Browsing my Studio Bookshelves

Part of my collection, with a photograph I took in Genova, Italy while I was studying abroad in 2006.

One of my favorite things to do is browse the shelves at the local thrift and used bookstore.  I am always on the hunt for five things: different editions of my favorite book A Farewell to Arms, books on Italy, birds, fish (used as visual references in my paintings & drawings) and art history.  I have what one might consider to be a slight obsession with art books.  I draw from many of these for my art history and art appreciation courses, to supplement the class text.  In my studio, you'll find three different editions of the same book my college art history class used.  My lucky day was finding the newest printing, with all color plates, for a mere dollar at a thrift in Central, SC.  Just ten years earlier the same book cost me one hundred times more at the OU student store!

My fascination with paper has been persistent my entire life.  This partly explains why, in this digital age, I focused my studies on a very traditional studio art: Printmaking.  Process-oriented and revolving around a love of paper, it was a natural choice for me.  Ink rolled on wooden blocks, limestone and rubbed in metal grooves, impressed on paper with the turn of a crank and a metal drum.  In the 1450s, the first book was printed using movable type...560 years later here I am in my studio with a press, piles of paper and blocks of type just waiting to be inked up and printed.

While I do love writing with my computer and reading on my Ipad, nothing will ever compare to flipping through the pages of something tangible; smelling the paper, touching the glossed pictures, underlining passages to remember and folding down corners to mark a spot...