Elissa R. Campbell | Blue Roof Designs

Vermont Open Studio Weekend – Montpelier/Calais Artists

Yesterday - by Elissa

Vermont’s 21st Open Studio Weekend is just around the corner (May 25 & 26)! If you’re planning on visiting my studio (you know you are…), you can visit other great artists within a 20-ish minute drive of here.

There are 10 studios participating in the Montpelier/Calais area. Artists are offering exhibits and demonstrations of pottery, sculpture, photography, mixed media, painting, and more.

I’ll be referring to studios by both name and number – the number refers to a listing in the green 2013 Vermont Studio Tour Guide. There are several ways to get your hands on a map:

• Pick up a copy at Artisans Hand Craft Gallery at the intersection of State and Main Streets in Montpelier (they’re an official Regional Information Center)
• Print out a full copy (warning – this is a big file)
• View a detailed map of Washington County on the Vermont Crafts Council website

Here’s the rundown of who’s who (click on the links to learn more about specific artists):

• #196 - Annie Tiberio Cameron Photography/Annie Tiberio Cameron: Photography, botanicals, abstracts, nature, wilderness.
  
• #197 - Inspired Creations/Polly and Phil Walsh: Mugs, platters, vases, magnets, sponge holders.
• #198 - Everything is a Shelf/Shelf Design/Dan Wetmore: Studio wood shop, custom designed shelves.
• #199 - Blue Roof Designs/Elissa Campbell: Handmade books (that’s me!)
• #200 - Art Tiles/Janice Walrafen: Handmade tiles, murals, sculptures.
• #201 – Thistle Hill Pottery/Jennifer Boyer: Functional stoneware pottery.
• #202 – Green Mountain Hooked Rugs/Stephanie Krauss: Traditional hand hooked rugs.
• #203 – Ray Brown: Landscape inspired abstract compositions.
• #204 – The Happiness Paradigm/Ginny Sassaman: Upcycled inspiring mixed media, happiness.
• #205 - Chris Miller Studio/Chris Miller: Hardscape, sculpture of granite, wood, and marble.

I created the map below to help you plan your travels. Because the studios are so close to each other, you can visit quite a few of them within a short period of time.

Have fun!

Make that map bigger!

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• Tagged as art, artist, book arts, Bookbinding, craft, Crafts, hooked rugs, mixed media, Montpelier, paintings, photography, pottery, shelves, Studio, tiles, Vermont, Vermont Open Studio Weekend

Worktable Wednesday

May 1, 2013 (2 weeks ago) - by Elissa

Yummmmmmmmmmmm…

Today was another of my not-so-fun, running around like a crazy person, appointment days. Luckily, I was able to squeeze in a shopping trip.

My friend Nancy has told me multiple times to go to Hides Pride in Essex Junction, Vermont – she praises their selection of leather.

So I trot myself on over there, really wanting to spend some bucks for my upcoming leather journals workshop.

All of the leather is on shelves behind the counter. I tell the leather dude that I want to make journals and I’d like to see what he has in an upholstery weight. He tells me that I need to be more specific. I tell him that I’m not really sure how to be more specific.

At this point I’m really wishing that I brought one of my journals with me. I ask him if I can check out the leather myself so I can show him what I’m looking for.

Leather dude says no.

He remarked that he doesn’t like it when people mess up his leather. I ask him if he can bring out some different weights and I’ll pick the one that would work the best. He gets cranky and tells me that there are too many different kinds of leather and that it’s too hard for him to do that for me.

Wuh? I thought that you were in the business of selling leather?

So then I just point at some leather that looks about right and ask him if he can bring it over. He lets out a sulky sigh and brings it over. Luckily, it was about right. With pain in his face, he agrees to bring over similar hides in different colors.

In almost any other situation, I would have walked out. It rare to find a business that prefers to hide (no pun intended) its inventory from you so you can’t buy it. I’m pretty sure that it was the leathery smell that kept me in there.

So.intoxicating.

I really love the grain of the different hides and all of the marks that remind you that the leather came from something that lived a life.

I can totally smell those pictures. If you’re thinking about taking my upcoming Leather Pocket Journals workshop at Studio Place Arts, then this what you’ll get to play with!

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• Tagged as "Studio Place Arts", book arts, Bookbinding, classes, journal, leather, Vermont, workshop

Paper and Book Intensive 2013

April 29, 2013 (3 weeks ago) - by Elissa

Well, it looks like I got lucky again this year. A week from tomorrow, I’ll be flying out to Michigan for my 2nd Paper and Book Intensive.

I was initially rejected, so I just put it out of my mind. And then the happy Email came…and now I’m going!

I have to admit that when I went last year, I was really intimidated by the talent there. Seriously – I never would have thought that I’d see Hedi Kyle and Julie Chen eating together in a cafeteria that I also happened to be in. It was completely unreal.

You just can’t convince me that these are regular people. So in the spirit of How I Met Your Mother, I will make a sweeping declaration: I get star struck and will never get un-struck!

[comes down from non-existent soapbox]

So yeah, I’m over the moon! I’m attending the following workshops:

Turn­ing The Cor­ner, And other use­ful leather cov­er­ing tech­niques with Jeff Alte­peter:

Ready to turn the cor­ner and work with leather? This class will be an intro­duc­tion for begin­ners or a refresher for stu­dents hop­ing to incor­po­rate tra­di­tional leather bind­ing tech­niques into their work. Stu­dents will have the oppor­tu­nity to prac­tice with a vari­ety of tools and types of skins while we focus on sev­eral fun­da­men­tal leather work­ing skills includ­ing par­ing, the for­ma­tion of head caps, and, of course, turn­ing cor­ners neatly.

Leather par­ing exer­cises will include fun­da­men­tals of tools and meth­ods. Stu­dents will also exper­i­ment with par­ing based dec­o­ra­tive tech­niques such as back-pared onlays. A vari­ety of knives and man­ual par­ing machines will be avail­able to stu­dents. Please bring your own knives and Scharf-fix or Brock­man style par­ing machines if you already own them. If you don’t already have these you will leave the class with an under­stand­ing of what you might want to acquire in the future.

Pres­sure Print­ing: A Painterly Approach to the Press with Sarah Bryant:

Pres­sure print­ing is a tech­nique based on low relief col­lage or sten­cils using a press that cre­ates a painterly, spon­ta­neous image or tex­ture on the page. In this course, stu­dents will exper­i­ment with dif­fer­ent pres­sure print­ing meth­ods on the Van­der­cook proof press. Begin­ning with the basics of this tech­nique we will move onto more com­plex appli­ca­tions. As a group, we will har­ness the unex­pected pat­terns and imagery that we gen­er­ate and com­bine them with col­lage, sten­cil­ing, and type to cre­ate sim­ple books.

A Look at the World of Islamic Book­bind­ing with Yas­meen Khan:

In this work­shop two Islamic books will be con­structed. One will be based on Islamic bind­ing struc­tures that were pro­duced through­out the Mus­lim world in the 18th cen­tury and defined as high-end deluxe bind­ings. The other will be a hybrid struc­ture designed by the stu­dent includ­ing a vari­ety of regional vari­a­tions that the instruc­tor will intro­duce in the work­shop. Class time will also be devoted to the prepa­ra­tion of deluxe gold-leaf dec­o­ra­tion end­pa­pers and dif­fer­ent styles of Islamic end­bands and head­cap con­struc­tions.

Vari­a­tion and style in Islamic bind­ing and its dec­o­ra­tion will be cov­ered in the work­shop through short lec­tures, hand­outs that include his­tor­i­cal back­ground infor­ma­tion on Islamic bind­ing, a read­ing list, and class instruc­tions. The aim of the course is to intro­duce Islamic modes of dec­o­ra­tion and book con­struc­tion to the tech­ni­cal arse­nal of the con­tem­po­rary bookbinder.

The internet access at Ox-Bow was sketchy last year and I had homework in the evenings, but I’ll do my best to blog a bit when I’m at PBI. Extended posts might have to wait until I get home.

Stay tuned!

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• Tagged as bindings, book arts, Bookbinding, Islamic binding, Jeff Alte­peter, leather, letterpress, Ox-Bow, Paper and Book Intensive, Sarah Bryant, Yas­meen Khan