Scrapbooking has become a trendy activity for anyone from teenagers to middle-aged mothers everywhere, and people are documenting everything from weddings and graduations to events like their dogs’ birthdays.
However, what Kristen Hodges, a 25-year-old local book artist and owner of Flyleaf Books, does isn’t exactly scrapbooking. She actually does book binding and book arts, a little more of complex artform.
What a person usually associates with scrapbooking is going out and buying an album or book and some colorful paper and then placing pictures, stickers and memorabilia into it. Hodges, on the other hand, makes these books by hand?so scrapbooking and bookbinding can go hand in hand.
“Bookbinding is starting to become more popular because of scrapbooking,” Hodges said. “You hand cut the paper, you hand fold it and then you end up stitching it by hand as well.”
She further explains that when you take a piece of paper and fold it in half and then take two or three more folded sheets and stack them together, it makes a signature. Once you get about 10 signatures, you sew them together and then hinge them to the hard or soft cover.
“It’s kind of like you would say I use impressionistic techniques, like broken color for a painting, because you have to do binding to make a book for book arts,” Hodges explained. “Book art includes bookbinding, papermaking, letterpress and paper crafts and arts . . . Artist books are different, that’s when I try to combine images, texts and the book art all together, kind of like I’m trying to make my own limited-edition book.”
For these artist books she sometimes comes up with a poem or saying and incorporates it into the cover or inside a book. Some artist books may even have intricate text or image designs used throughout the whole book-making a unique piece. These books are often used for a coffee table piece rather than for writing or sketching in.
Before taking a course at MTSU, while getting her degree in art education, Hodges mostly drew and painted, but after she sold all her painting stuff and completely went into creating books.
Other than artist books, Hodges makes journals, textbooks and photo albums, and at her home studio she showed me a large, custom photo album she happened to be working on with a deep, grape textured cover with a single silvery leaf boxed in the middle. I definitely see why the photo albums are her number-one-selling items.
Her book art and photo albums sell for fairly cheap, considering that she takes custom orders and uses high-quality homemade papers and fabrics. She doesn’t currently make her own homemade paper and wants to learn, but for now she purchases the fabric and paper.
The journals range from $10 to $35, depending on their size, and photo albums range from $35 to $50 and make great gifts for any occasion.
Hodges even admits that one of the reasons she switched over from painting to book arts was because book arts are cheaper and easier to sell.
“Not everyone has $400 in their back pocket,” she said. “Books are a little more functional and people seem to be drawn to them; they want to touch and feel them, and with a painting they don’t really feel like they can touch it. So, people can be intimate with books, there’s functionality to them and they are so much easier to market.”
You can also have the chance to make your own books by taking one of Hodges’ classes or workshops at The Art House. All the materials needed are covered in the individual program’s supply costs. Her classes, held on Mondays from 4 to 6 p.m., are about artist books and the workshops, held every other Wednesday from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., are about book arts. The classes are for adults 18 and up and she said she has an interesting group of students.
“It’s funny; I usually get a lot of doctors, lawyers and factory workers,” Hodges said. “It’s not really people who have artsy jobs but people who have Monday through Friday jobs and want a hobby.”
The Simple Silkscreen workshop is set to start up July 28.
For more information, visit flyleafbooks.blogspot.com or check out her pre-made stuff at The Art House, on the corner of Lytle and Front Streets near the square.
