Adventures of the Wandering Book Artists

Parked for the Winter

2012-01-21T11:02:00.000-08:00

People have been asking what happened to the gypsy wagon... We've parked it for the winter in Mariposa, California, a gold rush town in the Sierra Nevada foothills. It is parked under a big barn roof, right next to our 1926 Melbourne W-2 Trolley. We've been up there a couple of times this winter, with freezing cold nights and mornings at the 3000 foot elevation, which is usually just below the snow-line.

Looking out the front door to the oaks and pines.

Peter at the trolley door.

Inside the trolley

We got this trolley car from the Kelly Park History San Jose trolley barn. They had bought it as a parts car, had stripped it, and were ready to let the firemen practice putting out streetcar fires (?!) using it for their practice; we rescued it (but had to saw it in half to move it) and made it into a living space. The best part about it is the all around windowed walls!

Since we have not been traveling much this winter, we had time to be active in the studio and in the community.

In the studio: we made several new books, both letterpress printed editions and a few new one-of-a-kinds. Here is a link to our website to show you some books for sale now. Expect a new William Everson book, "The Alder" to come out later this year....

"Sierra Point"

(Click on Photo for link to website for this book)

"Sierra Nevada"

(Click on Photo for link to website for this book)

In the community: Inspired by all the community-based book arts groups we met with on our trip, we decided to put some effort into creating Book Arts Santa Cruz, a new group in Santa Cruz, involving many artists, binders, printers and papermakers. We've had several gatherings at members' studios and just participated in our first event, Poetry and Book Arts at the Museum of Art and History in Santa Cruz. Peter and I demonstrated papermaking and binding, others did printing, poetry, pochoir, marbling and more. If you are in the area and would like to join this illustrious band of merry book artists, check us out: Book Arts Santa Cruz.

Donna Thomas demonstrates the double accordion pop-up, while Kirsten Liske talks about her watercolor journalling techniques at the Book Arts and Poetry Event.

We are planning the next "Adventure of the Wandering Book Artists" for the Fall of 2012. We will leave in mid-September, 2012. Our general plan is to head out for the Friends of Dard Hunter and IAMPA paper making meeting in Cleveland and our ukulele class at the John Campbell Folk School, then head for Florida, and return home through the South. Can we include you in the adventure? We teach bookbinding classes, give lectures in the book arts and show our artists' books. Let us know if you would like to help us set up a stop in your area. We also love to visit National and State Parks, play ukuleles and sing, so invite us to go camping or have a jam session with you. We are looking forward to the fall.

Yours,

Peter and Donna Thomas

We are having fun hanging out with our grandaughter Emily during our time at home...

Wandering is great even if only for a week

2011-10-31T16:03:00.000-07:00

The Friends of Dard Hunter papermaking group met last week for a regional conference in Santa Barbara and we took the opportunity to travel in the caravan for a mini-wandering.

First thing we taught a bookbinding class. It held in the house of fellow FDH member (and current president) Jill Littlewood.

Here are the finished books with their maker's hands.

We had a blast making margaritas in Jimmy Yarnell's tiny "cocktail beater". Obligatorily, we first beat some rag pulp in during the papermaking fair, then cleaned it out, added the tequilla and lemons and the rest of the magic mix. Thanks for the beater Jim.

A toast to a fun and inspiring conference!

No wandering book artists blog post is complete without some kind of odd vehicle thing. This is a picture of an old restaurant made with trolley cars as bookends to the building. It's located in Buellton and is just about ready to be bulldozed to make room for housing, so let us know if you want to save the trolleys and we'll give you the contact number...

We drove some backroads of California, leaving 101 at Santa Maria, traveling in a generally north eastern direction. We camped by the side of the road at a beautiful Los Padres National Forest hiking trailhead parking lot. (Actually it was probably for hunters or off roaders, but that does not sound quite as romantic.)

Ah, it feels good to wander in the wilderness...

We took a sunset hike on a dusty trail through the chapparal, then played some cowboy tunes before sleep.

Did you know that California has areas richer in oil than water? The town of Maricopa was built by folks who figured they could make some money by extracting the stuff in the early 1900's. Good idea!

Driving on the "Petroleum Highway, we stopped in for a visit to the Maricopa Museum. Across the street at Tina's diner we got all the info about the town. An old timer who owned his own oil well toured us through the museum. He said that the museum would close when he dies because none of the young folks value history, and no one stays in town anyway. (Maricopa, "elevation 600, population 600".)

Here is a vintage photo of the "Lakeview Gusher," which spewed 100,000 barrels a day of oil for months back in 1910 in Maricopa.

An abandoned pomegranate tree in town provided us with abundant treasure in pomegranates!

Well that's it for our wandering till next year. See you at CBAA in January, or come join Peter at the Feb 3-4 ACM Book Studies Conference, The Past, Present, and Future of the Book, at Cornell College in Iowa.

One more thing! A radio article about a fellow who followed our "Muir Ramble Route" on a bike across California can be heard here.

Its not over till the ukulele-playing book artist sings!

2011-08-06T15:09:00.000-07:00

We have been home about 3 weeks now and it seems like 3 years for all that has gone on. We finally have adjusted to not moving on every day for some new city and new friends. We have almost crossed everything off the “to do when we get home” list we made on the trip… but if we promised you something, and have forgotten, let us know.

Back home and at the press once again.....

So I guess the trip is finally over, but it will not be forgotten. When we were in Boulder, Colorado, the library video-taped Peter's talk for their ScriptaLab site. It is about a half hour long and is now up on the library's server. They titled the talk, “What is a book? What is an artist’s book?” and they describe it as follows: “Book artist Peter Thomas talks about the nature of the artist’s book, what they can do, who makes them, and what they sound like.”

Click here to see the 30 minute video of our talk at CU Boulder.

And just to prove the old saying is really true...We just received a note from Ori Hoffer, the maverick news reporter from Park City Television, that he completed the editing of the interview he did with us when we were in Park City, Utah earlier this year. This is only four and a half minutes long and is posted on YouTube.

Click here to see the 4 minute TV short film.

Parked in front of the Santa Cruz Public Library for First Friday.

Now that we are home we get asked a lot, “When are you going to leave again?” But it is not asked like it sounds when typed. They want to know if we have plans for another trip. We have not thought that far ahead, but we will be taking the gypsy wagon to the "Friends of Dard Hunter" meeting in Santa Barbara in October, and we will probably make one more cross country trip in 2012 to visit the south. We will make a post on the blog to let you know about that, but until then, best wishes from your wandering book artist friends Donna and Peter Thomas.

The drum roll please....

Last but not least here is one last photo of the wagon, taken in Northern CA, that never got posted.

Home is where the Wagon is

2011-07-02T13:45:00.000-07:00

We're home after spending 235 days on the road with a gypsy caravan! But, then, who is counting?

We crossed over the California state line on June 27th and drove to Arcata. The group "North Redwoods Book Arts Guild, "NORBAG" treated us to a welcome back to the Pacific picnic on the coast that evening. We learned about their efforts to get folks interested in Book Arts, for instance, they held a fundraiser where they collectively made 1000 books and sold them each for a dollar. The proceeds went to fund a reading program in the county. Good going!

It was cold there by the ocean after being used to the 90s in Oregon and 100s in Idaho!

The redwoods looked so beautiful in the fog and rain. We drove down a one lane road to get to the "Rockefeller Grove" in Humboldt Redwoods State Park.

We didn't drive through the tree, we were too large. But it was fun to be tourists in our home state...

We arrived home July 1, which was "First Friday", an evening of gallery openings in downtown Santa Cruz. We had our last "open caravan" of the trip in front of the downtown branch of the Santa Cruz Public Library! Very appropriate! And upstairs in the library was a show of the books we made and broadsides we printed while on the trip.

Here is Peter with his mom (second from left) and friends.

Speaking of counting..... here are a few statistics about our trip that we think you might find interesting:

We were on the road for 235 days.

The truck and gypsy wagon traveled 20,641 miles.

We set foot in 35 states.

We visited 55 libraries where we showed our books.

We hosted 28 "Open Caravans."

We taught 24 classes, averaging 10 students each, making over 480 books.

Peter gave 28 lectures about Book Arts and sang "What's a Book" accompanied by his ukulele book.

We stayed in 22 State Parks.

We stayed and hiked in 19 National Parks and Forests.

We soaked in 5 hot springs.

We parked in 55 different friend's and family's driveways. Thank you!

We parked randomly by the side of the road 10 times.

We were questioned by the police 4 times. Tickets: none.

We had a fantastic trip.

We want to thank you for following our trip by reading this blog. It was the comments by you readers that kept us writing.

Thank you to so many generous people who made our trip so successful:

Our daughters Suzanne Weinert and Tanya Cothran and their husbands, who were the reason we could leave for so long. They took care of the home, mail and bills while we were gone.

Richard Raucina Cabinets of Midpines, California who helped to build the amazing gypsy caravan, Paloma, and it could not have been a sweeter home.

Our many organizers in the field who worked with enthusiasm to fill classrooms and lecture venues with creative and happy people.

Our hosts who treated us to parking places in the shade, hikes in their neighborhoods, meals with their families, a turn with their washing machines and driers, solid advice as to scenic routes to take, parties with music and drinks with their friends, recommendations for more libraries to show our books and an occasional electrical outlet when the sun wasn't out enough for our panels to recharge.

The many librarians who continue to support our endeavors in book making.

Now we will be home for awhile, where we will get busy binding books and filling orders. We will start dreaming of another trip down the road with the gypsy wagon... perhaps to your town next time? Let us know....

Sheep camps: Gypsy wagons of the West

2011-06-26T15:26:00.000-07:00

This is a beautiful Southwestern Idaho sunset we witnessed a few days ago. The photo was taken near Mountain Home, Idaho, on the longest day of the year, where we opened the caravan and our suitcases of books to give a talk and play some ukulele book arts folk songs for folks at the public library in Mt. Home. The next day we taught a class in Boise. Whew, the sun was cookin' hot and the caravan registered 98 degrees all day. An awesome thunderstorm cleared the air at 9 pm.

These are some of the books made in Boise. It was a very boisterous and creative class..

Sheep camps as they are called out here are the gypsy wagon of the west. Also called sheep wagons these are the traditional wandering homes for the shepherds of the western USA. In Boise we met a couple who, after the economy shifted a few years ago, decided to go to work full time building nearly authentic sheep wagons. Their business is called Idaho Sheep Camps. As Kim Veder told us... "Building sheep wagons is a lot more fun than working real estate or building big homes, I guess!"

They currently have 3 finished and for sale!

A very handsome wagon and its interior.

They install working vintage woodburning stoves.

A sweet interior with a handmade quilt and old enamel dishware.

They like to dress up the interiors to create a mood of simplicity and beauty.

Heading westward once again, we arrived in Ashland, Oregon on Saturday for an open caravan all day at Illahe Gallery. Then as the day cooled we jammed with local ukulele players, teaching them a number of Peter's book arts folk songs.

Cathy Deforest was the host for our visit to Ashland. She has been a book arts friend for over 30 years. She used to buy blank books from us at the Renaissance faire in the 1970s. Now she lives in Ashland on this beautiful land in a house she and her husband have recently completed building.

A cider apple orchard lines one side of the property.

The gypsy wagon feels like it is visiting a palace!

Today we taught a class at the Ashland Art Center.

We had 16 in the class, this was the biggest class we taught and it went splendidly.

The art center also host a show of our work:

A couple of pics from the road:

The lumberjack gets to work on the caravan roof.

The grizzly is waving as we pass through this little Oregon town.

You (and our camera) shoulda been there.

2011-06-20T09:12:00.000-07:00

A wandering rock star? A wandering Book Artist? Read on...

Our Friday evening presentation at Ken Sanders Book Shop in Salt Lake City was an amazing event. Donna demonstrated bookmaking from 5 - 7, making an edition of four books using lyrics from “The Telling Takes Me Home,” a song by U. Utah Phillips.

We shared the bill with Phillips’ son Duncan who has just completed a tribute CD honoring his father’s life, titled "Long Gone". Then at 7pm the chaos began. It was art walk night in SLC and hundreds of people flowed in and out of the shop as we traded off playing songs. Duncan and his accompanist played a U. Utah Phillips song and then Donna and I sang a book arts folk song. While Duncan played, Donna went back to work on the books. Occasionally I would step outside to find a crowd 10 deep around our gypsy wagon and I would open the doors to let them see inside. This lasted until 10 pm! What a picture that would have made, what a movie, but in the mad rush to do everything at once we completely forgot to take a single picture…Until the next morning.

Those of you who have been reading our blog for awhile now may know that we modeled our gypsy wagon after a “Reading” wagon, one of the many styles of horse-drawn homes, or vardos, made for Romany travelers in England during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. When we were building it, people often asked if we were going to pull it with a horse. I would usually reply with a quick smile, “No, we’re going to use a ram. A Dodge Ram.” I am not sure how cleanly this next part segues, but I figure that Dodge must have read that and wanted to one-up us for that quip because they created an ad for their Ram trucks which uses letterpress printing equipment as a metaphor for the toughness of their trucks. You can see it on Youtube. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xNmZSz07pfY

Speaking of Gypsy Wagons... it turns out that besides being a Mormon-kind-of-city, Salt Lake City is a gypsy wagon-kind-of-city. We found more gypsy wagons here than in any other city in the country. This is due to the influence of Brad Atkisson, who has built at least 6 gypsy wagons that we know of. We visited Brad, who lives in his latest wagon, saw a wagon built for his son, and then saw another under construction by Taylor, one of his apprentices (but the camera was missing then too).

Exterior of Brad's wagon.

Interior of Brad's wagon.

Here are two pictures of Brad's son's wagon.

Note the pop out on the right side to extend the bed length.

Interior of Brad's son's wagon.

Finally we want to let you know that the lecture we gave at CU (that is the University of Colorado at Boulder) a few weeks ago has been put online: This is the title:

"What is a book? What is an artist’s book?"

"Book artist Peter Thomas talks about the nature of the artist’s book, what they can do, who makes them, and what they sound like. http://scriptalab.org/?page_id=658 "

Out in Colorado the rocks were the books

2011-06-17T13:05:00.000-07:00

We taught a class at the Azura Winery and Gallery in Paonia, Colorado, on west slope of the Rockies, with a view of snowy mountains looming over green farm lands of Paonia. Azura has an amazingly beautiful setting and we were so fortunate to spend a couple of days there with Ty and Helen, the wine and art making owners.

This was the first class we have taught that ended with a wine tasting. We will have do do that more often.

A classic car rally made a stop at the winery while we were teaching our class. The Morgans really caught my eye.

Even though it is almost summer, because of the late snow it is the time of the spring blooming in the desert. Evening primrose, lupine, sego lily, penstemon, arnica, mules ears and giant paintbrush are just a few of the flowers we have seen blooming in Colorado and Utah.

Here is the cactus "claret cup" in bloom.

Yellow salsify, pink peas and the Western Colorado rocks.

Here is a juniper tree growing in Dinosaur National Monument near the 150 million year old "Morrison" rock formation containing the D-bones.

It has been so hot in the mid-day that we have been taking walks near sunset time, when the air temperature has cooled a bit, say the mid 80s or so. This part of the country is all about the ROCKS. We met a kid who said, "All the rocks are red. Everywhere RED ROCKS!" We are loving it.

Donna in the wildflowers and rocks.

Peter with the rocks in Colorado National Monument.

We visited the Canyon Pintado Historic District in western Colorado, looking at the pictographs and petroglyphs.

Reading rock books is what Peter calls it.

These are what they call "carrot people". We think they were aliens....

They call this a "pin-up" petroglyph. Someone shot up this Basque sheepherder petroglyph.

Now, to end this post, let me show you a picture of a distant cousin to Paloma that we found at the visitor center for Dinosaur National Monument.

The Magic of Traveling

2011-06-11T10:50:00.000-07:00

People who travel know that sometimes amazingly wonderful things happen and other times things become incredibly difficult. After teaching our afternoon class in Edwards, Colorado, (which was our first class with high school students and it turned out great!) we started out late for our next stop in Paonia.

I think Highway 70 between Vail and Glenwood Springs is one of the most beautiful stretches of highway in the country. The road winds through Glenwood Canyon, suspended above the Colorado River. I find it strange to be saying that a highway is beautiful, but this one was... the designers of this stretch of road really knew what they were doing. We stopped at a rest stop to admire the river, as it was overflowing its banks because of the last few days’ heat melting the largest snowpack in recent memory.

We pulled up next to a van pulling an enclosed utility trailer. Peter said, “These must be gypsy travelers too.” Turned out it was The Kris Lager Band. They were headed to a gig in Aspen, and they also play sometimes at Moe’s Alley and the Blues Festival in Santa Cruz. Check the band out when they come to your town and support hardworking touring musicians. A snipped from our conversation with Kris: “Battle of the Bands, American Idol, they are all taking music in a wrong direction in my opinion. Music should bring people together, not separate us into classes. Think what the word “idol” means…” Thinking about the music jams we have played in while on our trip and how they have been times of great connection and fun, we say he is right.

The town and spa of Glenwood Springs are located where Glenwood Canyon opens out to let the Crystal River flow into the Colorado River. The lodge building of local red stone was built in the late 19^th century and the huge hot pool and mineral baths there became a major tourist destination. Peter and I stopped for a soak. I love thinking of all the places I have gone in natural hot springs as a tourist…. Mono Hot Springs to soak tired hiking muscles, The Blue Lagoon in Iceland, Mercy Hot Springs for Katy’s 30^th birthday and the last place us wanderers soaked, Quinn's hot springs in Montana...

At dusk, we drove in the direction of a campground. Here is where we had one of the “not so nice” traveling experiences. The RV campground turned out to cost $58. a night for a slice of cement pad and a snack bar. We drove on hoping for something better. We started to get Tired and Cranky. Then it happened.

The wandering book artists became all-american. We spent the night at Walmart. The parking lot was quiet, level and had a marvelous view of the snowy peak of Mt Sopris. All in all our Walmart experience ended out falling into the category of “ a very nice experience.” Who would have guessed it.

Wandering in the Rockies

2011-06-06T13:28:00.000-07:00

We are back on the road.

At Evert Brown and Louise Padden's in Boulder. (90 degrees at 6 pm.)

We are in what they call the "front country" of the Rockies. We had a great adventure that started with an ad for wood type on Craig's list:

If you know of any wood type for sale let us know!

The type was in Fort Collins, so after teaching the first day of our class for the Book Arts League in Lafayette, we drove up to get the type. On the way we passed another gypsy sort of wagon. A fellow who, as the guy that sold us the type said, was "Traveling for JC".

The fellow with the wood type lived on Mountain Avenue, and as we were sitting on his porch chatting, a small historic trolley drove by. We hopped on for a ride. During the course of the 5 minute ride found that two of the other passengers were from San Jose, but the amazing part was that one of them worked for VTA and had driven San Jose's W-2 Trolley, the trolley that ours was stripped to refurbish. If you don't know that we own half a trolley click on this link: Peter and Donna's Melbourne w-2

Walking in Fort Collin's old town, looking for a place to eat dinner, by chance (or wanderer's luck) we strolled by a storefront called "Swamp Gas and Gossamer". Inside were Les Sande's displays of his steampunk-style gizmos including a 5 by 5 foot cube with a wind-up crank makes cottonwood fluff blow around like a snow globe, an old vacuum cleaner made into a flying bubble machine, and a old truck, sawn in half, that lines each side wall. Lee told us, "I used to be religious, but now I am just thankful, and the way I show it is I make things."

Les Sande, of "Swamp Gas and Gossamer"

Which reminds me, in Denver we met another assemblage artist, Jerry Simpson, who collects plastic, metal, toys, books, craft supplies and more from dumpsters and wherever, and uses it all to create wonderful 2 and 3D sculptures. In fact his whole property is an artwork, a maze of organized junk, neatly and artistically arranged and displayed. He was happy to give us a tour around his packed rooms and up to the roof garden. Even though the stacks and stacks of junk freaked me out, I loved the creativity of both these guys.

Egg beaters and lunch boxes.

License plate wall siding.

One of his cement patio tiles.

We made 12 copies of a flap style book with a quote by T. S. Eliott in the class for the Book Arts League. The first day we printed the covers, the second day we printed the text and bound the book.

We are now in Vail. My heart sang as we ascended the Rockies. We taught a class at the public library today. Look how the mountains and trees dwarf the caravan. (Going hiking tomorrow, yea!)

The Vail Daily featured the Wandering Book Artists on the front page! Click here to read the article.

The "Best Time Ever" in Colorado

2011-05-21T10:05:00.000-07:00

We left the hot springs at Ojo Caliente on the "most beautiful" road...

And we have driven a lot of roads on this trip. We have also visited many parks and museums. I have noticed that they all seem to want to impress their visitors that they have the "largest" or the "most" or the "oldest" or the "most spectacular" something-or-other thing.

The Great Sand Dunes National Monument , located in southern Colorado are the "tallest" sand dunes in North America.

The Florissant Fossil Beds National Monument near Colorado Springs are the "richest and most diverse fossil deposits in the world." These 3 petrified stumps at the monument are coast redwoods! This used to be the coast 3 million (or billion, I forget exactly) years ago. They are definitely the "oldest" redwoods I have ever visited.

Peter and Donna with James Ascher and Ray Tomasso.

Our long-time papermaking friend Ray Tomasso from Englewood, Colorado is now officially the "best" and our "favorite" papermaker. We thought he was just hosting our bookarts classes in his "Inter-Ocean Curiousity Studio," but actually, he somehow talked librarians James P. Ascher and Deborah Fink from the University of Colorado in Boulder, into planning a show of our work in Special Collections, to coincide with the current show of his art at the library.

Peter and I arrived at the library in Boulder where Peter was going to give a talk at the reception that evening, Ray casually showed us the catalog for the show of our work. We were the "most" surprised we had ever been.

We knew nothing about this! Ray made the paper, letterpress printer Tom Parson printed the cover, and James wrote a fantastic text for the catalog. Special Collections librarian Chris Levine kindly kept the library open after hours for the event.

Peter gave his talk. It was filmed by CU, and I'm so glad it was. It was one of his "best talks" ever. The website for the University of Colorado’s "Scriptalab" program will post the video, which they plan to use as an educational tool in university classes.

Ray's truck and his artwork being moved into the library

The evening was also the opening reception for Ray's show in the library, "Exhibition of Works in Cast Paper." Wow they are beautiful and BIG paper art pieces. If you are near Boulder, please go and see them. Not to be out done by any other library, CU was also

Diane has posted on Ray's paper art blog about the show and opening here.

And not to be out done by any other library, to make this CUs "biggest and best" event ever, it was also the opening night for a show of work by members of the Rocky Mountian Chapter of the Guild of Book Workers.

The next two days, with the wagon nestled in Ray's back yard, Peter taught book binding and book art classes in Ray's studio.

Ray has the "most comprehensive collection of old printing and papermaking equipment" that I know of. He also keeps it all running. The odd inter-ocean curiousity lives back there too...

Like this. This must be the "biggest pig-cooking cauldron" I have ever seen. If you ever come across one for sale, let me know... it would make the "best" bathtub, being pulled behind the Gypsy Wagon....

New Mexico: Land, lotsa land

2011-05-16T10:40:00.000-07:00

We made this book from old printers ornaments that Karla Elling loaned us last year. The guy who wrote that song must have been thinking about New Mexico. (Yes, I know it was Cole Porter)

New Mexico has charmed us. We love the blue sky, clear breezes and laid back attitude. Remember our first day camping in New Mexico, at Clayton, where we spent the whole day in the gypsy wagon because of the wind, well our second camping experience, near Eagle Nest, was the complete opposite. A sleety snow kept us in the caravan for the day, but we had fun anyways. We played music, read and baked cookies.

Down in Eagle Nest and we visited their new museum, home to an annual mountain man rendezvous, filled with "primitive arts" stuff on display. What an awesome and desolate setting, don't you think?

Driving towards Taos, we stopped for lunch at this old adobe plus log cabin rancho. Hey Jim or Jeff, do you want a new project? We like this place.

We had a huge parking mess up trying to get turned around in the driveway of our papermaking friend Priscilla Robinson's in Taos. It looked like we could just pull it around, but we got stuck jack-knifed into a corner. It took over an hour to get out of the jam by finally taking the trailer off and dragging it with a chain. This may have been the gypsy wagon gods telling us we had become to cocky about our trailer backing/parking abilities... No pictures of it though. It was too embarrassing.

A beautiful sky from the driveway at Priscilla's.

The Taos Book Arts group held a workshop for us in one of the nicest studios we have taught in so far.

I guess what made it nice was the beautiful oil paintings on the walls by Dinah Worman:

This painting by Dinah is called "Taos Mountain."

We spent a night with Peter's mom's friend Sue Westbrook. She's got a gallery in town called "Taos Blue" and has a great eye for the magical in the land and in art. She plans to open a Spiritual Road House and use old sheep wagons or home made houses for the rooms. We were able to give her all sorts of great mobile housing ideas.

Now for the last and best in New Mexico: We taught a class at Ojo Caliente Hot Springs Resort, and got to stay overnight and soak in the pools and a hike up into the hills behind the resort.

We parked in the plaza by the entryway to the spa.

Just after sunrise, we hiked 2 miles up to an old mica mine. The ground sparkled under our feet and we felt like children in a fairy land with treasure all around.

We brought a little home to work with in books.

Soaking in the 108 degree water. Ahh.

But thats all for now. We have to get back to more driving and some the book arts events planned in Colorado!

The Gypsy Wagon Comes to Wichita

2011-05-11T13:20:00.000-07:00

From 2004-2006, our book, “The Train Comes to Wichita”, was featured in a show at the Wichita Art Museum. That, and the fact that Jimmy Yarnell, one of our modern pioneer papermakers lived there, made Wichita a must-stop place. Jim's “Irving E. Lee” Hollander beater was pictured in Jules Heller's papermaking book and it was Yarnell who encouraged me to build my own beater when I couldn't afford to buy one back in 1976. He also worked with Lee McDonald to develop over-under beaters and low cost PVC beaters. Jim now has dementia, but we visited with his family and they gave us an amazing gift, his 4-ounce over-under beater. I always called it his "cocktail beater", because it is really more appropriate for mixing drinks than making pulp because it is so small.

We had an exciting visit at Wichita State University. As the students wandered through the wagon looking at our books we were asked what we are doing, how long we had been traveling and when we will be back, etc, as per usual. We usually say something tongue in cheek like, "We are advocating the addition of more color to the country’s highways and campgrounds. Regular trailers are too beige. Then we get down to the talk about artists’ books and how our gypsy wagon is a perfect metaphor for the artists’ book. A regular book is like a regular trailer, functional, practical… An artists’ book is like our gypsy wagon, a work of art." When we said we don't know if we will do it again, the the printmaking instructor said, “Please do it again, it is always good to find something to get the students excited!”

The giant mosaic is by Miro, the Spanish artist.

OOPS, we parked in the wrong place!

Mothers Day on the Road

What do you do in rural northwestern Oklahoma on Mother’s Day? Peter took me to the rodeo in Guymon! That’s where everyone else was! We sat next to an Oklahoma family who had never been to a rodeo before either. OK, it was a “cultural experience.” There were highlights: With no recognition given for their bravery, rodeo clowns risk their lives to lure angry bulls away from the cowboys that were crazy enough to try and “ride” them. The women rode for speed and accuracy, rather than trying to ride furiously bucking bulls or broncos until the bell rang. Little “roping” calves were so happy to be let go and chased back into the safe corral that their hind legs jumped sideways as they ran towards the gate.

The Weather

The weather shifts from day to day and state to state. At the rodeo, the announcer from Louisiana said he wished he could give some of their Louisana water to the folks out in western Oklahoma. The Mississippi is flooding but in New Mexico they have had so little rain and snow that there is a ban on outdoor fires in campgrounds. We keep hearing folks say, "the wind’s been bad this year." The wind blew so hard when we drove from Oklahoma to New Mexico that we could not drive in 6th gear on the highway, and we spent a whole day inside the wagon at a campground because it was too windy to enjoy being outside.

When we left Tennessee, the trees were all leafed out, but arriving in cold Iowa we found barren branches. Driving from Omaha to Kansas City we missed a whole season as the dogwood and redbud had already bloomed before we arrived. The campsite in Nebraska was filled with flowering dandelions. Like good gypsies, we picked enough to make a gallon of wine.

We have glass milk bottles, but don’t have an airlock, so using a trick we learned from our Gypsy Wagon-building friend Rick Raucina, we used latex gloves to keep the oxygen out of the “must”. The picture shows it being blown up by the fermentation gas! By the time we get home we will probably be able to celebrate with a first sip of what will probably be a very “interesting” tasting wine.

A Few Photos from the Road:

In the Cimarron National Grasslands in Western Kansas. Windy and hot, sandy and beautiful.

Rural Oklahoma

Now we are in the high elevation mountains near Taos, New Mexico, where we have had snow flurries all day.

How Can a Poor Man Stand Such Times and Live?

2011-05-05T12:04:00.000-07:00

This is the title of a song by Blind Alfred Reed, written in the 1920s. I made an artist book using his song as part of the text.

The photographs came from Peter's Grandma Mary, who was born in "Indian Territory." My family tree is the other part of the text. I found my family, like Blind Alfred, faced hard times in the depression, traveling state to state to find work. My Grandma Mary Caroline was born in 1915, in Blue Springs, Nebraska. Her family lived on 5 different farms in Nebraska and Kansas. We drove through Blue Springs, NE on our way from Lincoln, NE to Lawrence, KS.

A local woman described the place to us, "...Just a jerkwater town now."

I thought it was beautiful country. Nebraska sky. Montana is not the only state that can call themselves, "big sky country."

We camped beside a reservoir near Lincoln, Nebraska. All the sites are mowed grass, which may be pretty for city parks, but a little odd for State Parks, don't you think? In Pawnee Lake State Park we camped in a "primitive" site right on the water, and we were all by ourselves because we have solar power, so didn't need electricity, water and sewer. The blue glow at night shows that most RVs are plugged to watch TV. One student, awhile back, asked "What do you do for entertainment? I answered, "Read, play music, and talk." Those were all foreign pastimes to him. His incredulous reply was, "You don't have a TV?!!"

We have both finished reading "My Antonia" by Willa Cather. I made a book using a quote I found in it. I drew the pictures from Grandma Mary's photos, the same ones that I reprinted for the "...Hard Times and Live" book.

"My Antonia" is set in the red grass prairie land of Nebraska where we are right now. At the campground we got to walk through the red grass.

Then we entered Kansas on the "road to OZ."

We were busy, giving talks to classes at KU and Kansas City Institute of Art and want to show you a few more of those "Gyspy Wagon on Campus" and "Peter sings book arts folk songs to students" photos.

Music and book arts go together

2011-04-30T10:32:00.000-07:00

Playing music is a nice way to connect with folks. In the photo below we're playing old timey folk songs with banjo player, photographer and book-artist Bea Nettles. She treated us to dinner with other like-minded artists in Urbana, IL one very cool and rainy day last week.

We also spent a few windy cold days in Iowa City, where we were honored to be guests at the University of Iowa Center for the Book. The night we arrived Melissa Moreton had a fun old timyish music jam planned for us. She is a mom, teaches book arts at the university AND plays a mean banjo and wash tub bass.

We lectured and musicked and ate and drank with Iowa City book artists, and had some interesting 'State of the Artist Book" conversations with papermaker Tim Barrett and conservationist Gary Frost.

Tim and Peter at the papermaking facility.

Tim's Oakdale paper mill

The students with their instructor and friend of ours Kate Martinson, visiting from further north: they are from Luther College, Decora, IA, visited Tim at the papermill had a surprise visit by the Wandering Book Artists and the caravan. Several of the students' favorite book was the Squirrel book where I tanned the squirrel parchment used in the binding. I quickly changed into my buckskin skirt to show off. There are not many places where people appreciate the work!

I really don't think this is a good picture, but I have to show you that our granddaughter Emily made a surprise visit to the lecture screen when Peter's computer went to screen saver during a lecture! We miss her!

Peter gave a talk to the book arts class at the University of Nebraska, Omaha, yesterday. One thing we talked about was that there are so many more opportunities for students to learn papermaking, printing and book binding than when we were in college. Their end-of-semester project books on display were well-printed and bound. The instructor there, Bonnie O'Connell, had lots to say about the difficulties facing teachers today, with reduced funding and more hours of required work. Definitely lucky students to have her there.

We were able to have an open caravan directly in front of the Art Building. People ducked inside to get out of the wind.

I finished knitting my latest wanderer sweater!

Have you seen the inside of the wagon recently? Photo by Tim A. Fleming. Thank you!

Tornados in St Louis: OZ or bust?

2011-04-27T08:19:00.000-07:00

When we arrived in St. Louis for our talk at the Olin Library at Washington University, it was still sunny. The old part of the Washington University campus looks like an old European castle, built as part of the 1904 World Exposition.

While Peter gave his talk, and as the reception progressed, the rain began. The wind grew stronger and then we heard there was a tornado “watch”... but coming from "the land of earthquakes" we didn’t really know what that meant. Would our gypsy wagon end up in OZ?

The talk was very well attended. The audience included our Miniature Book Society friend Julian Edison, as well as Washington University's book arts teacher Jana Harper with her books arts class.

One student gave us this very relevant broadside.

We spent the night with Antiquarian bookseller Anthony Garnett and his family, who live adjacent to Forest Park in a 100-year old many-roomed mansion.

Here is Donna sitting in front of the fireplace.

We visited the beautiful: ARCH, built in the mid-1960s as a monument to the gateway to the west. It still feels very far from the “west” to us from California….

As we ate frozen custard ice cream at “Ted Drewes”, the local hot spot, lightning flashed in the west. Little did we know it was a tornado was tearing the roof off part of the St. Louis’ Lambert Airport.

While in St. Louis we visited our friends at ARCH Paper. They make 100% post consumer rag paper and paper pulp. They work with “Remains” a recycling and repurposing business that collects cast-off clothing for resale. They sort through tons of clothing and shoes every day. Shoes go to developing countries, cloth is recycled into things like archery target stuffing, auto insulation and more. The 100 percent cotton is shredded for making paper and that was what we were interested in. Peter bought as many bags of “Arch Shred” as he could fit in the empty spaces in the truck. The neat thing about the shred is that they sort the rag by color before it is shred, so Peter will not have to add dye to the pulp to get some vivid blacks, reds, greens, etc. Hand papermakers take note: this is a “100% post-CONSUMER” product, not merely scraps left behind from the making of clothing, so is the most ecological cotton rag pulp.

We parked at "Remains" for Easter. The storm blew by and we celebrated Easter with papermaker friend Joan Hall with pancakes and eggs. Check out her fantastic BIG work.

And finally: every community has its cool store for locally grown food!

Take the last gypsy wagon to Clarkesville…

2011-04-20T17:53:00.000-07:00

Today we didn’t monkey around. We got up early and drove to Clarkesville, to Austin Peay State University. Last night there was another THUNDERSTORM and the power was out at the Patterson-Marx home when we left.

Our host at the University was Cindy Marsh who teaches printmaking and book arts. The school bought out an old show card print shop (like Hatch) so they have a bunch of wood type. When we arrived the school seemed vacant. It was. Classes had been canceled for the morning because the STORM had knocked out the power over the U and half the town. Cindy met us there anyway and with the spare time we used her type to print a show card for ourselves.

When the students arrived by around 1 pm, we got down to business. We set up our gypsy wagon outside the art building and set up our books in the art building foyer. We showed our books and talked to students all day. One girl seemed to look at every book with excitement. She was a printmaking student, recently from India, and said, “I have a language barrier. I have been so worried about taking the book making class that I will have to take next year. I do not know enough words. But looking at your books I see I do not need many words, I can use pictures and colors too. The book can be like a painting.”

That made our wandering into Clarkesville worthwhile.

Nashville, a jumpin' book arts town!

2011-04-19T12:06:00.000-07:00

Besides all the letterpress activity we already knew about, we have been excited to find active book arts community groups here in Nashville, where folks all seem to be learning and sharing with each other. Vanderbilt College, Watkins College of Art and Design and the downtown branch of the public library all have collections of artists' books and teach classes. Also, amazingly, several local junior and high schools offer classes in book arts. So, as well as being "Music City" we declare Nashville to be home to the book arts.

We visited Hatch Show Print on Saturday, a print shop specializing in music posters, printed on letterpresses. Our friend Mary Sullivan (a fellow student we met last summer at Jim Croft's Old Ways Workshops) gave us a tour. They use lots of beautiful wood type:

We walked down Broadway and caught a few honkey-tonk shows:

We also taught 2 days of classes at a branch of the Nashville public library, where the 30 total students got to make books for free! Liz Coleman organized the event and gave a mention in her blog.

We love it that Nashvillians support their libraries enough that they are able to offer programs like this! Thanks, Nashville!

Nashville has also been good for the wanderers. We have walked in pretty places:

Radnor Lake Park

We are staying in a flat driveway, on a quiet street, but most especially, our wonderful host family are making us fully welcome into their home.

Lesley.

Lesley and Abraham walk to the bus stop.

Lesley, Jonathan and son Abraham Patterson-Marx are not the first hosts to treat us so well. In fact, I am sorry I have neglected to mention our hosts up till now. All over the country are welcoming artists and book people. Some we have known before, like Maggie Cheney, who used to live in Santa Cruz and now is in Asheville. Some we have just met and feel like long time friends, like Kay Patterson in North Carolina or Susan Jones of Mississippi. We feel so taken care of wherever we go.

Lesley teaches book arts at the high school level and makes very intricate and sweet books and prints:

Here is one of Lesley Patterson-Marx's works. Check out her website!

Leslie and Jonathan made a cob house in their back yard, for hanging out in, for the dogs to be in the shade, or for eating supper in, and just like Grandma Prisbey in Simi Valley, California, they used bottles in the walls. (We have started a bottle wall at our house in Santa Cruz, and when we stop wandering hope to find time to finish that wall up.)

We are inspired!

Wandering in the South, Y'all

2011-04-10T10:27:00.000-07:00

We arrived in Asheville, NC in a hailstorm and the hail balls were up to the size of large marbles. We stopped in a parking lot to let it pass, with all the other folks waiting it out, looking out with trepidation as the hail strikes on the roof of the truck sounded like gunshot!

Peter took this photo to show how much water pours off a parking lot during one of these intense storms.

Peter taught a bookbinding class on Sunday at BookWorks, in Asheville.

Some cool structures were made:

I went for a walk around the neighborhood of the center and look! the dogwood are spectacular here.

After the class, we had a beer at this brewery beside the French Broad River. This is the artsy side of town and the outside drinking area was surrounded by great iron work.

We stayed a night near Athens in the Ft. Yargo State Park. State Parks are jewels. Very empty this time of year. No mosquitos yet, no plastic beach toys littering the lakes. Just nice views and quiet.

Well, not so quiet when we are talking on the phone to Suzanne about grand baby Emily back home...

Teaching again in Chattanooga, TN and more cool books:

Here is the spot we "camped" for the night in Chattanooga, near the "Choo-Choo."

a very cool urban neighborhood, filled with entrepreneurial 20 - 30-somethings.

Last night, we camped in "Old Stone Fort State Park, near Manchester, TN, a 2000 year old ceremonial spot for the Woodland era Native Americans.

This is Peter wandering in the paper mill ruins in the park. Will you build me a wall like this please?

I Sing Behind the Plow

2011-04-08T13:10:00.000-07:00

We began week 2 at the John C. Campbell Folk School in North Carolina by visiting a gypsy wagon owned by a local gal, Misty Taylor. It’s about a quarter of the size of ours, is mainly a sitting room with a couch that converts into a bed and is a very cozy little space. The bright painting is very charming. I’m envious of the mollycroft (that raised-roof skylight down the center) too; next caravan we build will have to have one!

Back at the Folk School, Peter thought teaching ukulele might be easier than teaching book arts, just because less materials are required. We hauled around lots of paper, cardboard, paint, etc during last week’s class; this week he only had his uke to keep track of. But he worked really hard at helping beginning ukulele players learn enough to actually play confidently and enthusiastically in front of the whole school at lunch on Thursday and then at each studio that afternoon.

It is so fun to see beginning artists and musicians with those big proud smiles!

Here is a video of the song Peter and his class played for the rug hooking class (They went to sing there first because they were told it was a class full of hookers...).

I had a conversation with another instructor here about how some classes have instant rewards. On the first day of the cooking class, for instance, they got to eat yummy Indian food. On the first day of the basket-making class taught by JoAnn and Steve Catsos, they stripped black ash for hours and hours. Their baskets didn’t get made until later in the week. The ukulele class was a bit like the basket making class. At the end of the first day everyone was a bit weary and brain-dead, but they had learned their first two chords and some songs to sing with them.

The jewelry studio.

In my class, which was basic jewelry metal smithing, (with a great jeweler and teacher from Mississippi, Susan K. Jones,) the rewards came early as we learned stone setting, soldering and sawing of metals on the first day. I loved the class. I was able to work along at my own pace and so accomplished a bunch. Thanks to Susan and her assistant Kay Patterson (a great metal worker and felter) for all the inspiration!

Here are some of the pieces I made. I did some more metal work, not shown here, for me to use later on books.

John C. Campbell Folk School believes that music rounds out the experience of the artist (that is all of us, folks) so each morning they have music. The title of this post is from a Danish poem that talks of singing (expressing joy) while plowing (working), which brings fulfillment.

Singing and playing in the Keith House Community Room at "Morning Song"

Peter led the music on Thursday and I joined him as he introduced the ukulele to the folk school. This was the first time they had offered a ukulele class! Everyone wanted to know what songs were ukulele songs. We played Hawaiian, folk, old time and 60s pop too! We had fun and they did too.

On the last night, we jammed outside the jewelry studio with some locals. We played fiddle and old-timey tunes and sang Kate Wolf and Gillian Welch songs. What a nice evening.

One last note: Have you ever had moonshine? A classmate, Jessica, says that everyone has it around here. That’s not true in California, I say.

Two sips were just enough.

LATE BREAKING NEWS!!!!!!

I just got word that Adam Schwartz finished his radio interview and article about us for Indiana Public Media. Check it out. This is the link so just click here.

Folk School life in North Carolina

2011-04-02T08:18:00.000-07:00

We've spent the week at the John C. Campbell Folk School in the Appalachian Mountains, teaching a book arts workshop.

We did a pretty good job of not overworking (ie: staying up past 10 pm in the studio every night) and still taught a lot of different structures, had lofty book arts conversations and watched our students create intricate and quirky books.

I love this ultra-creative working table.

Lots of cool books

One student, Betty, used pictures of the folk school in her creation, which included a possum. I haven't seen any possums here, but this town, Brasstown, is known for its New Year's eve "possum drop", which they tell me "does not abuse the possum in any way, in fact, it keeps him from being run over for another night."

This is Peter playing music with the locals at the "Possum Pit" in downtown Brasstown.

People here are so lucky to have a resource like the folk school nearby. They invite artists and craftspeople to teach week-long classes in beautiful studios in this peaceful rural setting year-round. A major focus of the campus is "non-competitive education", which makes for a joyful camaraderie to develop in the classes and in the dining hall. They also believe in the unifying power of music. We sang folk songs in the morning, heard a free concert last night by a fantastic New England fiddler, Lissa Schneckenburger and contra-danced on Wed. night.

Look at the other crafts people did during the week:

Sweetgrass baskets

Banjars

wood turning: hollow vessels

We'll be here another week, where we will hopefully have more sunshine. It rained most days last week. Peter will teach a ukulele class and I (Donna) will learn some jewelry making!

Flash! ... KaBOOM!!!

2011-03-27T11:41:00.000-07:00

Lightning flashed and thunder boomed right outside the wagon and I could see the whites of Peter’s startled eyes. “I’ve never been so close to lightning before! The thunder reverberated in my chest!” We were just minding our own business playing our ukuleles inside the heated cozy wagon. The rain loudly pounded on the copper roof, as we sang, “Hard times, hard times, come again no more.”

But I will back up. “L is for Louisville” is what I was supposed to title this post. We visited the libraries in University of Louisville, in Kentucky, where the novelist who writes the alphabet murder mysteries, Sue Grafton went to school. But no murder mysteries to tell of besides that we happened to be listening on our ipod to one of her stories. Peter talked to a class of ESL students and what they were most interested in was the uke book and the caravan.

They took multiple photos of different groupings of friends by the front door and all planned to start playing ukulele very soon.

We had the campground to ourselves in Cumberland Falls State Park, Kentucky, where the temp never rose above 40 degrees.

We are still getting things organized.

The falls are thundering and greeny-brown with this year’s plastic trash tangled at the high water mark.

In Knoxville, we had permission to park on private property next to a Jerry’s Artarama store. We didn’t realize it was right next to some mainline railroad tracks. The locomotives could be heard from FAR off as they roared their way to us and then as they flew by a few yards away every couple of hours. Luckily Peter and I can fall back asleep easily so were not too tired when the Knoxville Book Arts Guild toured the wagon and looked at books in the freezing weather on Saturday morning.

that's a train back there.

There was a lot of analyzing of the structures of our books by this group. They obviously are an active binding group.

We pulled into the John C. Campbell Folk School in Brasstown, North Carolina last night in the rain, cooked a curry vegetable dinner and drank some local Tennessee beer. All night the storm raged but by morning the air was still and we could walk around the folk school’s awesome crafts’ studios. We will spend two weeks here teaching in this lovely rural setting.

Louisville, Knoxville, Brasstown. Kentucky, Tennessee, North Carolina. We are in the south, in the Appalachian Mountains now, where the trees are just barely showing this year’s new leaves and the spring rains are flooding the low draws.

Last minute: The tiny house blog has done a story about us:

Check it out here.

Sheriff here! Open the Door!!!

2011-03-23T18:49:00.000-07:00

We pulled into a vacant parking lot at an empty warehouse to sleep last night. We figure a neighbor must have complained about Gypsies in the neighborhood, or the fact that a random GYPSY CARAVAN was parked by a vacant warehouse, because some time long after we were already asleep there was a pounding on the door, and a gruff voice yelling, “Sheriff! Open the door!” I’m thinking, “Can’t I just pretend I am asleep?”

Peter leaps up, still in his PJs, he opens the door. “Hi!”

A decidedly mellower voice then enquires, “What exactly is this wagon anyway? And what is a “book artist?”

Peter, ever the educator extraordinaire, uses this midnight intrusion as an opportunity to share about what we are up to! He also is so pleased to be able to tell her that having a sheriff tell us to leave is EXACTLY what wandering book gypsies would expect to happen….throughout history the police have always been telling gypsies to move on.

She lets us off with a warning, imploring us to “PLEASE ASK the owners next time if you can park on their PRIVATE property.”

This is the very sleepy warehouse lot where we were visited by the sheriff last night.

Once again we visited the Lilly Library at Indiana University in Bloomington. We opened the caravan door and put out books. Curious students and faculty toured and admired. Also, a radio show host, Adam Schwartz interviewed us, mostly Peter, for a show he is developing to air later. We’ll let you know when we know about the airing place and time. It was a good introduction to the wandering ways again to talk about books, the wandering life, the beautiful gypsy wagon and the sunny warmth of spring in Indiana.

Peter and the radio guy, AJ at IU.

Now we are camping out in the knobs and hardwoods of southern Indiana. Ahhhh.

Sunset and the daffodils that EVERYONE grows in their yards here...

Wandering again!!

2011-03-23T18:33:00.000-07:00

Santa Cruz 55 degrees, rain. Bloomington, Indiana, 77 degrees, warm, sunny and the caravan is rolling again!

We are picking up where we left off in October. After spending the winter at home in Santa Cruz we have returned to our gypsy wagon in Bloomington. Already the adventure is in full swing. We flew to Indianapolis, with two 49-pound check-on bags and two probably 59-poundcarry-on bags, loaded with books we made last winter, workshop materials, maps and a few new clothes. Howie Clark of Twinrocker Handmade Paper met us at the airport and drove to Jim Canary’s house in Bloomington via Geoff Davis’s Blue Stone Folk School in Noblesville, a suburb of Indianapolis. Howie and Geoff are in a band that plays many of the Hoosier Hotshot’s great novelty tunes, and we spent the evening jamming in the folk school. Peter learned a few Hotshot tunes to take to John C. Campbellwhen he teaches his Introduction to the Ukulele class week after next. His favorite was “I like Bananas because they have no bones.” In true musician style we arrived at Jim’s house about 2 am.

Jim Canary in his handmade house/bindery/printshop/conservation lab!

The next morning we started up the truck ( on the first crank!) that had been stored at Jim’s. We headed for the Dam Boathouse where our gypsy wagon spent the winter, dreading what we might find after the snow and cold temps of the winter. The wagon was in perfect condition and it only took a few minutes to pul it out.

The stored caravan with the stored boats. (different kinds of fun!)

Now if you want to talk about angels in disguise, lets talk about Howie. We took our truck to get the oil changed and mentioned the fact that we never drove at night because there was some problem with the trailer wiring and when we drive at night the left tail lights blow out. (Remember the night in Vermont when we got pulled over for that?) Howie said, “We have an hour how about I crawl under the trailer and see if I can find a short.” Right, we spent hours and hours last year trying to figure out the problem, but we humored him and let him go for it. Five minutes later he had found the short and another hour later it was fixed, and the oil changed, tires rotated and we were ready to wander the open road.

Donna and Howie inspecting the newly-opened caravan.

Wanderers ready to go!

2011-03-03T13:24:00.000-08:00

Paloma in warmer times in Salt Lake City

In just a few more days we will fly back to Indiana where the gypsy wagon "Paloma" has been cooped up in a garage for the winter. Although it was a freezing cold and snowy winter there, the wagon should be ready to head down the road again into some spring weather. Luckily there is a good heater inside and the walls are insulated. I imagine we will still get some cool nights for awhile. I can't wait to be traveling in the sweet little wagon once again!

First thing we'll do is head to the John C. Campbell Folk School in Brasstown, North Carolina to teach 2 weeks of classes. In the first week's class we will be making a book: papermaking, printing and binding a limited edition for each student to take home. We are looking forward to the serene surroundings and the inspiring atmosphere of tons of creative energy at the center.

The second week Peter will teach, guess what: UKULELE playing!!!! If you want some real good times learning this fun instrument, come and join us the first week of April.

Peter playing in front of the giant uke, Big Sur.

More news:

We have finished the portfolio of broadsides that we printed on the first part of the wandering. It is titled, "The Wandering Book Artists' Collaborative Broadsides." The broadsides are housed in a beautiful gypsy wagon-colored clamshell box.

The Wandering Book Artists' Collaborative Broadsides

We made paper especially for a letterpress printed booklet with information about each collaboration which is included with the broadsides. We will carry one with us to show and we will ship them out to folks who order them when we get back to Santa Cruz in the summer.

Inside the The Wandering Book Artists' Collaborative Broadsides

I worked on the blog site a bit while I was home and now you can see a calendar on the bottom of this page as well as a map link to see where we have been and where we are going.

A very nice article was recently published in an online journal called Fine Books Magazine. Check it out.

Hope to see you on the road!

PS, here is a picture of our new granddaughter Emily, the reason we went home for the winter....

Emily, 4 months.

Crossroads of America

2010-09-29T18:37:00.000-07:00

“Crossroads of America” is the state motto of Indiana and this is where we are crossing the figure eight in our travels. On this trip we went north across the states to Vermont in the east, then looped around to Kentucky, Michigan and now Bloomington, Indiana. We leave the gypsy caravan and truck here for the winter in this boat storage place down the road (the proprietor was really jazzed to have Paloma parked there!).

But wait, we have some stories to tell of Bloomington first. Our friend and conservator in the Lilly Library, Jim Canary, invited us to come to the University of Indiana. (One of Jim’s other jobs is the keeper of the scroll of Jack Kerouac’s book, “On the Road”. He sets up the shows and tours of the scroll around the country!)
Peter gave a talk in the library where there is a huge collection of miniature books. The talk was preceded by an open caravan and the thing I liked about the event was that is was mostly students and they were interested in books and art as much as they liked the caravan. We always get someone who “has always dreamed of doing something like this…”

We printed our last broadside of the series, this one done at the Graphic Design Press at the University. We worked with Paul Brown and Tom Walker and the cool thing was having 2 presses going at once! We designed and printed the amazing number of 6 color runs in the day.

We used the pressure print technique to do the crossing roads, a very fine wood engraving of an apple by Paul, and some wood type for the words “Cross Roads”. The broadside’s got great color and I’m happy with this final boldness.

Just a few runs are done on this print…

We camped here for the night at Oliver’s Winery when we found we could not get down the hill to Jim’s to park the caravan, hence the stay at the winery then the boat yard.
So we fly home tomorrow. The caravan is nestled in. We will miss living in the simple colorful way we have lived for the past 6 months and we’ll miss the companionship of all the folks who have been part of the adventure.
We will return to wandering next March. Our first event will be teaching some classes at the John C. Campbell Folk School in South Carolina, then crossing America to get home in the summer sometime. Let us know if you would like the wandering book artists to visit!

When I see things like this, I remember how I want to live my life

2010-09-24T07:42:00.000-07:00

That is what Olivia, in Kalamazoo, said to me yesterday. Now that quote is what makes the trip worthwhile!

The other quote of the day was,"What the F**k is that!!!" Hmmm....

You want to see the wagon up close? Peter and I give you an especially homey homemade video here.

We met with Neil Chase of the Western Michigan University Special Collections Library. A nice change from other library visits is that he showed us some of his favorite artists' books in their collection! One artist I was intrigued with is Gwen Frostic. She worked in the last century, creating books of her poems and linocuts.

Her work is simple and beautiful. Apparently her work is still being printed on notecards and other things, but I really loved her nature books in the library.

Our friends Ladislav and Janna Hanka live in Kalamazoo and what a pleasure to visit their creative world. Look what they painted on the walls!

Lad is attending ArtPrize in Grand Rapids this week where he is competing in this art show with one of his fantastic intalio prints. It's huge, 6' by 2'. Here is a photo of the print: and if you go to grand rapids this week, you can vote!

Here is another of his prints:

Today Peter is teaching the last class of the season at the Kalamazoo Book Arts Center.

This is another newly established center that is vibrant and thriving. Lucky for almost everyone in the country except Californians, there are incredible buildings built a long time ago, with lots of character, that are being turned into community arts spaces. This place is right downtown, has lots of equipment for printing, papermaking and bookbinding. Western Michigan University works in cooperation with the center, mostly to provide interns that are interested in book arts to work there. Western's printmaking teacher Jeff Abshear is the director of the center.

Wow. there is so much happening around the country that is GREAT for book arts and that means great for all!

Peter and I fly home next week to attend 2 weddings, 1 birth and stay for the winter. We will leave the gypsy wagon in Bloomington, Indiana for the winter and return next spring to continue the wandering. Keep checking for updates on our schedule for next year!

Midwestern hospitality

2010-09-19T14:15:00.000-07:00

Someone told me a long time ago that the midwesterners were the friendliest and most hospitable folks on earth. I have to agree. We had a visit to the home and studios of Tim Moore and Pati Scobey in the village of Concord, Michigan for the weekend and they are proof that this is true. Tim makes papermaking and bookbinding equipment of the very finest quality,

and Pati makes beautiful prints and books.

We took a bit of a break here before heading off to Kalamazoo to teach our final classes of the season. They live on over 100 acres, most of it is planted in pines which are all the same age, so not all that pretty, but more firewood than they'll need for their whole lives. In the forest grow hickory, oak and other hardwoods which I loved to walk through.

Other friends we visited here are Wil and Sarah Reding, the "Rent a Rambling Naturalists". Their big accomplishment in the last few years was walking from Indiana to Florida, following John Muir's "1000 Mile Walk to the Gulf."

They showed us pics from their trip and we were glad our Muir Ramble Route is only 300 miles long....

Camping on the east shore of Lake Michigan is lovely: Sand dunes 100 feet tall, clear water waves lapping at the rocky shores, people gone for the season.

Nearby is the community of Holland, which was very heavily settled by the Dutch so we did a touristy thing and went to see wooden shoes being made. The machines were awesome: simple yet ingenious! Big belts, lathes and augers noisily grind along and turn poplar cubes into shoes!

The reason we were interested is that we have a wooden shoe collection and are trying to figure out how to change them all into artists' books.....

The art community of Ox Bow is near Holland, and we stopped to tour the facility with the plan to someday see about teaching there. They built this cool structure/gypsy house for a parade this summer.

A little cousin to our caravan...

We are here for 3 days before we head to Kalamazoo for a whirlwind 3 days of classes, library visits and talks. I can make it, I can make it......

Cincinnati and Ann Arbor

2010-09-17T17:57:00.000-07:00

Beautiful selection of decorative papers at Hollander's

We had two days to drive from Larkspur Press in Kentucky to Ann Arbor where we were to teach a class at Hollander's then be part of the Kerrytown Bookfest. We spent the night between in Cincinnati, where Peg and Stuart hosted an open gypsy wagon pot luck for the Cincinnati Book Arts Society. (I have to add here, these people really know how to cook! Homemade cookies, salads, appetizers with olive oil and herbs, etc.)

We stopped for a short papermaker's pilgrimage to the Cheney Pulp factory in Franklin, Ohio. This is where we get the raw material for our paper. They buy raw rag and process it half way so that I can use it in my beater. An interesting fact…Before NAFTA they used to use denim, but now it is all produced in South America, too far away to make economic sense, and there is an even bigger problem with denim today, from their prospective. Almost all of it has some spandex put in it to make it stretch in all the right places…and synthetics make it unusable as pulp for papermakers. So, instead they use tee-shirt knit off-cuts, mostly from the Caribbean we were told.

We arrived in Ann Arbor with plenty of daylight left to get lost a few times before ending up in front of Hollander's to get ready for the class and book fair.

While in Ann Arbor, we parked on the street by book artist Barbara Brown's house. A park stretches out down the hill in front of her house, with huge mown lawns and lush green shade trees.

What a lovely way to watch fall come in. Leaves yellow and red fell on the roof and the grass and we needed blankets again to sleep.

We stayed in Ann Arbor for 5 days. We taught a class, attended a eco-type festival about local food, participated in the "Kerrytown Bookfest", showed books to two libraries and gave a talk at the Book Club of Detroit. Our daughter asked, "Is your schedule ever going to let up? I mean, aren't you a little tired?" In answering, I thought about how much we get back from all that we do. The class at the center called "Hollander's" was well received and we saw some great innovations in the structures Peter taught. The bookfest was full of smart and interested people looking at books. It reminded me of the old days at the Renaissance Faires where there were crowds all day looking at books. We had our gypsy open for tours at the fair and had a nonstop stream of visitors. The rug kind of got worn out 'cause so many people walked through and I bet some of them will make their own gypsy wagon some day.

For a short break, we camped one night in Waterloo State Park, 1/2 hour away from Ann Arbor. OK, now the campsites look like this: all empty. We walked in the woods here and saw cool carnivorous pitcher plants and dwarfed tamarack trees growing in the bogs.

We made a quick drive up to East Lansing to show books at Michigan State University and arrived at just the wrong time: pouring rain! and no parking close by!

We had a worthwhile meeting with the librarians, though. Peter sold the 'History of the Accordion Book there!

One funny picture of me to end: this is what a wandering book artist looks like when doing bookkeeping in a gypsy caravan:

We slow down for rural Kentucky

2010-09-10T10:09:00.000-07:00

We spent three peaceful days in rural Kentucky at the Larkspur Press with Gray and Jean Zeitz as our hosts. In the 1970s, as a poet at the U of Kentucky, Gray had worked with Carolyn Hammer at the Anvil or King Library Press and like others who worked there he was inspired to set up his own press, so with his wife Jean he moved to Monterey KY where land was cheap, to get back to the land, farm and do what ever was required (grow tobacco, hogs, constructuion… You get the picture) to set up their own private press to print Kentucky poets.

Now thirty years and hundreds of books later they are living the dream, letterpress printing and binding poetry on a 12 by 18 C&P in editions of 5-700 copies, working exclusively with Kentucky poets, including their neighbor Wendell Berry.

While there we printed a broadside together, well maybe it would be more correct to say Gray printed it while we watched. The text is from the 1970s Whole Earth Catalog… The story of Divine Right’s Trip. I had loved that story when I first read it stretched out through the catalog, a few lines at the bottom of each page, and again, later, I read it in paper back form. I had not realized that the author was from Kentucky. Gray knew the author, Gurney Norman, who is currently Kentucky Poet Laureate, and found a passage written by Divine Right’s VW bus, that he thought perfect for a collaboration with wandering book artists traveling in a gypsy wagon.

Every October Larkspur Press hosts a wood engraving workshop with Wesley Bates. Donna found the class tools, instructional hand-out and scraps of endgrain wood and carved her first wood engraving, which we used in the broadside.

We had some beautiful weather, and took some time to work on the gypsy wagon. Donna painted Whitman’s quote on the side of the wagon. We are now looking for a travel quote for the other side from a well-known American woman author. Any thoughts?

I fixed the taillights.

Never told the story of being pulled over in Vermont for driving at night with out proper taillights, did we? The parking/running lights stopped working back in Montana or Wyoming, and I meant to fix them, but you know how that goes…. When we gave the evening lecture in Burlington, with the gypsy wagon parked in front of the library, we had to drive home in the dark. That was the first time on the whole trip that we drove at night. It was 11, a Friday night, and a probably bored policeman pulled us over, you know the drill. About an hour later he let us go with only a warning. Thank you Mr. Policeman. After that I kept meaning to fix them, but we kept moving at a relentless pace (wandering is only a figure of speech some times we should call ourselves the road warrior book artists….) until Kentucky, where everything has time to slow down.

Apparently it is an important piece of info: "Ice cold beer also available on Sundays"....

If you can get to Santa Cruz this Friday night, our town’s Museum of Art and History has a show opening about hand papermaking in Santa Cruz. We have a great display of our work in the show which we are proud of and too bad we can’t be there with you to see it. Check it out and say hi to our papermaking friends John Babcock, Laura Ito, Chuck Hilger and others!

Lexington, Kentucky: Miniature books and more

2010-09-05T19:16:00.000-07:00

On our first day in Lexington we met with Meg Shaw of the Lucille Little Fine Arts Library. Parking near the library was so tough she agreed to look at the books in the gypsy wagon (braving the soaring 90s temps) as we waited in a loading zone in front of the art museum.

She chose two of our favorite books for the collection at the arts library:

"Sit and Knit"

and "The Pencil"

Our primary reason for visiting Lexington was to attend the Miniature Book Society's "Grand Conclave."

Peter and I made our first book under 3 inches tall in 1980 or so. We just were wanting to use up some beautiful handmade English paper that was headed for the recycling bin and thought this small format would be fun and challenging. Well, we were led down a long road of making miniature books, teaching miniature book making classes, writing the book, More Making Books by Hand (which features many miniature book bindings), and attending meetings of the Miniature Book Society.

We went to the first ever meeting of the society in 1983 in Ohio, carrying baby Tanya (our daughter) with us. We were the "hippies from California" at that meeting. Today I watched a movie taken at that meeting, where long-bearded Peter played accordion and barefooted me played along on a penny whistle. But the folks were friendly and they bought our books! We just finished our weekend with the Society. The numbers at the conferences are lower than in years past, but the group is a close-knit one we are brought together by our somewhat quirky delight in small books.

On the second day of the conference Peter and I printed a broadside at University of Kentucky's King Library Press.

This press was established in the 1950s under the artistic vision of American Uncial type designer Victor Hammer. Our broadside features a quote by Hammer that we find inspiring, about the "mystical quality of handiwork." In any age, there seems to be a small group of folks who find satisfaction, or even enlightenment through excellence in the use of ones hands and hearts. (Also meeting at the hotel was a group of 5000 marketers that looked to me like some kind of pyramid scheme, a way for some to get LOTS of money, while others get bilked, but that is another story, I guess....) I am happy to be a member of the group of craftspersons. Peter and I named our press years ago "The Good Book Press" because we aimed to make our books with the highest level of craftsmanship. The name fell away as we decided to work as artists and not as a press, but the intention has always been there in our work. Hammer's quote was a reminder for me.

The Miniature Book Society toured through the King Library Press while we were working, so we had to answer questions while pulling the handpress. This is not always the best way to do good work, but happily the ink went into the page crisp and black (and red).

On the last day of the conference, we parked the gypsy wagon in front of the Hyatt Hotel for all the miniature book folks to tour through. And we guessed right: miniature book enthusiasts also love miniature houses on wheels!

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

2010-09-03T18:44:00.000-07:00

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

2010-08-31T16:57:00.000-07:00

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

2010-08-24T10:19:00.000-07:00

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"

2010-08-20T03:48:00.000-07:00

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

2010-08-18T18:34:00.000-07:00

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.

Bookbinding time in the East

2010-08-13T10:13:00.001-07:00

Peter and Don Rash on the Handpress:

Part way through our broadside collaboration with fellow printer and fine binder Don Rash he said, “How does this compare with other collaborations?” I had to think a bit. For one thing, I was completely at home in his print shop even though we were printing on a 1900s Morgan and Wilcox Washington hand press instead of a Vandercook press like ours at home. Another thing: Don is very relaxed about what he likes and voices his pleasure when he is happy with the printing results and that is fun. Still another thing: I felt like I was in the sauna for 12 hours yesterday as we printed the broadside on damp Moravia hand made paper in his shop!!!

The paper came from another Pennsylvanian who joined into the collaboration, Pavel Repiski of Atlantic Papers. The fact that the paper was made in Moravia was double perfect since Peter first met Pavel in Moravia at the Velke Losiny paper mill and also many Moravian Brethren are settled here in northern PA.

Hot and humid, humid and hot! But you know what is really standing out in my memory right now? I like thinking about how many friendships we have made and how much we have learned about printing because we have worked in so many studios with so many artists in the prime time of their craft-lives. Don has been bookbinding for over 30 years and his artistry and craftsmanship are outstanding. He designs, repairs and teaches fine bookbinding (this includes leather, boxes, tooling and more!) in his studio in Plains, Pennsylvania. Next door to his studio he owns a house that is available for students to stay in for a very reasonable cost. I highly recommend Don for any binding student.

The class in Don Rash's studio:

Off to another community: Treadwell, New York, in the Catskill Mountains. Peter is teaching a bookbinding class here today and I am catching up with office work. We are staying and teaching at the Bright Hill Literary Center, a center where art and literature are combined in a lovely setting in a small country town in the green woods. You can take classes, attend readings (which include open mikes, the best!!) read in their library or see the current art show in the gallery. Residencies are available for artists and writers too. Bertha Rogers is the powerhouse behind all this and she reminds me how much one person can do if they love what they are doing and care about their community.

Wagon Paloma in front of the center:

Peter teaching the class today in Treadwell:

I started this posting when the weather was in the 90s and humid, but today I am happy wearing my sweatshirt and also socks! We knew that if we paid 3X what we should have for new fan blades (we broke both our fans by leaving them plugged in while driving - no, not on – and they jumped onto the floor and turned themselves on and burned out….) to be mailed to us by second day air that the weather would cool down….

And now, after the workshop, we get to have dinner from the garden in this wonderful house on the hill: Bertha and Earnie's porch, fresh corn, Whitlock Red wine, cucumbers and tomatoes from the garden....

Do you want us to send an email to you when we have made a new post? The easiest way we have thought to do it is for you to email us. We will then make a group email to send out announcements to. We can't figure out any other way to contact you as my followers....

Our email:

Peter and Donna Thomas

From Pennsic Wars to Penn State

2010-08-12T07:06:00.000-07:00

We’ve had a magical week

We arrived last Friday at the Pennsic Wars, which is a production of the Society for Creative Anachronism. We really hadn’t planned this visit, but Peter had been in contact with several gypsy wagon owners and they said they would be here. Now this was a good chance to see some wagons all in the same place! The Pennsic Wars are like the Renaissance Faire (Peter and I participated for 20 years or so back in the 70s – 90s), they re-create a time period in England (mostly), but the SCA concerns itself with the medieval time. A big part of their activities have to do with fighting, i.e.: swords, foils, shields, bows and arrows.

So here we are. In the middle of the 11^th century with 10,000 people wearing linen sheets and armor, carrying weapons and PARTYING non-stop! We had fun. I painted and Peter photographed all the gypsy wagons we could find. We camped with a group that welcomed us in and fed us and took us touring around the site. Something we have noticed on this trip: We feel like every person we meet is the most interesting and friendly person in the world and we are dear old friends. So nice.

We spent the next night at friend Marty from Santa Cruz parent’s house in the country near Pennsic, where he just happened to be there because of a wedding. We ate dinner from their garden then visited in the firefly and cicada evening. I picked enough green beans, squash and tomatoes for the next few days. Yum.

The next day as we drove east on the Interstate 80, Peter saw a sign for Penn State University. He thought, we’ve sold a book to them before! I was napping and the next thing I knew, we were on the way to an impromptu meeting (actually, this is not usually a concept in a librarian’s world) with special collections librarian Sandra Stelts. The library is under construction this summer (this is happening ALL OVER), so she wanted to come down to the gypsy wagon at the loading dock and see our books there. We were happy to oblige because it would save us hauling all the books inside. What a nice meeting it was! We sold books (quite a few!), people dropped by and smiled and inquired about the wagon (as per usual) so our detour off the highway was a highlight of our day. And in an email she said, “Your visit was the highlight of my week! So glad that you followed your impulse and called from the highway. I felt when I got back to my office that I'd BEEN somewhere, even if we never left the library's parking lot! The caravan is a charming little world of its own.”

Indiana Homestead to Cleveland Art Center

2010-08-05T11:44:00.001-07:00

Our friends John Hook and Andrea Peterson and their boys Ry and Lu are living the good artistic life in northeastern Indiana. Their garden, goats and chickens feed them and keep them busy with their upkeep. They work in their papermaking and ceramics studios to produce prints and pots under the name “Hook Pottery Paper” and offer classes in both. A sign hangs by the driveway inviting customers and another sign is added for “fresh eggs” when the chickens are particularly productive.

Peter and I spent 2 days with the family, making another broadside for the trip series. This time we made a handmade paper piece in the shape of the caravan, with a 2-color stenciled pulp painting applied to the surface featuring a bright red chicken! I am happy that this piece will add some whimsy and color to the series.

Andrea in the beater room with her hot pink and green press in front.

Andrea attaching the shaped stencil to the mold:

Pulling the 2 shaped papers: Peter, Andrea, Donna and Allan (assistant):

Donna holding finished papers on pellon:

A highlight for me was the party the family hosted for us the eve we arrived (after a crazy drive from Milwaukee via Chicago on a busy rush hour interstate with lots of road work happening….). Lu was masterful with the outdoor pizza oven, making probably over 25 pizzas to order! John made the nice real sourdough crust (I got some starter for the road!) The guests brought an item of old cotton clothing to add to the papermaking beater for our project. Ry helped us park in the yard and guided us back out again. He appeared the instant he heard me squeal when Peter started backing into traffic!

On Wednesday afternoon, we were hosted by the Morgan Conservatory for a bookmaking class. Peter taught 13 people how to make a scrolling book and a nested accordion structure. Even in the humid and hot weather of Cleveland in August, the creative process took control and many very nice books were produced. One participant, Ginny wrote about it on her blog. The Morgan C. hosts lots of cool classes throughout the year in a fantastic facility, check it out.

Two Gypsy wagons are better than one.

2010-08-03T07:01:00.000-07:00

Remember how we made a pilgrimage to Muir’s boyhood home and then to all the Muir sites at the University of Wisconsin? Well, yesterday we made a pilgrimage to East Troy and spent the day visiting with Jim and Loi of www.gypsytrailersusa.com.

We first contacted Jim about 5 years ago when we saw his web site, and when we found his home was only 20 miles outside of Milwaukee we realized it would be possible to visit on this trip. Jim and Loi are artists and Jim is definitely an outsider artist. I think in this case pictures will speak louder than words so let us show you his wagon and his home. By the way Jims wagon is for sale for $8900 (he has $11,000 in receipts for materials and did all the labor himself). Check out his web site.

Wandering Wisconsin

2010-08-01T05:36:00.000-07:00

We entered Wisconsin in the "Driftless Area", the part of the midwest that did not have glaciers move through, so the terrain has hills and hollows. The Driftless Bookshop

was the first stop. This used book store is where our friend and fellow printer Mike Koppa works and they buy used books that others want to throw out and find readers for them. What an awesome collection of books in a cool old tobacco leaf warehouse! Here's Peter wandering the stacks, playing his uke. Mike works for Organic Valley, purveyors of organic dairy products and we spent last Sunday gorging on lovely yogurt, cream, chocolate milk, ice cream and more at their yearly festival.

John Muir spent his youth in Wisconsin so we stopped at "Fountain Lake Farm" in the middle of the state. It was a super hot and humid day but we managed a walk around the lake in the beautiful prairie flowers to his old home site. The area has been preserved as a park and Muir would be happy to see the way folks have loved and nurtured the native prairie landscape. A jump in the lake refreshed after the sweaty hike. Afterwards we visited the nearest town, Montello, where the Montello Historical Preservation Society has a great show up highlighting Muir in Marquette County. Kathleen McGuin, from a long time Wisconsin family, showed us around the incredible artifacts they gathered for the show.

Hamilton Type Museum in Two Rivers was our next printing stop. Here is where wood type was made for years and we printed a broadside here using some great fonts of various sizes.

We camped just north of town on Lake Michigan with all the mosquitos. Oh and some other campers. One camper was "Fish Bah" who made a very nice cabin camper over 25 years ago and look how nice it still is. He lives in Idaho and drove all the way to his high school reunion in Two Rivers....

Swimming was fun in Lake Michigan: we body surfed the smallish waves! Then made dinner out at the dunes before we had to move back into the dark wet buggy forest for the night (that is where the campsites were).

On to Madison, where we were hosted by a family who own and operate a glass shop: Studio Paran. The artist, Richard, makes such beautiful vases, tumblers and bowls.

Richard cleared out his gallery and Peter taught a book making class there on Saturday.

But earlier in the week, we were treated to a "Muir-iana"tour of the University of Wisconsin. Muir went to school here in 1860s, and a Muir enthusiast, Dan Einstein, was kind to give us a tour of all the Muiriana on campus. We toured his dorm hall, saw his bronze bust in the biology dept, visited his famous "locust tree" site (where he supposedly had his first botany lesson) and more.

Our friend Tracy Honn is the director and letterpress printer extraordinaire at the Silver Buckle Press, which is in the Memorial Library on the U of Wisconsin campus. I have always admired Tracy's fine aesthetic and while printing our next broadside, she showed us some cool techniques. One was "pressure prints", which I won't try to explain, but we used some grass from "Muir's Knoll" which is right up the hill from the library. In the end, we didn't used the technique for the edition, but the learning was great and I am happy with the broadside featuring Muir's grass and a tiny caravan paired with Muir's words about wandering in Wisconsin.

A little more Madison: farmer's market on Saturday: crazy crowded because you could get organic cheese, fruit, vegies, cheese, sausage, jerkie, bread and more cheese. Oh, and fresh corn. That's the best!

Little Gypsy Wagon on the Prairie

2010-07-24T16:32:00.000-07:00

Highway 14 across South Dakota and Minnesota is known as the “Laura Ingalls Wilder Memorial Highway” and that is how we drove through these states. We went from the Badlands National Park rugged landscape:

to a comfy recreation area in the capital city of Pierre, SD, where we camped on mown lawn next to a swimming lake on the Missouri River. We swam at sunset to cool down in what is hot to us, but was only in the 80s. Pierre is where we met the little highway on the prairie, the mostly 2-lane highway 14.

Now I have to tell you how we are met in these heartland small towns. We get lots of looks, but people are careful to only glance quickly at us two aging hippie-types in this very curious trailer? Or is it for the circus? Or perhaps for some upcoming Shakespeare thing? We are parked in the McDonald’s parking lot (free internet) posting blogs or trying to keep up the book business and what an odd picture we present. I sometimes feel self-conscious as I slip from truck seat to caravan back door in my flowing pants and flying gray braids!

But then when someone stops to talk, it is because they really LOVE the wagon and have to know how we got it. All agree that the world needs more color and creativity when it comes to RVs. Here is an RV with a giant pheasant on top! (The pheasant hunting capitol of the world is on HWY 14.)

On Highway 14 you can buy vegies from a farm stand where a WHOLE CASHBOX of money is there for you to put your money in. Not just a slot, like in California. I am writing a thank you note on the whiteboard for the tomatoes, cucumbers, sweet onions and corn.

One more story. We camped in a State Park in Minnesota, down in a hollow by a slow moving river, surrounded by leafy cottonwoods. The ranger said nonchalantly that IF we were to have any severe storm warnings, THEY WOULD LET US KNOW and the safe place would be the big stone CCC-built bathhouse. OK, fine. They will “let us know”. Well, at midnight, the wind whipped the cottonwoods, thunder and lightning happened simultaneously (no “counting out” how far away it was) and the rain came down in tablespoon-sized drops. Folks ran to their cars and waited and watched. It quieted and we all went back to sleep. In the morning we casually asked if it was always so fun at night camping in Minnesota. The campground host said, “Didn’t you hear the warning? We stayed in the bathhouse for 3 hours.” Apparently they forgot to tell our loop that we needed to move. Oh, also that we were supposed to tune into the radio for the announcement.

Big Sky Montana

2010-07-20T20:10:00.000-07:00

Yes, it’s true. The sky is big and beautiful in Montana.

We hiked in the sky on Sunday in Glacier National Park on a trail called the Highline Trail, which traverses just under the Continental Divide by Logan Pass. This hike is near the top of my list of all-time favorite hikes. We started out hiking with mountain goats, who are intent on feeding on greenery beside the trail. We enjoyed so many wildflowers, including the millions of yellow glacier lilies covering the alpine slopes. 11.6 miles later, we had descended into a wide watershed with a view of Heaven’s Peak, with its glistening glacier in the afternoon sun. I am very sorry to report that our camera has gone missing from the time in Glacier Park, but we did take some great shots of the hike! Luckily I painted a few watercolors of the scenes and flowers.

Because of a late, cool spring, the grass is still green here on the rolling rangeland. We stayed in the Lewis and Clark and the Custer National Forests yesterday and today. These campgrounds are typical forest service campgrounds during the week: nobody around! The ranger said we probably wouldn’t like the campsites because of the busy road beside it, but when she found out we were from California, she decided we would be fine.We counted about 20 cars passing during the 14 hours we were there…

Speaking of roads, we are traveling the “slow roads”. We followed highways 89, 12 and 212. They are 2 lanes and run right down Main Street in every small town. The natural curves of the landscape are felt in the ride, no big freeway cuts mar the views. We saw deer and pronghorn antelope feasting on the long prairie grasses beside the road. Oh, this is really living!

Driving only about 250 – 300 miles a day is the best way to go across the country. There is time for stops to local antique stores where you might find interesting things like a California hankie,

a woodstove iron panel,

a pressed tin box and other stuff. We leave about 7 am and drive to a pretty spot for breakfast. Here I am shaking off the night before we sit down to breakfast.

We then arrive at our campsite in time for a walk or a music session in the late afternoon. I can’t say I have improved in my bass playing, but we are memorizing a few favorite songs.

OLD WAYS of MAKING BOOKS, Santa, Idaho

2010-07-14T13:49:00.000-07:00

Peter, Mary, Thomas, Jim, Donna, Susie and Bob, holding the books we made this week:

We have the pleasure of being out of reach of cell phones, TVs, the internet and electricity (except by solar panels) for two whole weeks! We are attending the workshop run by our friends Jim and Melody Croft way up north in Idaho.

We are 2.5 miles down to the end of a dirt road and way into the green spruce woods. Jim and Melody have made this their home for over 33 years, starting by living in a teepee, now in a handmade house. They have lived a simple but labor-intensive life on this homestead where they eat from their garden.

Melody makes baskets in the spring when the willow shoots are up, she sews warm wool children’s coats in the summer to have for sale in the winter and makes sweet fairies to go with each season from plants from her garden. In the summer Jim leads a workshop in making books by hand in the old way. And that is where Peter and I have been these last 2 weeks. There are 6 of us in this year’s workshop and we are making bone tools, tanning deer hides: (Mary, Bob, Donna, Thomas, Susie and Jim and the stretched out deer hide)

splitting cedar boards for book covers, making paper: (Bob, Thomas and Susie in the greenhouse paper studio)

and spinning our own flax sewing thread. This is an amazing time. Jim is a walking-talking encyclopedia of old ways knowledge and the participants are taking every minute to learn and create together. Here are the books we made this week. Mine is the upper right, with a bone carving of Old Faithful on the front cover. Peter's is the mini in the bottom middle with the dark leather spine.

Here is Jim talking up carving bone and sharpening paring tools with Susie and Mary:

If you want to learn medieval bookbinding and live in a beautiful green wood for awhile, check them out! You really haven't lived if you are a book person and haven't spent some time in Santa, Idaho with the Crofts.

A little more of Pocatello, then Yellowstone

2010-06-30T11:57:00.000-07:00

Here is a picture of our Wandering Book Artist’s Bookmobile parked next to the Pocatello Public Library’s Bookmobile. Katherine from Children’s Services is behind this genius idea of heading to the farmer’s market every Saturday and handing free books (donated by other patrons) to every child that wants one. Donna sat with her and she passionately outlined the

value of a public library.

Now, we go to Yellowstone!!!!

Donna and I looked at geysers and hot pots the other visitors looked at our wagon.

We always invite folks to look inside if we find them yearning. After inviting one family in, the dad said, “You are artists, Right?” and the pre-teen daughter said, “This is the most BEAUTIFUL thing I have seen in my ENTIRE life.” Another family flagged us down and the dad said, “My kids want me to buy them one, where can we get one? We stopped to get directions from some rangers and instead of us beginning the conversation, they jump in with, “What’s the story?” I said, “We are on a road trip promoting the idea of more color in campgrounds. RVs are so monochromatic and dull. The ranger said that should go for ranger trucks too. This thing is too white.”

Donna wanted to include these photos of her painting in Yellowstone.

We left Yellowstone late in the afternoon, feeling roasted from wandering all day in the hot high-elevation sun to see the steaming geysers, the bears and the standing petrified tree. After driving an hour or so we stopped on the roadside for dinner at the bend of the Yellowstone River and we were able to back the wagon right up to the water’s edge.

We poured ourselves a glass of wine, just as all good gypsies do and sat in the wagon looking out the door at the mesmerizing river.

“There is someone outside taking pictures,” Donna said. I saw a shadow of the person and stepped out. He was just getting back on his motorcycle to leave, not wanting to bother us. I said, “Would you like to come in?”

“Man would I. You don’t know how much I want to see inside. This really makes my day. I started In the 70s with a school bus. Now I have an RV, but I am kind of living the gypsy life. I make leather hair barrettes and sell them wholesale to western stores. I sold $200 today. I have been going 7 months and have paid for all my food and gas.”

We camped next to the freeway and 2 tipis in Butte, Montana.

Eight Libraries in 5 days – OH MY!

2010-06-26T07:03:00.000-07:00

We left Santa Cruz Monday June 21 for Salt Lake City, where about a month ago we had left off our trip to return home and make more books, and had left our Gypsy Wagon parked under a shady walnut tree next to our friend Willy Littig's tomato plantation. Boy, I wish I was going to be here in August! so many tomatoes!!

We first stopped by Stanford University’s Green Library to show our books to the librarian there. Roberto Trujillo is one of the main forces behind the Codex Book Festival, the world’s premier showcase for fine press artists books, which will next be held in February 2011. We encourage everyone to mark their calendars and plan to be there.

We then stopped at UC Davis Shields Library and met with John Sherlock, who paused for a moment to pose with Donna by a student book art sculpture in front of the library. Donna and John are bonding with the face buried in a book..

After sleeping the night at Sierra Hot Springs (hot soak too!) we drove to Reno and met with Donnie Curtis at the University of Nevada. In Special Collections the books are open shelved and we spent a bit of time enjoying looking at the collection. We then toured the new library, visiting the casino-like tech area in what is not officially called a library, but a “Knowledge Center”.

Our bookstore friend Ken Sanders from Salt Lake (where you can order our latest commercially published book: "Muir Ramble Route: Walking from SF to Yosemite in the Footsteps of John Muir", in case you have missed that news....) hooked us up with some like-minded artists from our next stop north, Logan. Here you can see Bob Bissland with his fantastic colorful posters.

He and his wife Laura Fisher live in an artist-created house up the canyon with a clear stream running close beside it. We loved the night in the forest. The pic below is their "shrine room", decorated with African and South American art.

Peter couldn't resist the cowboy oil sign. Notice that the cowboy is a bee, the symbol for Utah's busy Mormans.

I will now list the 8 libraries, all with dedicated librarians working to keep all of us reminded of the vital need to have BOOKS, not just information or technology present and preserved!

Stanford, UC Davis, U of Nevada Reno, U of Utah Salt Lake, Weber State U Ogden, Utah State U Logan, Idaho State U Pocatello, and finally the Public Library of Pocatello, where we hosted a herd of very interested and active youngsters through the gypsy wagon and the display of miniature books. Peter hung outside with the librarian, Katherine, playing on his ukulele book....

California, for now.

2010-06-10T20:33:00.000-07:00

It's been 2 weeks since we got back to Santa Cruz and it feels like years since we have slept in the gypsy wagon! No worries, though, we are gearing up to be back in Salt Lake City real soon and will be heading north from there for more adventures of the wandering book artists!

Meanwhile, we have been making lots of new books to show you. Donna made a bunch of one of a kind books, some using the paintings she just did in the desert this spring.

Peter printed a miniature book using some vintage photo-engravings that Karla gave us of cowboy scenes like sitting around an open campfire, wearing cowboy hats and boots and pictures of rearing horses. It is bound with wooden pine boards that our friend Jim milled from his land in Mariposa County, California. A saddle leather title panel on the front cover is stamped with a cowboy on his horse.

While here in California, Donna went to the Sierra Nevada to check in with the granite. She went on a short backpack trip near Hetch-Hetchy, in Yosemite, where John Muir had his last fight to save the wilderness. Soon after he died, the dam was built there to secure a water supply for San Francisco. Late spring snows and a long winter made for lots of water in the waterfalls and rivers.

The bridges in front of Wapama Falls.

Crossing a boggy meadow, so nice to be barefoot!

Painting near Illouiette Falls, Yosemite.

We also attended an opening ceremony for a newly named stretch of county road, "John Muir Highway" up in the foothills of the Sierra. Since Peter and I walked on that route back in 2006 when we walked from San Francisco to Yosemite, we got to say a few words to the gathered crowd and hold the ribbon!

We are headed for Salt Lake on June 21st, the start of summer! Let us know if you would like us to stop by and show you our books!

Utah earth pigment and now home for a short spell

2010-05-14T21:33:00.000-07:00

This is Utah Lake, near Provo.

Earth pigment from Utah: it's what we used on our latest broadside collaboration in Provo, Utah. With new friends and printer/papermakers Rob and Georgia Buchert, we drove up a canyon to a red hill near the ghost town of Thistle. We scooped up 4 different colors of dirt, from buff color to a deep, rich browny-red. The idea: use the pigment in the dirt for coloring a broadside we were to print at their "Tryst Press" studio. Rob and Georgia make very beautiful books and broadsides on their own handmade paper and Rob teaches a printing class at BYU. Their printing is precise and their work often features lovely relief-printed color illustrations. They also do job printing, like wedding announcements, and the one I saw looked perfect....

We used a quote by Jack Kerouac from "On the Road" for the text, and the illustration was of Utah clouds. Rob had made with his co-worker Paul some beautiful buff colored paper which turned out to be a beautiful color with the earth pigment. To make the pigment work, we first sifted the dirt with a set of miner's sieves. The resulting dirt was as fine as talcum powder. We printed the clouds in transparent rubber-based printer's ink, then dusted the clouds with the different colors of pigment. Oh so beautiful watching the clouds appear in the soft earth colors!

Here is the set of brass seives.

Me and Paul sifting the dirt.

Georgia, Paul and I 'painting' the dirt onto the wet ink.

Peter brushing the excess pigment off.

Now our first leg of the Adventures of the Wandering Book Artists has come to a close. We drove from Provo to home on Thursday and Friday. We crossed the beautiful Salt Lake valley, through the sagebrush and casinos of Nevada then our senses were bathed in the new green color of all the California foliage. Oak trees have newly leafed and the grasses are all chest high! We will be here about 3 weeks, to go to Strawberry Music Festival with my family, bind more books, leave behind all the unused stuff from the caravan and gather the stuff we forgot, then return to Salt Lake City to re-hitch Paloma and drive north to Idaho!

Utah clouds reflecting in the Salt Lake.

red desert to the salt lake

2010-05-09T10:48:00.000-07:00

We've moved from the red desert of southern Utah into the sage hills and snow mountains of central Utah, where spring is just arriving with yellow mule ears blooming now with gusto. We spent a couple of days in Arches National Park walking amongst the graceful and the more solid rock arches. Peter played uke, I painted some watercolors. We stayed not in the park, but closeby in the canyon (not grand, but upstream from the grand) of the Colorado River. The river there is large but somewhat quiet, before it heads into Canyonlands National Park and then Lake Powell. Peter and I are itching to go into the Grand Canyon again on a raft trip. Who wants to do that with us???

Driving up north to Salt Lake City we passed some "sheep camps," which are houses on 4 wheels that shepherds use in the summer in the high pastures. The wagons we saw were all in disrepair, but still looked charming parked up in the high country.

In Salt Lake City, we are staying with friends Pam and Will Littig. We met them over 30 years ago, when Will, Peter and I were some of the few non-Mormons demonstrating at a festival in northern Utah for a week for a couple of summers. He made us the very nice window in the door of our first caravan, which burned 2 summers ago in a forest fire in Mariposa. Will did and continues to craft leaded and stained glass windows of the highest level. Contact him for your next window upgrade; you will be so happy you did!

On Friday we arrived and parked the caravan outside Ken Sanders Rare Books where Peter gave a presentation in the evening. It was a great talk; different than his usual book arts talk. He talked about the great opportunity that book stores like theirs offer to customers: you can look at all these books as they are meant to be looked at: held by your own hands, read and purchased at your leisure!

This fabulous book store filled with rare, beautiful and/or creative books and book arts is in downtown Salt Lake, and they are central in the alternative book scene for over 50 years. Go visit them sometime or attend one of their many events with well known or up and coming great authors! You can browse freely in the stacks, (not like in a museum or special collections library) looking and reading to your heart's content. Comfy couches and chairs sit smack in the middle of the room. Ken and his knowledgeable staff can help you find stuff when you only remember part of a title like "something something imaginary world of something.." They carry books made by Peter and I and also books by our daughter Suzanne Weinert.

Peter's Note:

This was the first time, in a long time, that I had spoken in a bookstore rather than in a library or a university class. I really had to rethink what I was going to say. I first began to think about how was I going to explain the connection between gypsy wagons and making artists books, and I will tell you a little about that now.

Book stores are organized by subject, so I decided to approach it this way. We began our careers as book artists in the Historical Fiction section, working at the Renaissance Pleasure Faire, where dressed in Elizabethan costumes we demonstrated papermaking and sold blank books. Some of our fellow participants were gypsies, perhaps from the Biography section. Real or not, I will never know, but their colorful clothes with bells clanging, their music and dance, their colorful wagons, delighted us with the images of romantic adventure. We went to the Literature and Non-Fiction sections and read books about gypsies and their wagons. Literature inspired, and we soon made our own gypsy wagon. That wagon is itself now a sort of Historical Fiction book. As it travels down the road, parking in front of book shops, it inspires the imaginations of those who see it.

Now to tie this all back to the books we make. At the talk in Ken Sanders Book Shop, I continued to describe how I was going to be showing them two different types of books we had made. Some were regular published book, one, More Making Books By Hand, would be found in the How To section. It was made to help people learn how to make books. The other, The Muir Ramble Route, would be found in the Travel section, or else the Guide Book section, as it tells how to take an Urban Backpacking trip.

The other type of book, what we call our artists' books, would not be found on any of the shelves in the store because they are not made to tell stories, or share poetry or travel. Very simply, a book artist is an artist whose medium is the book, and an artists' book is their creation. Like a painter who decides they want to make a painting about a tree, the book artist decides they want to make a book about something and they do it. The goal is not to tell a story, the goal is to make a work of art.

Like our gypsy wagon, artists' books may have some sort of function, they may tell some sort of story, the gypsy wagon may get us from place to place, but they are both really created to inspire the imagination and touch the soul.

In Ken's shop there is a shelf for this sort of book. It is a glass display case, because these books call to be admired as objects as well as to be read.

Mother's day:

called mom to wish her a good day and found out she's on a plane to Italy!! (she's got a bit of wanderlust in her too...)

breakfast of eggs benedict (prepared and presented by Aldo and Dimo Littig and Alisa)

hike on the hilltop with the sunflowers blooming

more bookstore

more hiking

more giving tours of the curious passers-by

maybe Vivaldi at the tabernacle this evening....

Thanks mom! without you, this whole adventure would not have been possible!

Visit and enjoy a National Park soon!

2010-05-05T11:59:00.000-07:00

You just can't go wrong. Every park we have seen is just so amazing. The places that have been preserved are all the best wow-spots in the USA. We spent 3 days at Canyonlands National Park in the less visited area of the park called the Needles. The campground in the park was tiny and filled, so we drove to the almost as spectacular campground on BLM land 4 miles down the road. We had our own orange bubble sandstone rock as a backdrop, and the view for miles of the mesas and lowlands of Canyonlands. Here is the beautiful claret cup cactus in full bloom:

I just loved how the trails wandered through the canyons surrounded by pink, orange and red sandstone spires and walls. Hiking over the sandstone on slickrock was similar to hiking on Sierra granite when you are going cross-country, but the trail is marked with ducks. No, not real ones, but rock pile ducks.

The desert flowers are still blooming after a rainy spring. (snow too, 2 days ago). Here are 2 flowers I don't know!

Sunset on the first night.

Peter played uke while I watercolor painted the landscape. I'm finding that I am learning how to paint the desert. I think my paintings have improved over the last time, which was in the Grand Canyon 4 years ago. I'm hoping to make a few new one-of-a-kind books with desert themes with all the paintings I've done on this trip. There is no shortage of beautiful landscapes to paint!

Snow, Canyon de Chelly, chocolate chip cookies

2010-05-03T05:10:00.000-07:00

I’ve been thinking about the concept of full time RV-ing. Arizona is a prime location for snow birds and a prime location for mobile homes and RVs. We’ve met all kinds of RV folks, or just people on the road permanently. So what I am thinking is, if this trip is what life on the road is like, then I’m all for it! We camped in a cottonwood grove campground last night in Canyon de Chelly National Monument,

after a full day of hiking and painting in the canyon. In the morning, we woke to snow falling. No problem, turn on the nifty propane boat heater we have in the caravan! Then, snow keeps falling, so, bake some cookies! We pulled out at 10 am, but the snow just kept getting thicker until we had white-out and stopped in a parking lot to watch it pass.

As it lightened, the monoliths of Monument Valley came into view! So we continued into the park as the sun came out and lit up the rocks until sunset.

Oh, we cooked frozen pizza and ate while watching the sunset from inside the warm caravan.

Now we are camped where we will happily get to shower in the morning before taking off down the slow roads to Canyonlands National Park. I don’t know if I would ever want to be a full time RV-er, but right now, I am loving it!

Tucson, sky prevailing (more art today)

2010-04-28T18:52:00.000-07:00

Paloma in Catherine and Rob's garden, Tucson

As you can tell, I love it when there are what seem to be coincidences and magic that happen in my life. Like running into Barbara at the library "coincidentally", someone I had never met before, but who was in Peter's book making class today. Or the Jerome gypsy wagon vortex thing, or the completely out of the blue allowing of the caravan to be hauled through the campus to the art museum even though fire marshals and security people said it couldn't be done. When I am traveling I notice the magic much more. Well, we are living at the edge, we don't always know where we will sleep, where we will get enough sun for the solar panels to keep our fridge and lights and computers going, or if anyone will attend the talks we give. We are depending on the goodwill of a lot of people to pull this trip off. And the people we have met have been top notch people.

Catherine Nash, a paper and book artist is hosting us here in Tucson. She and her husband Rob Renfrow have built a very functional and beautiful workshop space next door to their home. They take turns teaching book, paper, encaustic painting and photographic arts as D esert Paper, Book and Wax, and have guest teachers too. It is their living, yes, but it is much more. They believe strongly that we are all artists and our expressions have relevance and importance and can bring joy and meaning into our lives! Their classes bring together people looking to enliven and add color to their lives, and many have formed friendships out of taking those classes together. I admire their service.

Today Peter taught a class here in making scroll books. A friend from long ago, Mabel Dean, showed up at the class, surprising me! She and I attended calligraphy retreats in the 1980s together. How great to hear all that she has accomplished: you should check out the organization she created: Paperworks.

Peter taught the scroll book making and Catherine and I worked on a collaborative piece to add to our broadside collection. Oh, I haven't really described that yet, right? Where we are able, we are printing a broadside or paper work that will all be gathered into a collection or book when our trip is through. What we printed in Phoenix (poem by Alberto Rios) and in Los Angeles (International Printing Museum) started the project. Catherine and I made a piece titled, "Sky Prevailing", which is done in an encaustic (beeswax and resin) monoprint process.

So, Tucson has been full of magic, creativity and good friends. Oh, and warm weather, in the high 80s. Tomorrow we head out to the desert again, to visit some places of natural beauty. I plan on spending my time painting, so blog posts will be less frequent. And we will be open to more magic and wonder and connections.

Ukulele + books + gypsy wagon = ART!!!

2010-04-27T20:43:00.000-07:00

We need more art in our lives, right? We want to feel connected to our creative natures. And what is better than to visit the art museum with a bunch of your friends on a hot spring afternoon, where some wandering book artists have carefully manuevered a gypsy wagon into the courtyard and are now playing music on a ukulele book? I tell you, this is a celebration of the artful life!!

The museum: University of Arizona Museum of Art. The event:

A program in conjunction with a current show: Sculptural Books: Memory and Desire.

The uke book artist: well, you know who that is.

We braved the heat long enough for everyone to tour the wagon and look at books, then went inside for a panel discussion about the artists' book. Peter and I are so pleased that artists' books are now being shown in art museums. There were so many years when we would show our books to museums and they would say, "Um, that's nice, but it is only a book, not art." Now there are lively discussions and all varieties of artist's books in art museums like this one at the University. The curator, Lauren Rabb really had vision when she put together the show and program, and we were in the right place at the right time so were invited to participate. The community showed their support today by filling every available seat and asking hard questions, mostly having to do with definitions of the artists' book. A common thread through the day: we all love books and see a need to continue to make, hold, read and enjoy the real thing.

oh, and one more thing: got a note from an admirer of Paloma: "Looking at your blogspot helped me re-focus on some of life's important little things (major things, really), essentially to be a bit more creative and stay close to Nature. I have the Nature-part down pretty good, but the creative aspect seems to be lagging a bit at times..."

Yes, we find much meaning and fulfillment in living a creative, artful life.....

Ocotillo moon

2010-04-26T16:49:00.000-07:00

The moon is waxxxxxing!!!

We ended our stay in Paradise Valley (near Phoenix) with a "Letterpress Express" party at Karla and Jim's. 30 artists and poets sat around a huge long table for dinner, then were entertained by Peter's "book arts folksongs". Since Peter was singing to people who know about books, they understood all the silly puns and jokes, and their mirth was enhanced by beer, wine and excellent food so all were laughing!

Catalina State Park, just outside of Tucson, was our destination the next day. Peter set up the solar panels keep the battery charged, and we walked at dusk among the blooming ocotillos and cactus. I can see how people fall in love with the desert, especially after a wet winter and the blooms are vivid against the muted colored desert.

One more photo shows the "first visitor to our caravan while dumping at a toilet dumping station." He didn't even notice me doing the job while Peter showed him around Paloma. He is planning on making one to live and travel in.

"In about five year this place is going to be a museum for books"

2010-04-24T07:41:00.000-07:00

We spent Tuesday and Wednesday at Arizona State University talking to the letterpress and artist book classes taught by John Risseeuw (Cabbagehead Press). Much serious thought about questions like "what is an artist book?" and "who is a book artist.?"

On Thursday we went to the Phoenix Public library to show our books to rare book librarian Gladys Mahoney. We include for your pleasure pictures of the exterior and entry of this amazing building. When we were in the lobby we saw a show of artists books. Looking at them Donna said, “Hey there is one of our books!” at just the same time another lady standing in front of the case said, “Hey there is a book by the people I am going to take a class from next week.” Crazy. She is taking the class in Tucson. Then as we were going up the elevator to the fourth floor and the rare book room, which is right next to the teen center in the library, a kid in the elevator said to his friend, “I bet in about five years this place will be like a museum for books.”

Where do you get your ideas?

2010-04-22T08:21:00.000-07:00

That is the most commonly asked question when we show our books. Yesterday at the book arts class at Arizona State University, a graduate student asked the question. Basically I said that I get ideas by looking for meaning in what I see and hear and feel in life, and I realized that because the question is so common, we must all have a deep desire to be creative people. We need to feel connected to a creative flow that creates beauty or meaning or connects us to our his/her/story. The answer to the question gets super complex because really, if I knew, I could bottle it and sell it, right?

One thing I know, though, is that if you are engaged in a creative life, you probably live in a very beautiful and interesting house. In Alhambra, CA, our friends Janet and Robert have restored their 1900s house with vintage wallpapers, antique light fixtures and even the doilies on tables look cool. In Jerome, AZ, Nancy and Mike revamped their miner’s shack beautifully with vivid colored walls and quirky antiques like a rusted child’s wagon for a coffee table. Nan and Dave are transforming an ugly motor home with corrugated tin siding and bright red paint. Our hosts Jim and Karla here in Paradise Valley (Near Phoenix) designed and built a house in the 1970s that because the materials and design were so artfully considered, their home does not have that dated 70s feel. We are parked in their driveway beside the creosote bushes that are in full bloom with yellow flowers. Quail are scuttling around and calling out to one another all over the yard. Karla has dedicated a portion of her yard for growing a papermaking fiber plant, which she says makes a fine strong paper like the paper mulberry (now that is an awesome example for sustainable art, yes?). The house is long and open to the outdoors with floor to ceiling windows, the door handles are all of wood and Jim has made a lot of the furniture of naturally shaped slabs of wood. We eat off ceramic plates made by a local artist. We visited the studio of architect and artist Paolo Soleri yesterday and loved the curvy and surface decorated walls and bronze bells. I am inspired by all of these folks. Gosh, where DO they get their ideas?

Jerome Gypsy Wagon Vortex

2010-04-20T16:40:00.000-07:00

Have you heard of the “vortexes” around Sedona, Arizona? We vaguely remembered that pilgrimages are made there and other places like Mt. Shasta, California to benefit from the energies there. But we found a different kind of vortex. It’s the “gypsy wagon vortex” and it occurs in Jerome, Arizona. It happened like this:

After spending the night in Prescott National Forest on the side of a dirt road at 6000 ft., we drove on to Jerome. Now I had heard of this little town, we think a friend of ours at some time lived here or lives here now, but we can’t remember who that friend is. Anyway, the streets are very narrow and winding, so taking the caravan through town was slow and tricky. Peter measured our whole rig the day before, because a highway sign posted that no vehicles over 40 ft. were allowed through. We are 39 ft. long. OK.

Jerome was a mining city, built on the side of a mountain, kind of like where I grew up on Manor Hill in Fairfax, California, only without the downtown flat part. Only on the hill. The town boomed and housed mining families until the mid last century. Mines closed, it became a ghost town, then hippies/artists moved in and now it’s a wonderfully funky cute tourist/artist town. That’s enough history.

We found a place to pull over to have a look around and like other times we have stopped, a curious crowd develop to look at the caravan. Only this crowd was special. First it was Cranston, who has lived on the road for 25 years in a motor home who knows someone who is building a caravan in Sedona. Then comes Dave, who happens to be riding by on his motorcycle and has 2 gypsy wagons in his yard about 45 minutes away. Then a woman from Germany stops and admires the wagon and says she lived in a gypsy wagon in her home town for awhile. Then Nancy and Mike drive up. Someone in town saw us drive through and told them they had to find us. They own Hillside house B and B in Jerome with an authentic bow top vardo parked in the front yard!

This all happened in the span of about 20 minutes. Peter and I were talking to different people as they arrived, so we didn’t know the extent of the vortex until everyone left! We jumped in the back of Mike’s pickup and went up the hill to see their wagon.

Instead of staying in Sedona like we had tentatively planned, (the Sedona story is this: I was shocked to find one of nature’s best canyons in Arizona sprawled with mini mansions and fast food joints. I am so thankful that folks had the vision to preserve Yosemite and other national parks) we parked Paloma in Jerome, drove the truck to Sedona and visited Red Rocks State Park and Slide Rock State Park up in the Oak Creek Canyon.

We talked to Theresa at Crystal Magic in Sedona about the wagon she is building, but unfortunately we didn’t get to see it cause she worked late that night. She did tell us about another wagon in town, so we drove to it and took photos. (alert: Peter has a book in mind: “Gypsy Wagons around the Country”, so he is taking lots of wagon pictures….)

We had dinner at Quince with Mike, Nancy and a bunch of their friends from Jerome plus an author Jana Bommer who loves researching Arizona history and just published an historical novel. We then spent the night at Mike and Nancy’s in Jerome and had a great visit.

I don’t know if we just happen to meet the niceist folks around, or if gypsy wagon people are the niceist. On our way to Tempe we stopped at Dave and Nan’s and loved talking to them and seeing their wagons. This is all gypsy wagon magic at its best!

3 days in Joshua Tree National Park

2010-04-17T11:49:00.001-07:00

Three days in Joshua Tree National Park, among the cholla and ocotillo and yucca, and of course Joshua Trees…and the mighty natural fortresses, or castles, or just big rocks, depending on how you choose to look at them. The wildflowers were in bloom, miles of brittlebush daisy like yellow standing over blue phacelia, lupine and bluedicks. It seemed so normal until you realized all around was desert and there was no water so where did all the flowers come from? Donna painted two books of desert wildflowers and one of landscapes.

Friday we dropped down to the Salton Sea, dead fish on the shore, orange water, signs and displays everywhere saying how clean and safe and normal it was. We stayed a day at Slab City, a tract of empty land outside of Nyland, where RVers can stay forever (but most only spend the winter) for free. We followed the yellow brick road up Leonard Knight’s religious mountain, then drove into the city, fairly vacant since it is late in the season. -Peter

We’ve just left Slab City, “the last free place in America.” (That’s what the sign says as you drive in.) You might have seen the place if you saw the movie, “Into the Wild,” where the main guy visits the family in the RV camped out in the desert, with tons of other RVs. This is what it is like: dusty, hot, scrubby brush. Campers trying to hide under minimum shade of low trees. Peter describes the people here as “living on the margins, kind of hard around the edges, people who by choice don’t want to live in the mainstream and a community is created by people who don’t have many options outside of this place.” Their skin is leathery brown and prematurely wrinkled, their days are filled with figuring out how to survive the summer heat, feed themselves, keep their water tanks full and dump their sewage. Entertainment is self-provided. They play music on a cast-off decorated stage on a cement slab on Friday and Saturday nights. We attended a punkish band set last night, where bass, guitar and flat yelling voices were miked through inadequately powered amps. The crowd was having a blast, dancing, drinking and voicing loudly any complaints about the sound system. We stayed long enough to know that the music was not going to get better, then walked back the ¼ mile to Paloma. Just inside, the music was faint enough to ignore and we fell asleep. This is not a place I am comfortable in. I am happy now to be back on the road, just now passing the Imperial Sand Dunes, the buff colored undulating hills blooming with purple sand verbena. -Donna

Joshua Tree

2010-04-16T11:20:00.001-07:00

Joshua Tree National Park had no internet available, so we instead got to enjoy 3 days of rocks, cactus and wildflowers.
Today, we are visiting the Salton Sea, where I have access to the internet for a few minutes in the visitor center. I'd rather be looking at the birds, so back outside I go!
We'll be posting with pictures ASAP!

where do gypsy book artists bathe?

2010-04-13T07:38:00.000-07:00

Things you may take for granted, like flushing toilets, electric lights, refrigeration and hot showers are things that the gypsy book artist must take into consideration all the time. Luckily, librarians like Judy Harvey Sahak was thoughtful enough to think about these things for us yesterday. She had a parking spot arranged for us when we got to Scripps Denison Library. Peter learned how to parallel park with a trailer, and when we were in, instantly a crowd gathered to see inside Paloma. I think the visiting parents enjoyed the wagon more than the prospective high school students! The books were shown to the librarians in Claremont Colleges, then they arranged for us to spend the night on the streets of the college! Security were very curious about the wagon too, and "checked" on us all evening. In the morning, we had passes to the gymnasium for showers! (Now that was WAY NICER than the sponge bath of the last 3 days). Two pics show us parked at Scripps.

On Sunday morning, we taught a book arts class at Otis Art Institute. Well, really they took a field trip to Paloma and we had 6 students and teacher inside the wagon! Peter talked, sang ukulele book arts songs and generally talked about the wonders of this penultimate art form, the book.

They were thoughtful enough to bring us drinks and muffins and scones!

International Printing Museum!!

2010-04-10T19:39:00.000-07:00

You've got to check this place out if you live anywhere near. We have spent the day here at the Printing Museum, playing with the WONDERFUL collection of type, typecasting machines, presses, and most of all, with the knowledgeable, fun and QUIRKY people who love all this stuff.

We didn't finish the broadside we started, but Peter gave one of his better talks out the back of the wagon! He sang a few of his "book arts folk songs", which are remakes of well known songs like "What's a book" to the tune of Five foot two, and "Tiny type" to the tune of "Tiny bubbles". You are really missing out if you haven't heard them.

Tomorrow we will finish printing the broadside, which features a linoleum cut of the gypsy caravan. If time allows, we hope to visit the Renaissance Faire and see old friends.