What is your musical background?

We had a close family friend who was a harpist, so I decided that was my calling while still in elementary school. My parents attempted to distract me with piano lessons and finally capitulated when my school obtained a harp. I was able to begin lessons in the 5th grade.

My undergraduate and graduate degrees are in harp performance, and I’ve been fortunate to make a living as a performing (and now teaching) artist. Early in my career I performed with many of the touring shows in Central Texas—A Chorus Line, Cats, Evita, The King and I, Dave Brubeck, Ray Charles, Natalie Cole, Bernadette Peters, Doc Severinson, Florence Henderson, and Philip Bailey. In the 80s and 90s in Austin, I performed regularly at the University Club, Ricco’s, The Austin, Headliners, and Metropolitan Clubs, Barton Creek and Austin Country Clubs, The Driskill, and Stephen F Austin Hotels.

At some point, I began looking for new challenges and was fortunate to win auditions to perform as principal with the Waco Symphony (20 years) and second harp with the Dallas Opera Orchestra (16 years). I’ve also been an extra with the Austin and San Antonio Symphonies since the early 1980s. Currently I am the harp professor at the University of Texas Butler School of Music. Formerly I taught at Baylor and Southwestern Universities, Texas A&M in College Station, and Winthrop University in Rock Hill, SC.

Have you performed in different parts of the country?

I was part of a flute and harp duo recognized as “Texas Touring Artists” for a time, and we toured Texas, New Mexico, Illinois, and Wisconsin. As a member of the Austin Chamber Ensemble, I toured The Hague, Lyons and LeMans, France, and Cologne, Germany.

Since becoming a teacher, part of my career trajectory has been to become a Suzuki harp teacher and specialize in teaching very young children. That has given me the opportunity to travel to teach and perform in Canada, Italy, Utah, Washington D.C., California, Wisconsin, Virginia, Tennessee, North Carolina, and Colorado.

How and when did you become interested in book arts?

On one of the studio tours, I found information about classes, and signed up for the introductory ABAC course for teachers. Then Amanda Stevenson contacted me to perform for an ABAC fundraiser and I saw how beautiful and varied the book arts are! Since then, I’ve had the opportunity to study long stitch leather journals, photo transfer to watercolor paper, watercolor sketch books with Amanda Stevenson, case bound books, Secret Belgian Binding and Medieval Bookbinding with Kevin Auer. Our Medieval class was just ending and we were scheduled to start paper marbling as the pandemic shut things down. When ABAC pivoted to offer online classes, I kept busy with those and my own inventions.

I have a jewelry studio at home and I’m taking baby steps into making book furniture for the Medieval books we made in Kevin’s class.

What do you enjoy about book arts as opposed to other art forms?

I suppose that I enjoy first that book arts are art of a more permanent nature. You can see and hold it. Music is temporal. You play it and it’s gone. Yes, it’s possible to record music, but it doesn’t have the same energy and magic as the interaction with a live audience.

Then, I like that my skills as a jeweler seem to transfer to the book arts. Careful measuring and cutting straight lines is second nature. Originally I thought that working with paper would be less expensive than precious metals. Hah! Little did I know how easy it is to go down the rabbit hole of finding beautiful paper. I’ve just ordered some beautiful marbled paper from Canadian Robert Wu.

I like the tactile aspect of making something with my hands and being able to show it to others when it is finished. And, I like finding ways to upcycle materials by making my own paper from random bits, making book cloth from fabric, and finding recycled materials at ACR to use as book board.

Please tell us about your work as a book artist and teacher.

For about twenty years, making books was everything to me. I made them, I taught them, I wrote about them. From the beginning, I was only interested in the book as a vessel for content. I made books with calligraphic texts, photocopier imagery, and then natural materials.

I continue to make handmade books with natural materials but also use technology through amazon’s KDP Publishing to support my bookmaking. My recent books have included Words For Our Time in response to the 2016 election, Suffragists Speak commemorating the 100th anniversary of women’s right to vote, an illustrated memoir titled Calligraphy: How I Fell In, Out, and In Love Again, and and the upcoming Naming The Garden: Fifty Flowers And Their Latin Names.

My teaching grew out of the books I began making when my first child was two. I wrote this about my motivation:

As our world becomes smaller, it is easy to get the feeling that all the important things are happening somewhere else. Making books is a way of reminding ourselves that the family is the center and affirming our value as parents and children. 

I began working with schools and tailored my approach to what would be most useful to teachers. I created books that connected with curriculum, used accessible materials, and were easy to make. I applied what I knew of bookmaking techniques, but always put simplicity first. My goal was to have teachers be able to duplicate what I did with students. I wanted my visit to the school to inspire continued bookmaking and often taught teacher workshops and family workshops. I retired from teaching workshops some years ago but continue to share my knowledge of teaching simple books on my website (makingbooks.com) and youtube channel (susangaylord).

How has your art evolved over the course of your career?

I began my work as a visual artist with calligraphy when I was in my late twenties. My love of words (English literature major) was the foundation that grew into a fascination with letterform, design, and expressive mark-making. A series created after the birth of my first child led me to the handmade book as I sought a more personal and intimate home for my thoughts and images. My early books with calligraphy and text transitioned to wordless ones, first with photocopier imagery and then with natural materials. The Spirit Books, ongoing since 1992, express my reverence for both the book and nature. They are my primary bookwork as an artist now. https://www.susangaylord.com/spirit-books.html

Over the past ten years I have reconnected with calligraphy with a renewed energy and freer spirit. I find that words give me a chance to more directly respond to the state of the world.

What is special about book and other paper related arts?

I wrote this a few years after I had discovered making books. I think it says it:

Books are intimate; they welcome personal encounters.

Books are humble; they fulfill their potential closed as well as open.

Books have depth; even the simplest forms are rich with the possibilities of endless variation.

Books have spirit; they are dwelling places for our thoughts and dreams.

What inspires you?

The specific answer is: the spirit of nature and the beauty and power of words. The broader answer is everything and anything. After 40 plus years in the arts, I feel that my world gets wider and richer everyday.

Can you think of a specific moment or memory that best captures what it’s like to work as an artist?

In 1992 I made the first Spirit Book. The seeds had been planted four years earlier when we did a massive pruning in our yard. As I handled the cut pieces of grape and blackberry vines, lilac roots, and rose branches, I felt that they were communicating with me. I brought them into the studio and tried to make art that spoke to the reverence and gratitude I felt for these messengers from the larger interconnected world of nature. I tried handmade boxes and stacking bundles of binder’s board and twigs. I experimented and I struggled. I remember all that clearly. What I have no memory of is what led me, one fall day in 1992, to make a book and place it on a cradle of grape vines. It just happened. I think Lewis Hyde in his book The Gift describes the moment perfectly: “The process is always a bit mysterious. You work at a task, you work and work and still it won’t come out right. Then, when you’re not even thinking about it, while spading the garden, or stepping into the bus, the whole thing pops into your head, the missing grace is bestowed.”