but it did not have diesel gas. Getting later, in a sketchy neighborhood in deserted downtown, nice people try to help. The gas station guy gives us hard-to-follow directions to the only diesel station around. The computer drops to 18 miles left all of a sudden. We drive what seems like in circles around downtown's one way maze. People yell out the window: "What IS that? I LIKE it!" We make it to the station with 8 miles of gas left.

Bonnie lives in East Aurora, which was perfect, as we wanted to visit the Roycroft Campus. Founded by Elbert Hubbard in the late 1890s, they built arts and crafts-inspired furniture and fixtures, and printed beautiful books. Maybe you have seen their floppy leather bound books in antique stores.

Here is a sample of his printing and design work.

Peter pretend printing in the Roycroft Print Shop.

Take some time to learn about the Roycrofters. It was an amazing movement and inspiring place to visit. We may return to teach printing classes there. Here are some pictures of their buildings:

We drove to Chillicothe, Ohio and visited the home of Dard Hunter one of our inspirations and artistic mentors. Dard was a Roycrofter, and after leaving them set out on his own to make the “Harmonious Book” where he, rather than a machine or some other craftsman, made the paper, designed and cast the type, and printed the book. We stopped by Dard III's Mountain House Studios and then visited Hunter’s Mountain House.

We then drove the beautiful Appalachian Highway, past the famous Indian mounds, to Lexington, KY, where we will attend the Miniature Book Society Meeting and print a broadside using Victor Hammer’s  wooden common press of the Stamperia del Santuccio at the King Library on the University of Kentucky campus.

The New York by the Great Lakes

We've had a couple of days in the New York of Great Lakes, dairy farms, lazy swimming rivers, and more book arts! This is what it looks like when we pull up next to the OTHER diesels in the rest stops on the interstate:

We taught a class and opened the caravan in Canton, New York, where St. Lawrence University is located. 

The Special Collections Librarian, Mark McMurray, is also a printer and book artist of "Caliban Press" 

and his semester class "The History of Artists' Books" began this week. Mark's reader for the class could be published for other book arts educators to use! There is an ongoing need for updating this subject as the book as art is quickly evolving and his research is comprehensive. What lucky students to have for a teacher one who makes books AND knows books as a librarian as well. 

We had a great visit to his home, parked next to the garden (tomatoes and the most beautiful eggplant I have ever seen!), 

Peter got a massage for his sore driving muscles by Patty (Mark's wife) and we are on the road again!

This is us camping on Lake Ontario last night, at sunset. In the morning walking on the beach I saw a baby turtle crawling to the dunes. Oh, also we swam in the lake before the sun went down.

The Visual Studies Workshop visit at noon in the 90-degree weather was reminiscent of Cleveland last month...but great to see the place where artists' books evolved in a different direction: They make mostly books printed offset, in larger numbers than our editions. They teach graduate and undergraduate students the finer nuances of creating books as art and work a lot with individuals on concepts for artists' books. The building is covered with an installation art piece having to do with architecture/time. Someone stopped behind me right after this photo was taken and said, "What is it?" 

Peter said,"a gypsy wagon!" and she said, "No, the building, what is it?" It was fun that the art got more attention than the caravan!

At 6 pm we then started another lecture and class, this time in Buffalo at the Western New York Book Arts Center. 16 students made scrolling books at this downtown center that has only been open a year and is full of great energy and good classes and cool letterpress stuff to buy!

The truck and caravan are parked on the street in front.

Vermont

If you ever go to Vermont, go to the Bread and Puppet Theatre. We visited the community earlier this week and fell in love with their colorful puppets and music and the very ALIVE nature of every participant. Whether singing, enjoying our books, planning or rehearsing shows, painting or printing the woodcuts of one of the founders, Peter Shumann,

they are full of drama and enthusiasm! Peter and I printed a broadside in the printshop using one of Peter Shumann’s images and my linoleum cut words, “wandering” and “far from HOME”.

We feel very far from home, yet Vermont is comfortable. Weather is mild, the bread is home-made, the cheese is rich and local, the artists’ book community is alive and WE HAVE FAMILY HERE!

My cousins' Jean and Kevin Wry's "camp" on Lake Champlain is where we parked for a few days. We had a hectic schedule for a few days before arriving here and the next few weeks are going to be busy, so having a rest and recreation time at the lake was welcomed. Having family to be with makes it even better. The air is cool and fresh, the water is warm by our standards (the Pacific is probably 15 degrees colder).

The Bailey Howe Library on the University of Vermont campus arranged for us to park the caravan in front of the steps of the building, which is always the best way to show up to a library! We got lots of interested visitors to the caravan and then it’s easy to get the books inside to show the librarians. No parking meters, no crowded streets! A bunch of people came to the talk Peter gave, including my cousin Jean who has a few of our books and wanted to catch up on our book-art-ish news and see our latest books.

Vermont Book Arts Guild is active with meetings or workshops every month, shows annually and parties where food is often involved! They hosted us for a workshop on Saturday in a large bright room next to a church with a steeple!

(Vermont earns the “cutest villages in the US” award). We stayed with Jill and Harold in a small village by Lake Champlain, parked next to a crabapple tree abundantly decorated with deep red, shiny apples!

And every garden and road shoulder is verdant for Vermont! Flowers are everywhere....

Boston: the "Open Caravan"

 At the end of a residential street in Boston, next to a wood, in balmy (notice I did not say steamy or humid) weather, we show books, drink wine, snack on chips and salsa and talk about our lives as artists. Crazy ideas come to life (like tanning chipmunk skins for binding, books that talk or play music, a puppet book?) and materials and techniques are compared (wood versus linoleum for relief printing). I don't think open caravan is going to be the ultimate business model for selling books, but it certainly is fun for the connections made. I don't have pictures of all the neighbors stopping by and seeing artists' books for the first time, but these show some of the fun: 

Wine, books, conversation.

Ashlie Taylor, painter/artist-extraordinaire, rode her bike to the open caravan. Click here to see her beautiful paintings and drawings.

Annie Silverman with her accordion toy theater. Inside are pictures of accordion players in layering dimensions. This is a cousin to our real accordion book.

Dinner afterwards in the pavillion with our hosts Lee McDonald and Anne Marie Stein and friends.

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.