Bookbinding Endeavors

It's been difficult to make art lately. My creative powers seem to have found another outlet: bookbinding. While I dawdle the hot summer hours away, twiddling with arbitrary concepts in my mind for paintings in the future, I find my thoughts ever winding back to books.
I attended my first, and one of my only bookbinding club meetings at SCAD when I was a fall-quarter freshman. Like many of the clubs that I intended on being a part of, it unfortunately fell through. However, the excitement of the bookbinders was irresistible, and I caught the book fever. Ever since, the thought of binding has lingered in the back of my mind, and I never gave up the hope that someday I would bind my own sketchbooks and journals. While I was in Lacoste this past spring quarter, I luckily befriended the lovely Rachel Self, who binds elaborate books herself. She instructed me on how to bind a book using the coptic stitch technique, and it started me rolling. Under her guidance, I bound a small book comprised of three short stories that I had written that quarter, collected entitled "Contes De Provence":

I was so ecstatic about this book, I carried it on my person on all of the flights from all the way Marseilles to Savannah, most likely with the hope in the back of my mind that someone might ask me about the book, and I could enthusiastically brag about such a small achievement.

When I returned home, I fully expected to forget how to stitch a coptic binding. But it came back to me naturally once I threaded my needle, and I succeeded in binding two small journals in similar styles.

When I had completed those, I then proceeded to make two pamphlet journals. The first, bound in a safety brochure from the Lufthansa airplane that I took from Frankfurt to D.C.:

The second, from a delightfully organic paper that I found in Primary Art Supply:

I'm so very lucky to live in Savannah during the summer, where I can go to the Jen Library every day if I like and look at the countless books that they have on art. I've checked out a couple of really cool books on bookbinding, and one has been very inspiring to me. It is a book that was obviously created by people who love to make books, since it is a fabulous looking book in itself. I recommend it to everyone who is interested in bookbinding, and I leave you on that note!

How to Make Books, by Esther K. Smith