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....

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Monday, October 28, 2019

Crankies, Chanterelles, and a Steampunk Party

This portion of the trip took us through Washington and Oregon, and on into Northern California. Seattle was beautiful and had some beautiful weather to share with us.


Besides giving a lecture for Seattle Book Arts Guild at University of Washington and having a table at the Seattle Antiquarian Book Fair, and attending the Fifth annual Crankie Festival at the Northwest Puppet Center, we got stuck trying to pull out of the Day Moon Press's driveway where we were parked during our stay. 



In Portland we held a “tiny bookmobile home on wheels” open house at Backstory Books and Yarn, and in Eugene we gave the inaugural King Arts Lecture at Lane Community College. You can see that we pulled the wagon inside the building for the talk. Never done that before....



Then we taught a weekend workshop hosted by LCC instructor Susan Lowdermilk.



We made miniature sheets of paper, miniature linoleum cuts on that paper and bound them as a miniature book. 




Also in Eugene, Donna took a quick walk into the fir forest near Eugene* to collect these beautiful chanterelles. They will be lovely in some soup this winter! 

*a secret spot! 

And to top it all off we went to an elaborate Steampunk theme party where we saw another crankie. What is a crankie? Imagery on a roll of translucent paper, mounted at the ends to shafts with handles is attached and cranked through a picture frame window while being illuminated from the back. The sequence of images that are on the roll of paper tell a story. The first crankies, originally known as moving panoramas, were made in the mid-1800s. There were both small (to be held in the hand) and large (to be shown on a stage) variations and they provided a form of visual entertainment that remained popular until the invention of movies.





Is a crankie an artists’ books? In his lectures, Peter often compares the field of artists’ book to that of music: There is a huge range of musical styles; from non-melodic jazz to nursery rhymes, from rap to Gregorian chant, all different, but all considered “music”. It is the same with artists’ books; there are many forms; from digital zines to letterpress printed fine press, altered books to literary shrines. And what about crankies? According to Peter, it all depends on whether the creator made it as a book, or as a work of theater. 

Talking about art, just before the California-Oregon border we visited a shop selling burl wood where they made the wildest buildings with twisty wood.




And then we finally reached the California coast. It was almost 2 years ago that the truck and trailer left the state on the start of this fourth and final wandering book artists trip - and we could tell they were glad to be almost home.




Wednesday, October 9, 2019

Papermaking in the Snow

We have started on what will be the final leg of our ten-year project traveling the country as wandering book artists, and our first stop in Moscow has really tested our mettle as book artists, and by that I mean what I say.

Doug Richards Potlach music instructor


The University of Idaho is in Moscow, Idaho, where there has been a show of our artists’ books on display in the special collections library since August. We arrived in town the first week of October to see the show and provide some programming for the library.

Peter and Donna with UI Librarian Ben Hunter

That’s where we were tested: the first thing did was meet with Potlach High School music classes to sing some of our books arts folk songs and talk about our careers as book artists.




Next we spoke at UI to a graduate seminar where we were asked to discuss how being book artists has informed our avocation as musicians.


Following that we gave a gallery talk/lecture in the library about the work in the show, and then finally we met with a evening class of art education students, teaching accordion binding structures they could use with students in the classroom using materials on hand. Whew!


Then the next day when we were demonstrating papermaking in the library courtyard it started to snow. 




Ever make paper standing outside in the snow? We’ll tell you one thing, the water is cold!