How did I get into bookmaking? Well, I spend a lot of my time in the digital world – composing emails, writing reports, surfing the web, etc. I don’t think I’m so much different from the rest of the world in this – our lives are increasingly being taken over by everything “online” – you can’t get a moment’s peace without hearing bells and whistles go off on your phone reminding you about another email, tweet, or much-desired like!
So lately I’ve been craving the satisfaction of making something with my own hands. Something that I can proudly hold up and proclaim “Look here world! I made this!”
This is how I fell into the world of bookmaking! I love books – I’ve spent my educational career deep within them – so it makes perfect sense for me to learn how to make them by hand! I also secretly want to have a craft, a skill that I can call my own and use when the zombie apocalypse comes and we revert to a pre-Google, pre-Facebook, pre-Internet world. I’m going to need to contribute to the world in someway so I’ve decided that my craft shall be bookmaking !
I took my first workshop back in February at Spudnik Press Cooperative – a printer’s cooperative housed in this amazing loft space in Chicago’s West town. I’m going to describe this studio in another post because its just so cool, but I’m now enrolled in their 8-week intensive bookmaking class and it’s so much fun!
So far we’ve covered very introductory basics:
I can’t wait to learn more and plan to make books for people as gifts. It’s a relaxing and self-soothing process and for now is satisfying my desire to make something and its (hopefully) going last a lot longer than an ephemeral tweet or post!
