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.”

1.What is your background?

My background, well I started getting serious about my interest in art in high school when I took an advanced placement art course that started an hour earlier than normal school hours. I then went to college at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC) where I received a BFA in 2001. While studying there I focused in graphic design, photography, and printmaking. I have had an interest for a while in the connections among these three disciplines, so when I saw there was a letterpress course offered at SAIC I signed up for it. The course was taught at the letterpress studio at Columbia College, since at the time SAIC didn’t have a letterpress studio (they do now). This course was taught by Catherine Ruggie-Saunders. A few years ago when I wanted to find a way to start doing some letterpress printing again I found out about the Rob Roy Kelley Collection and the Design Lab at The University of Texas at Austin. I spoke to Kevin Auer, who ran the studio there at that time about possibly using the studio there outside of class time. He agreed to let me do so after a refresher class on letterpress printing. He also told me about the ABAC, and I contacted them about possibly volunteering in exchange for access to their equipment.

2.What do you enjoy about letterpress?

I enjoy a lot of things about letterpress. I enjoy the physicality of it; when hand setting type you are physically rearranging the type and leading and spacing and the furniture when it comes time to lock up the type. I also appreciate the connection to history all the way back to Gutenberg (many folks don’t know there’s a copy of the Gutenberg Bible here in Austin at The Harry Ransom Center that is always on exhibit). I like that letterpress is both a technical and a creative process which compels you to slow down when you’re doing it.

3.Do you prefer to work with a  particular letterpress machine or type face? Why?

I prefer working with the cylinder presses especially the Vandercooks; there is a lot more control available with them. I also really like working with wood type, which I first worked with at UT. The wood type makes one slow down even more because most of it is old and in turn requires you do some make ready work in order to get good results. Of course there is also chromatic wood type, a wonderful trick that allows for printing with two colors to look like printing with three.

4.When did you begin volunteering at ABAC?

I started volunteering at ABAC around six years ago.

Here’s another one from the Biblio Files, a periodic profile of a community member, highlighting what makes ABAC an awesome place to work and to learn!

Greg has a radio show on KOOP and has served as Master of Ceremonies at each of ABAC’s annual fundraisers.

1. How did you become involved at ABAC?

I believe that Dave Sullivan suggested that I needed to talk with his better half [ABAC Board Chairperson Mary Baughman] on my KOOP radio program.

2. What would you like ABAC fans to know about you?

That ABAC opened a new world of expression for me.

3. What forms of book arts do you study?

Currently I am drawn to the use of type face for design, specifically P22.

4. Why do you think the arts and art education are important?

The Arts are second in importance only to reading in that they help us both learn and express.

Greg Ciotti and Rick Kegler