CBAS Study Group: Alice Balterman's Altered Books

Everyone loves to visit artist studios and Alice Balterman's studio, the site of the CBAS study group's May meeting, was no exception. The well-know Cincinnati collage and altered book artist shared examples of her work and suggested some techniques we might use if we wanted to try altering a book. Alice said she saves everything, pictures, postcards, paper, letters, stamps etc. How she keeps track of it all is a mystery but she always finds just what she needs when she needs it.

Two other group members, Ruth and Nikki, shared examples of their work and explained their altered book processes. Nikki is still working on her first book, a fairly large one and suggested that first timers start with a small book. She also suggested sewing or gluing pages together to reduce the number of pages that need altering. Ruth found a Japanese book on dogs and some band-aids in different shapes and colors (some printed with doggie images) in a dollar store. Inspired, she cut and arranged the band-aids into dog shapes and was on her way to creating her humorous altered dog book.

Our three talented book artists, Ruth, Alice and Nikki.

A table with some of the many books Alice has altered. The open book is Ruth's. She has a wonderful sense of humor.

Alice's work area and some of her tools and supplies. She works on one project at a time, finishing one before starting another. Wish I could do that.

Here, we looked through a selection of books from her library and wrote down titles of books we would like to add to our libraries.

CBAS Study Group: Six-Needle Coptic Binding

I have been traveling the last two months and, regrettably, have missed the last two study groups, the second session of Interlocking and Woven Book Structures, covering Slit/Slot & Other Paper Hinging Techniques, (see Piano Hinging for part one), and most recently, Potato Print Papers.*

No photograph can convey the simple beauty of the potato print papers that were produced during this last meeting. Even so, I thought I would include one here. As you can see in the photograph above, many of these papers were used in today's project.

Here's a photo of our eager-to-learn group. All that was required of us was that, prior to our meeting, we pick up our precut book boards, covers for the book we were going to make, and cover them, preferably with the decorative papers made the month before.

Our first task was marking and making holes in the book signatures. For this, we used a hole punching cradle, a device to position the signature for accurate hole making.

Here is a closeup of both sides of the cradle, top and bottom. This one is made with medium weight binder's board.

Cran is instructing the group on how to accurately mark their covers for punching so the resulting holes will line up properly with the holes in their signatures.

Jeanne is sewing her first signature to her back cover. Coptic stitch can be done with one needle but we used six needles, worked in pairs. Once we got started, it was pretty easy going. If you are interested in this stitch, check out Keith Smith's Non-Adhesive Binding, Volume III: Exposed Spine Sewings. We worked from one of the diagrams in his book.

I didn't have any stamped paper so I used a paste paper I made in a workshop last year. The term refers to a method of decorating the surface of paper with acrylic or tempera paint mixed in a paste medium. I'll be writing more about this in a future post.

A closeup of the stitched binding. What is nice about the coptic stitch technique is that, once you catch on to the stitching, it is fast, it uses no adhesive (except for what is needed to attach decorative paper to the cover boards), and the book opens flat (nice for sketching and/or journaling).

*Red potatoes were said to be the best.

CBAS Study Group: Piano Hinge Books

The Cincinnati Book Arts Society to which I belong has a study group. We meet at a local library, nine times a year, on the third Saturday of the month.

Being a member of the study group means being willing to participate by being in charge of a program. It’s not as scary as you might think. We are a friendly, informal group and you do not have to have a background in the topic you want to share, just agree to learn about it and pass along what you have learned to the study group members. It is also fine to have a joint presentation with another study group member and while most of the meetings are about book structures, this year we are also planning a field trip to a member’s studio.

Our last program was the first of a two part demonstration of interlocking and woven books structures, specifically the piano hinge structure. The image at top left, Crown of Thorns by Tennille Shuster, believe it or not, is just such a structure. The one at top right by our program presenter, Cody Calhoun (who, incidentally has a book in the online Flag Book Bind-O-Rama Exhibit), is the more traditional format. Here is a free tutorial. Don’t be confused by the name, skewered book. Skewers are often used in the construction of this type of book, but piano hinge is the traditional name.