Delve into consciousness and memory for your magical places and stories and create an artist’s book to contain your concepts.

Your book(s) may become a travel journal of this,
a past or future trip, a free-wheeling, non-linear record of an experience or thought, and a certain path to dynamic creative exploration!

In Marie Clews’ memoir she mentions the feeling one gets when arriving in a place where you know you belong. Our stories are built on such powerful places, whether it’s the wooden steps to a Lake Michigan beach, a tree we sat in with a book, or a castle on the Mediterranean.

What is a book? And what are artist’s books? We will examine the book from the ancient scroll, to the development of the codex form, to the exciting explosion of the book as art form. Books can be…noisy, illegible, chaotic, precise, tiny, round, tall. We will have a lot of fun challenging the conventional concept of “bookness!”

Château de la Napoule is rich in thought-provoking imagery and structure. Treasure hunts will yield images, ideas, or objects that spark fascination. A scrap found on the ground, a bit of conversation overheard in a cafe, a mark on a wall – anything is fodder for your unique process.

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Learn several folded and bound book structures,

experiment with various tools and mark making techniques, lettering, and ways of thinking about what writing is. We’ll play with automatic writing, poetry, asemic writing and other ways of “saying.”

We’ll take a field trip to the world-renowned Fondation Maeght in Nice to see their one of a kind
collection of artists’ books. A passionate bibliophile, Aimé Maeght assembled one of the most
important private libraries in France. Enthralled by paper, typography, and the book as an object,
he conceived the idea of bringing together painters, writers, and poets of his time within a single medium, thus uniting words and images. He bequeathed to the Fondation his personal collection, which bears witness to this extraordinary collaboration between artists, writers, and poets who shaped the cultural life of the 20th century.

Materials: fine paper, found paper, ephemera, found objects, natural materials, photographs. Artists will be given a list of items to bring to use in their projects (if desired.)

Experience level for all classes: Zero to Infinity. Any level of artistic experience is welcome. You do not have to have ever held a paintbrush, or you may be a professional Artist with a capital “A.” You will apply your deep wisdom to the projects. You will go off on tangents. You will not believe what you will create.