ARTISTS' BOOKS

Artists' books are neither about books or about artists. Simply stated, an artist book is art expressed in book form. Check out Shareen Laplantz's book, Cover to Cover for a book that both describes artists' books and also includes basic book construction techniques.

Kohler Art Library, Madison, Wisconsin: If you ever get to Madison, be sure to visit the Kohler Art Library's collections of artists' books. To read more about this unique form artistic of expression, go to Artists Books.

The University of Delaware Special Collections Department has a site devoted solely to describing and displaying artists' books. Browse through it at Artists Books

Wellesley College has an active book arts program, and has sponsored workshops and conferences on the artist book. Their site includes descriptions of the work of about a dozen artist book artists, including brief bios of each artists describing how their work as book artists have evolved.

If you're interested in adding pop-ups to your repertoire, check out Popular Kinetics Press. Carol Barton has written two books which are themselves cleverly engineered: The Pocket Paper Engineer, Volume I, covers basic forms. Volume II demonstrates the use of platforms and props.

David Carter and James Diaz present the process of making pop-ups differently from Carol Barton, but their book, The Elements of Pop-Ups: A Pop-Up Book for Aspiring Paper Engineers is fun and very dramatic.

CENTERS FOR THE BOOK

There are centers throughout the country that are devoted to the creation of books. Some focus on history, others on the technical aspects of the craft of book-binding and paper making, and others on the book as an art form.

• Columbia College Center for Book and Paper Arts in Chicago
• Minnesota Center for Book Arts:
• San Francisco Center for the Book:
• Wisconsin Book and Paper:

SUPPLIES AND EQUIPMENT

If you are fortunate to live in a community that has a good source of art supplies, I urge you to support your local businesses. Especially if you are new at this, nothing substitutes for getting your hands directly on the materials before you purchase them. For a list of Internet suppliers, go to the Do It Yourself section of this site.

OTHER LINKS

Interested in calligraphy?

What can be more beautiful than using your own hand-made journal to document your calligraphy skills? This link comes at the suggestion of a middle-school reader of this site, and Melanie suggests that you take a look at her favorite page. What I especially like about this site is the information about the history of calligraphy, and the links to lots of other sites. Here you'll find about the origins of this art/writing form in different cultures, and also lots of “how to” links. Thanks for the suggestion, Melanie!

The home site of the Book arts web, developed by Peter David Verheyen in 1995. It includes links to a large selection of book arts related sites on the web, including educational opportunities, professional organizations, tutorials, reference materials, and galleries with images.

Book_Arts-L: Discussion group for people with serious interest in the book arts and book conservation. Be warned that this is a very active list-serve, and sometimes generates dozens of e-mails daily. On one day you may have a dozen messages on the technical aspects of animal-hide glue or how to remove rust stains from an old text block, and at the same time get a link to an exquisite website or information about book-arts workshops around the country. So the site is good if (1) you are a serious artist seeking the wisdom of other serious artists, (2) you're a curious amateur or (3) you don't get enough e-mail. And of course you can always unsubscribe if it doesn't suit you. The site is also fully searchable from www.philobiblon.com. If you want to join either to participate or simply lurk, instructions are at www.philobiblon.com. The list is fully searchable from that site, as an alternative to joining the list serve, you can search for discussion of items of interest.