Earlier this month I travelled out to Port Orchard, WA from Baltimore, MD to teach the Dialogue with the Earth retreat that I had been planning for months with Kathie Vezzani. Actually for a few years, because originally I was supposed to teach this workshop in 2020 and we all know what happened that year…
In the planning stages for the 2024 iteration, I thought it would be great to make the bark books during the workshop, but I didn’t want to commit because of the fact that we had to have a lot of bark. I happen by chance upon the bark that I use for my books. It’s never purchased, or planned, or taken from a tree. OFtentimes it has been a gift from people who know me and happen to have a felled tree on their property and they get in touch with me with something along these lines- “this might sound strange, but a tree fell during that last storm and I have some bark and other branches…. it occurred to me that you might want some…are you interested?” And so I just didn’t think it could happen. Then one day, Kathie emailed me an image of a big pile of bark she found in the barn and I replied, “All right, let’s do it. It was meant to be!”
Teaching book binding is challenging….teaching book binding using irregular and funky pieces of bark is a whole other level of challenging, but we did it! I just love how the books turned out. They are more like sculptures in my opinion. Some of the books were filled with found natural materials, some with photos and some were kept blank. The waxed pages were artful enough.
I was thrilled and felt very proud seeing all those book sculptures when we put them on display on the table on our last day together.
When I got back home and was unpacking and cleaning up my studio, I ended up taking my book apart that I had made during the demo at the retreat. I had told them that if I were doing this book not as a demo, but alone in my studio, I would have made many more signatures than the four that I had made in order to keep the demo short and not make people watch me bind and bind and bind. So back in my studio all my myself, I took the book apart, cut many more pages and rebound my book to make this book piece I called Hidden Within the Seed, a Secret.
I also cut holes in all the pages, except the last page where I sewed on a half of walnut shell I had found outside a while ago. If you want to see more photos, check out the book over in my book arts section.
I had such a wonderful week out in the PNW. First teaching at Kathie’s and creating alongside with a really wonderful group of artists who came from WA, OR, CA, ID and MT. I am honored that Kathie had me as a guest artist in her wonderful studio and that people took time out of their busy lives to retreat and create with the earth with me. Please visit my Instagram to see more photos and Belissima Art Escapes Instragram as well.
