While in England on my NEA grant, I met Philip Smith – an encounter that spun into a lifelong friendship. Most bookbinding texts focus on journeyman work – the skills needed to begin the process and to contemplate mends, repairs and the conservation of rare works. During my self-propelled apprenticeship I found many books covering these issues in binding – key issues where I was intrigued. Through them I learned a tremendous amount about the raw fundamentals and first principals. […]

Categories: Biography

By the early 1980s, I could clearly envision the kinds of books of images that I wanted to make. Now it was time for serious ratcheting up of my skills at making books – so that their quality matched my own demanding vision of it. Artist stories often omit this part – after all skilled making of things is somehow not “intellectual” enough in today’s world. Yet success as an artist requires skills to bring what we see into reality and […]

Categories: Biography

The mere act of seeking often leads to answers in surprising places. I was looking hard after leaving grad school – following the idea of making one-of-a-kind books that contained my images. I had made a few visual books, in essence small board books with all the wrong machine directions and improper adhesives. What I sensed was that the entire process of book making, its scale and the meshing of all sorts of materials and disciplines was an extraordinary place […]

Categories: Biography

In the last part of the twentieth century, I was awarded a degree, an MFA. It was a most odd thing to me to be a ‘master’ of a fine art, especially at 25 or so years of age. In the great lens of hindsight, I recall the congratulatory remarks of my committee that were at odds with my own deeply buried feeling – for I never felt less masterful, less prepared or remotely qualified for the thing which was […]

Categories: Biography