My lifelong love of books led me to a new creative pathway in 2002, when I completed a Penland School of Crafts summer class on letterpress printing. In that class I learned to handset metal type letter by letter, as well as create collographic and photopolymer printing plates. I then printed the type and the images using a Vandercook press—a favorite among book artists, I learned. One of my projects involved printing three of my original poems and three accompanying images for a pamphlet-stitched book (Natural Ways). By the time I finished that book, my relationship to writing and my appreciation of books as aesthetic objects had changed, and I knew that I wanted to explore the realm of artists’ books much more deeply.
In the spring of 2003, I returned to Penland School of Crafts to complete an eight-week concentration focused on making both books and paper. I soon found that I especially enjoyed learning how to create a variety of book forms, many of which were based on centuries-old practices, and experimenting with ways to present text. I remain grateful to the generous teachers I had in those Penland classes—Steve Miller (University of Alabama’s M.F.A. in Book Arts program director) in the summer, and Julia Leonard (University of Iowa Center for the Book faculty member) and Ann Marie Kennedy (nationally known papermaker and paper artist) in the spring.
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Since taking those Penland classes, I’ve attended Paper & Book Intensive and completed a number of other workshops, served as an assistant instructor in a John C. Campbell Folk School book arts class, and completed an artist’s residency at Mammoth Cave National Park and a joint artists’ residency at Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore with visual artist/book artist Lucia Harrison. I’ve also become active in book arts organizations such as the Southeast Association for Book Arts, the Guild of Book Workers–Southeast Chapter, and the Slow Book Salon (an association of western North Carolina book artists), and I am an associate member of the American Craft Council. My local arts council, the Watauga Arts Council, has also offered me invaluable support by hosting my first solo exhibition and encouraging my artistic development. The launching of this website was partially funded as a cooperative venture of the Alleghany Arts Council, the Ashe County Arts Council, the Watauga Arts Council, and the Cultural Arts Council of Wilkes, with support from a Regional Artists Project grant of the North Carolina Arts Council, a state agency. I am very grateful for these agencies’ support.
Many of my artist’s books reflect my interests in editing, which I focused on for twenty years before delving into book arts. As a freelance editor, I’ve worked primarily on nonfiction trade books for publishers such as BasicBooks (HarperCollins), Newmarket, Addison-Wesley, and Kodansha America. I’ve also edited scholarly books and journals, college textbooks, foundation reports, conference proceedings, newsletters, and special reports. In addition, I’ve taught editing at Appalachian State University, at the Carolina Publishing Institute, and in private workshops. Editing has opened many avenues of language-related interests for me, so in artist’s books I often return to that facet of my background. (Details about my editing experience are available upon request.)
Since I also write poetry, I incorporate original poems in a variety of my books. My poems have appeared in numerous journals, a chapbook, and various anthologies, as well as on the North Carolina Arts Council’s website among poems featured by the state poet laureate. I’m a past president of the North Carolina Poetry Society and an active supporter, as well, of the Poetry Council of North Carolina. I’ve long been interested in links between the literary and the visual arts, and creating artist’s books has offered me an ideal avenue for exploring those links.
You can read more about my background and my approach to book arts in a Western North Carolina Woman magazine profile at wncwoman.com/may07/page20.html.
For more than twenty years, the beauty of Boone, North Carolina, has fed my creative activities and fueled my explorations. With an elevation of almost 3,400 feet, Boone is part of an area known as the High Country, where the natural splendors rival those of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Here are a few glimpses of the place where I’m fortunate enough to live and work.
Mountain Twilight
Azure afternoon fades
into a light line rimming
the ridges. With the sun’s
parting blaze, gold
and coral swirls yield to
blue-gray hills meeting
blue-gray skies. In the moment
of merger, eyes strain for
one last assurance
of separateness and find
only unity’s affirmation.
After darkness obscures
vision, we seek location
markers and home in on stars.
“Mountain Twilight” first appeared in Moonwort Review.