My love affair with color and books has been a long journey. I suspect that my love of color comes from being born a redhead! When I was a child, redheads were not allowed to wear red or pink or — heaven forbid — ORANGE. We were thought to look splendid in green, blue, or brown, and that’s what I got. So, two of my favorite items of clothing as a child were a red plaid kilt I was allowed to buy with my baby-sitting money when I was eleven. Then later, when I was in high school, there was the pink organdy dress that horrified my mother, but I adored it.
Bookmaking and collage have always been loves of mine. My first handmade book started with 2nd grade Valentines, and collages were my first handmade bookmarks. But my real passion for books started in the early 1970’s when I worked in the Resource Center of The Children’s Museum (TCM) in Jamaica Plain. I was part of the team that developed the bookmaking and paper-making kits for classrooms. We carved and printed with rubber stamp erasers, made paper out of everything, and created books in all shapes and sizes. That experience crystalized my love of books, paper, ink, and paint into a true life-long endeavor.
After TCM, I became an early staff member of Cooperative Artists Institute where I continued to explore the artistic process through our work with children, teens, and teachers. During that time, I designed our book arts workshops and have continued making books myself for these many years.
Sometime in the late 1990’s I read Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way, and out of that process I started painting my morning pages and journals to keep myself interested. Before long, I resisted using any white pages and began to work only on pages that had been pre-painted and were often collaged, as well. These journals were never intended for other people’s eyes, but my friends kept urging me to “show” my books. So at one of the local Open Studios, I finally did exhibit my journals, and doors have been opening ever since!
Having spent most of my adult life working in the arts with children and teens, I will forever marvel at their creativity and visual joy in bookmaking. And now, in “retirement,’ I continue to do this work with adults by sharing the thrill of creating handmade books and journals that are truly a joy to make and use.
