Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
PAPER & BOOK INTENSIVE
handmake a book
AT CAMPS & ARTIST COLONIES AROUND THE COUNTRY
I'm stubborn enough to want to tell a story just the way I want to tell it. If
I have to try and sell it to a book publisher, my voice gets lost.
—Bea Nettles, professional book artist
17 |
The topic you're holding in your hands is mass-produced. It was printed on a giant press
along with thousands and thousands of clones. The topics you'll make at the Paper & Book
Intensive (PBI), by contrast, are unique handmade books that nobody but you (and those you
care to appoint) will ever see. Each one is an original piece of art.
In today's Internet-driven world, handmade books might seem passé. But in the past ten
years, interest in the topic arts—which, loosely speaking, includes handmade art books, book-
binding, papermaking, mail art, and calligraphy—has grown faster than the readership for
The
Da Vinci Code
.
Nonprofits such as the Center for Book Arts (CBA) in New York City regularly stage
exhibitions and host workshops (2006's hundred-plus lineup at the CBA ranged from how to
make comic books to hand typesetting). At the same time, stores like Hollander's in Ann Ar-
bor, Michigan, a 5,000-plus-square-foot retail shop, sell decorative papers and bookbinding
tools, and little mom-and-pop outfits like Joyce Miller and Gary Frost's Iowa Book Works
hawk book craft kits and classes in epic journaling.
Perhaps the best place to hone your book-arts talents is at the Paper & Book Intensive,
an action-packed eight-day conference that travels in the spring and summer like a book-arts
Chautauqua from venue to venue, state to state. In 2006, for example, PBI was staged at La
Lumiere School in La Porte, Indiana. The year before, it was held in rustic log cabins at the
Lowell Whiteman School in Steamboat Springs, Colorado, and before that at a YMCA camp
near Portland at the end of the Oregon Trail.
Suffice it to say, PBI is pretty savvy when it comes to picking scenic and interesting ven-
ues. For example. the 2003 PBI was held at Camp Wapiti outside Tooele, Utah. With inspiring
views of Lake Bonneville, the Oquirrh Mountains, and Settlement Canyon, participants could
