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July 10, 2008
Focus
Aside from my moaning about not being able to get a cell signal here, there’s something pretty incredible about being in a place where it’s literally all about the work. Even a graduate program isn’t all about the work, because it’s also about teaching and taking classes in related areas and making a living. But here, for this very short week, it really is all about the work.
Yes, I get up in the morning and I check my email and I post to my blog. And my evenings are taken up with lectures and writing. My time in-between is spent doing the work.
For example. I left the studio at lunchtime today in order to visit a wonderful little store in Idyllwild itself that was selling handmade decorated papers for $3/sheet, which is obscenely cheap. I bought a bunch. The technical term for how much paper I bought may be a metric fuckload. But I went in order to further the work. I walked into that store, saw the papers and started grabbing sheets. I used one of those sheets today in a set of covers. It’s gorgeous, by the way. for a Japanese stab binding that I’ll be actually binding tomorrow. Wait until you see this book. I can’t believe I’m making it, that I’m the person who’s making it.
But I’m getting ahead of myself.
This morning, I knew we were going to be doing sewn bindings. I didn’t realize that by lunchtime, I would have created a complete clothbound book with actual bookboard covers. I did. It’s gorgeous. Seriously. Wait until you see a picture. Again, I can’t believe I made it myself. My journals—the ones I’m so proud of—look horribly cheap by comparison. Now, I have a book I made that, though the pages be blank, looks like the Platonic Ideal of “a slim volume of verse.” I am inordinately proud of my little book. I just want to walk around cradling it next to my heart.
And, as mentioned above, I’ve got the covers done for a stab binding. Plus, I’ve decorated many of the pages. They look like they were done by someone who’s just learning image transfer techniques, but you know what? That’s okay. That’s a very good description of the person who made them. And the image on the first page is perfect, even if I do say so myself.
I stayed until 5:30, working on those image transfers, finishing the cover for the next book, cleaning up my area and adding to the accordion fold book I’m still creating. It’s become the thing I do while I’m waiting for something else to happen (glue or paint to dry, the next set of instructions to come, class to start). I was still there, even though class was over at 4pm and I was the last person to leave. I had to lock up. I would have stayed later, but dinner is only available from 5:30-6:30, and I’m not sure I could have done without. Plus, dinner was lovely. I had some great conversations with a group of people I hadn’t met before, and a bunch of wine.
My point, however roundaboutly reached, is this. I am here this week to learn new skills from one of the best (run your cursor over the photos to see inside the books). I had no idea that that would mean that by the end of this week I would be making real books, books I had not ever expected to be able to make. And yet, here I am. Not only have my new abilities already vastly overshot my teeny goals for the week, I’m getting new ideas. And because I am here to do the work and only the work, to focus on learning the art of the book without any extraneous other stuff, I am able to accomplish so much. I need to find ways to do this when I’m on my own.
I need to figure out how to bring some of this focus home with me.
Posted by sally at July 10, 2008 08:16 AM
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