Milton Glaser/To Inform and Delight

I recently watched (twice) the documentary, To Inform and Delight, about the designer Milton Glaser. What an amazing man! He is funny, wise, and eloquent. His work is wide-ranging (the Dylan record cover, I (heart) NY, the Rubin Museum of Art in NY—one of my favorite museums, posters, books, magazines, The Underground Gourmet, New York magazine, Brooklyn Brewery), deep, and innovative. After seeing the film, I wanted to know and hear more. His website, miltonglaser.com, is a treasure trove of information and inspiration. He values teaching and the website is a course in itself. While most of the website is visual, make sure you visit the Milton page where there are essays and interviews, biographical information, and a short film. It is hard to choose any one passage to share, but I love his answer to the question "What is your view of the poster and its relation to ‘high art?’" in Commercial Art.

When does ‘high art’ meet ‘low art?’ At this encounter is everything above the line ‘art’ and everything below ‘non-art’? What shall we call the material below the line craft, applied art, commercial art, decoration? Who invented this question? Who is served by the distinction? Does it matter? The search for ‘high art’ is a theological issue, like the search for the true cross. The culture priests attempt to protect the world from false religion or faith, a never-ending task. I have a modest proposal; why don’t we discard the word ‘art’ and replace it with the word ‘work?’ Those objects made with care and extraordinary talent we can call ‘great work’, those deserving special attention, but not breathtaking, we call ‘good work’. Honest, appropriately made objects without special distinction we name ‘work’ alone. And what remains deserves the title ‘bad work’. One simple fact encourages me in this proposal; we value a good rug, a beautiful book, or a good poster over any bad painting.

I recently watched (twice) the documentary, To Inform and Delight, about the designer Milton Glaser. What an amazing man! He is funny, wise, and eloquent. His work is wide-ranging (the Dylan record cover, I (heart) NY, the Rubin Museum of Art in NY—one of my favorite museums, posters, books, magazines, The Underground Gourmet, New York magazine, Brooklyn Brewery), deep, and innovative. After seeing the film, I wanted to know and hear more. His website, miltonglaser.com, is a treasure trove of information and inspiration. He values teaching and the website is a course in itself. While most of the website is visual, make sure you visit the Milton page where there are essays and interviews, biographical information, and a short film. It is hard to choose any one passage to share, but I love his answer to the question "What is your view of the poster and its relation to ‘high art?’" in Commercial Art.

When does ‘high art’ meet ‘low art?’ At this encounter is everything above the line ‘art’ and everything below ‘non-art’? What shall we call the material below the line craft, applied art, commercial art, decoration? Who invented this question? Who is served by the distinction? Does it matter? The search for ‘high art’ is a theological issue, like the search for the true cross. The culture priests attempt to protect the world from false religion or faith, a never-ending task. I have a modest proposal; why don’t we discard the word ‘art’ and replace it with the word ‘work?’ Those objects made with care and extraordinary talent we can call ‘great work’, those deserving special attention, but not breathtaking, we call ‘good work’. Honest, appropriately made objects without special distinction we name ‘work’ alone. And what remains deserves the title ‘bad work’. One simple fact encourages me in this proposal; we value a good rug, a beautiful book, or a good poster over any bad painting.

South Carolina School Library Conference

My trip to the South Carolina Association of School Libraries was wonderful and proof that Southern hospitality is alive and well in Columbia, SC. I felt so welcome and met great people. The children of South Carolina are lucky to have such dedicated librarians in their schools.

The pre-conference workshop was fast-paced and fun. The librarians worked with kids from 3 through high school so it was a diverse and lively group. As usual, we used grocery bags, cereal boxes, and used copy paper. We made at least seven books, five from the grocery bag. It's always hard in a two-hour period to get in as much as I'd like without being overwhelming but I think we did well.

On the day of the conference, I gave a talk called The Community of the Handmade Book from Ancient Egypt to Your Library. I originally put the word "community" in the title because it was the theme of the conference but the more I thought about it, the more appropriate I decided it was.

Although reading is a personal and private activity, I always do feel a sense of community when I sit down with a book—with the writer of that particular book, with authors through time, and with the rest of the world of readers. And the same is true for the making of books. In workshops, there is always a great feeling of togetherness as we all work on our books. With educators and librarians, there is also the community of purpose, knowing that what takes place in the room will be shared many times over with children.

After viewing books through history and around the world, a small collection of artists' books, and lots of examples of books to make with kids, we closed the session by making two simple books, each from a piece of recycled copy paper with writing on one side.

I did have time to do a little exploring of the city of Columbia. My hotel was in the Vista neighborhood which is full of restaurants and art galleries. SCASL was so kind to make sure I had company for dinner every night and I tried the local dishes of she crab soup and shrimp and grits (twice each) which I loved. The gift basket that was waiting for me in my hotel room contained a package of grits which I look forward to making at home. I got lots of advice about preparation.

I love old buildings, cemeteries, and trees and had lots to inspire me. The State Capitol Building was a short walk from the hotel and a beautiful building. The grounds had massive southern magnolias, palmetto palms, and blooming redbuds. I couldn't help but gather a small amount of material for possible use in a future Spirit Book. Across the street was Trinity Church Cemetery—old and beautiful.

View some of my photos from Columbia, SC.

10 Tips for Raising Readers

I was pleased to be included in Sarah Farthing's article, 10 Tips for Raising Readers at thegoodstuffguide.com. I do believe making books can be a key component in developing literacy and a love of reading. Not to mention all the fun!

PoeTree at Rhythm of the Home

I'm very pleased to be able to share this project with the readers of Rhythm of the Home, a lovely quarterly online magazine of crafts, recipes, stories, and celebrations of the season. With four sections—Warmth, Play, Celebration, and Connection—there's lots to savor and inspire.

PoeTree at Rhythm of the Home

What Is a Book?

I'm preparing a talk about the handmade book for the South Carolina School Library Association Conference in March. I took this photograph to illustrate a brief discussion of What is a Book which I think is a particularly timely question. Here are two versions of Chapter Five of Little Women: the one I downloaded from Project Gutenberg on my ipod which I read last fall and the copy of the book that I read many times as a girl. Are they both Little Women? For me the answer is yes. The book is both the physical object and the set of words.

My involvement in making books has always been about both the object and the content. Whether my books have words or not, they have always been about something. The challenge is always to find the right form for the content, what Ben Shahn called "the shape of content."

As I reflect on the future of the book, I become more passionate about bringing bookmaking to as wide an audience as possible. No matter what happens to the form of the book in the marketplace, we will always be able to hold physical books in our hands because we can make them ourselves.

Interview on the Elephant Rag

Terry Farish did an interview with me for her blog, The Elephant Rag. Writing the responses to her thought-provoking questions was a learning experience for me. Her questions made me think about why I make books and why teaching them is so important.

"Living in this world of media saturation, it is easy to think that all the important things are happening somewhere else. Making books about our own stories and our own lives reminds us that we are the center of our own lives."

You can read the interview here.

The Library/John Greenleaf Whittier

I am working on an installation for the Tenth Outdoor Sculpure Show at Maudslay State Park. I am using lines from the poems of John Greenleaf Whittier. I've read lots of his poems online at Project Gutenberg. I liked this poem written on the dedication of the Haverhill Library in because it describes some of the earlier forms of books.

THE LIBRARY.

Sung at the opening of the Haverhill Library, November 11, 1875.

"Let there be light!" God spake of old,
And over chaos dark and cold,
And through the dead and formless frame
Of nature, life and order came.

Faint was the light at first that shone
On giant fern and mastodon,
On half-formed plant and beast of prey,
And man as rude and wild as they.

Age after age, like waves, o'erran
The earth, uplifting brute and man;
And mind, at length, in symbols dark
Its meanings traced on stone and bark.

On leaf of palm, on sedge-wrought roll,
On plastic clay and leathern scroll,
Man wrote his thoughts; the ages passed,
And to! the Press was found at last!

Then dead souls woke; the thoughts of men
Whose bones were dust revived again;
The cloister's silence found a tongue,
Old prophets spake, old poets sung.

And here, to-day, the dead look down,
The kings of mind again we crown;
We hear the voices lost so long,
The sage's word, the sibyl's song.

Here Greek and Roman find themselves
Alive along these crowded shelves;
And Shakespeare treads again his stage,
And Chaucer paints anew his age.

As if some Pantheon's marbles broke
Their stony trance, and lived and spoke,
Life thrills along the alcoved hall,
The lords of thought await our call!

Literacy and Family Bookmaking

I was recently having discussions with a parent about doing a Family Literacy Night at her child's school. When she presented the idea of a bookmaking workshop with me to the committee, one person said that she didn't understand what making books had to do with literacy. She convinced them and the workshop will go on. I am so close to the subject and so passionate about it, I realized I didn't even have an answer except: of course they have everything to do with each other.

I decided I need to search the internet for some further information. Teachingmatters.org gave me just what I was looking for in their information about Balanced Literacy.

Balanced literacy is an approach for teaching literacy that is widely used in classrooms across the country. It involves several methods of teaching and learning reading and writing, whole class instruction directed by the teacher with independent work in reading, writing, and oral language. By integrating a variety of approaches, a balance is achieved in which students learning to understand text (from a whole language approach) as well as how to read text (from a phonics approach).

The section that I think particularly pertains to making books with children in general and family workshops in particular is:

Independent Writing
Integral to the process is independent writing, which provides students with the consistent opportunity to apply and practice the skills already introduced and to cultivate their love of and comfort with writing on their own level.

In order to get good at writing, just as in order to get good at reading, quantity is important as well as quality. I was a big reader as a child and read Little Women and a lot of the classics, but I also read every Bobbsey Twins, every Nancy Drew, and lots of Cherry Ames and that was where I got to be comfortable with reading. With writing it is the same. We need to learn sentence and paragraph structure and grammar, but we also need to learn to take joy in writing, to express ourselves with freedom and abandon. I can't remember ever seeing a child make a book and not want to write in it immediately. The handmade book sets the stage for the writing experience

Extending bookmaking out of the classroom and into the home is a logical next step. With all the material that teachers are required to cover during the school year, finding time for children to write for pleasure about the things they care about can be difficult. I feel that now, more than ever, teachers and schools need the support of parents at home. But it shouldn't just be about memorizing multiplication facts and doing worksheets. The home can be a place where creative learning happens. And the wonderful thing is that parents will find that their own lives will be enriched in the process. They often tell me how relaxed they feel after one of my family bookmaking workshops.

When I started using recycled materials for my workshops, I had two reasons. One was environmental: to consume less. The other was to make bookmaking easy to continue at home. With no special papers or materials to purchase, it is inexpensive and easy to get started. I have since discovered that it is also liberating, especially to adults. While children are very free about writing in the books they create, adults are often afraid. What if I mess it up?, they think. With recycled materials, it doesn't matter; they have only used paper that was going to the recycle bin.

We can improve literacy and all grow as writers, readers, and creative human beings at the same time.

I offer Family Workshops to schools and libraries in Massachusetts and southern NH and Maine.

Family Workshop Report

One of the facts of life is that there are always lessons to be learned. There were a few at the Earth-Friendly Bookmaking for Families workshop at the Newburyport Public library last Saturday. The first was that having people sign up ahead is a good thing. For this one, since the format I planned was informal and didn't require knowing numbers, I decided not to bother. The last time I gave a family workshop at the library, with sign-up, we had a full house. This time attendance was very low. It could have been the time, the season, the topic, or the fact that people had to bring materials, but I think people are much more likely to come to something they have already made some level of commitment. Plus when there is a sign-up, the Children's Room staff always calls the day before with reminders.

Most of my workshops are done in schools which is a much more controlled setting, even in the case of evening family workshops. Teachers can remind the students, send notes home, etc. I think in the future in public settings I will ask the staff to gather materials for me and not require the participants to bring anything which is the way I have done things for years.

The happy lesson is a confirmation of the innate openness and creativity of kids. I am in the planning stages of a book for families on making books with recycled materials. As I think about it, I feel that in some ways it is the parents who need the book more than the kids. Although we lament, and with good reason, the amount of time kids spent in front of the computer and TV, I take heart in the fact that when kids are presented with what they need to sit and create, they do it with enthusiasm. When they make a book, they can't wait to write, draw, or collage in it. Adults on the other hand are often timid and reserved. They are afraid to dive right in.


The library experience also demonstrated the power of the collage box. I collect paper from all kinds of sources. Everyone in the house knows to keep the wrapping paper for me after the presents have been opened. I save scraps of art papers, old calendars, interesting envelopes, can labels, catalogs, and anything else that catches my eye. I cut or tear them up into smallish pieces. I am a firm believer that everyone is creative. One of the problems with creating on paper is that so many people assume it is necessary to draw well to do so. The colorful papers in the collage box are a friendly entry and a great way to get children and adults working.