Creativity is contagious
Book Arts is curious! Show us what you’ve been working on!
Calling out to our teaching artists, members, supporters & creatively curious folks! We want to know what you’ve been working on as we put our life on “pause” and settle in to this new normal. Creating art? Writing a short story? Drawing some new characters? Or maybe you’re caring for someone who is sick, gotten really into playing board games, or working on your living space, or writing some snail mail!
We want to know it all! Fill out the form below and we’ll feature you and your activities among other members of the book arts family!
Tell us!
MIRANDA HEYER
Book Arts Volunteer & Budding Teaching Artist
If you’ve stopped into Book Arts on a Friday, you’ve probably met Miranda working in the Shop! Miranda also helps out at our events & leads workshops for families. She comes to us through Aspire of WNY, a non-profit that works to support people with developmental and similar disabilities, helping them to live their lives to the fullest by providing individualized assistance based on personal choices. We’re so glad Miranda chose us!
What she’s been up to….
Before the COVID-19 crisis, my schedule was very busy, but now I don’t have a regular schedule of activities. I don’t have my weekly physical therapy appointments, which means I don’t have access to the machines at physical therapy to strengthen my legs, which means I may lose the strength I have built up. I use a wheelchair to get around, and if I don’t keep up my arm strength, I won’t be able to move my chair by myself. I’m often sore after physical therapy appointments, but I know that I wouldn’t be the independent person I am today without them and I would have to depend a lot more on others helping me.
I’m also not volunteering at Oishei Children’s Hospital on Monday mornings making packets of information for the patients in Labor and Delivery. I also used to go to the ATTAIN computer lab at the University at Buffalo Education Opportunity Center every Monday afternoon, where I have recently been working on earning my Microsoft Office certification, but it has been closed since mid March. This is an important part of my former routine because the certificates I am earning there are helping me build the skills that employers want, which will hopefully lead to a good job someday. I’m very proud of all I have learned there and I don’t want to fall behind on my progress.
Read on…!
I also miss attending my Work Readiness classes through Aspire of WNY on Tuesday mornings at the Tri-Main building, where my classmates and I worked together on building soft skills that will help us with securing and being successful in employment. Through this class I have learned how I can have better conversations and create a closer relationship with my team. Each week I learn new things to make me better at what I do, and I also feel encouraged when I can help the others in the class, which helps me learn more skills too.
Last but not least, I no longer go to the WNY Books arts center every Friday afternoon, where I have interned for over two years now. I love the new skills I have learned there, such as working with Square to make sales, building marketing skills, and working on creative projects to sell at the store or on my own Etsy shop. I was also supposed to teach three workshops in the coming months, but they have had to be rescheduled. At the WNY Book Arts Center, I have been able to get out of my comfort zone and build skills in customer service and public speaking. I miss building on those skills each week, and I also miss sharing the joy that I have making things with other people.
With all the changes, I’m spending a lot more time with my family at home, trying to keep busy, because a lot of our family activities have been interrupted too. We had to cancel a family vacation, and I couldn’t hang with friends or family for my birthday last month and go out to dinner like we usually do for birthdays. Also, my grandmother was unable to join us to celebrate Easter this year. To pass the time, I’m spending more of my time on crafting projects. I’m making bracelets to sell on my Etsy account. I make them using a loom and a crochet hook to loop rubber bands around each other. I like making them because they’re easy to do and I can make fun and colorful designs. It’s a project I’ve been working on for about the last four or five years and they make really great gifts. I’ve also started learning how to knit hats on a circular loom using yarn and a hook. Right now I’m using some white yarn that has colorful specks in it. I’m not sure if I’m going to sell them, gift them, or donate them yet, but they’re sure to come in handy next winter!
I hope all of you are finding fun and crafty ways to pass the time as well until we can see each other in person again.
KATY SLOAN
Book Arts Teaching Artist
@KatySloanArt
My life has been thoroughly interrupted by Covid-19, as I’m sure everyone in the world can agree. Despite the hardships of this situation, I have enjoyed the extra cuddles with my cat, springtime walks, and time spent with my roommate. I am a long-term substitute art teacher at a 3rd to 5th grade Intermediate school. My new day-to-day involves sleeping in, reading emails, connecting with students and parents online, and making artwork. My artwork has not only been a great distraction, but also a cathartic way to confront my feelings about this pandemic.
The artwork that I am making is inspired by the turn of the season from winter to spring, and the contradictory turn of our lives from freedom to isolation. During these strange times, I am looking to nature for stability. I am in awe of nature’s ability to keep moving despite the wild disruptions in our lives caused by Covid-19. In my most recent piece, dried hydrangeas tower over dwarfed buildings that are inspired by the west side of Buffalo. The landscape is lush and welcoming, but the collagraphed words read “stay home”. Ultimately, my longing to lose myself in spring and forget the world around is interrupted by the reality of Covid-19 and my dedication to keeping myself and others safe.
SWEETY KABRA
Current Book Arts volunteer and teaching artist. Sweety has led various book & printmaking classes, including our free & family-friendly Printing Partners workshops at the Central Library’s Reading Park. She also hosts Henna classes at Book Arts and throughout the community.
What she’s been up to….
For me one of the hardest things that happened because of COVID19 is that I can’t go out to do my favorite things including creating art at the Book Arts Center and leading art workshops. But this time gave me a chance to look at my other passion: Henna!
I’m taking this time to develop a new series of henna tattoo designs for the upcoming season and also taking time to do some on myself. Henna brings in the positive vibes, joy and happiness that would be otherwise very hard to find in these times!
NICHOLAS STOKES
Former Book Arts intern and budding teaching artist. If he looks familiar, you might have met him at last year’s BookFest, where he ran the screen print t-shirts demo, or at last month’s collaborative workshop with the Albright-Knox Art Gallery & Hervé Tullet, helping families create one-of-a-kind screen printed collages!
What he’s been up to….
“Since the introduction of COVID-19 to America, all I’ve been doing is sleeping! As you can see I have permanent bed head. I’ve never had this much sleep in a long time! Now recuperated, and quite frankly ill-prepared, I now work on my pieces. These are the art pieces I have in production and some I plan to collage. There’s even me! (I don’t even have any paint on the brush, eesh)
When I heard COVID-19 was dangerous to people with underlying conditions, I immediately thought of my mother. Unfortunately, she’s battling many health conditions due to lupus. I try my best to help out with the situation and stay at home. Yet despite this, there’s only optimism here!”
About the atwork…
I typically use watercolors, mechanical pencils, and for more formal detailing graphite pencils for the more detailed work. Sometimes I dabble in chalk pastels and color pencils.
In the drawing of the woman with the beads the subject is Solange. She is a musician out of Houston better known as Beyoncé‘s sister. Solange creates music that speaks on the black experiences of many in an artistic and poetic manner. I absolutely adore her because she made the album, A Seat at the Table, after a critic (a white male) deemed she didn’t “understand the culture of R&B”. She poured her true unapologetic feelings in this album. Proving not to just us but to the critic that she isn’t just cultured. She is culture. To speak for my subjects, in general, most of the time they are of black people or my friends. I choose black people to try to wrestle my inner self-hatred that, dare I say, ALL black people face. When I draw these portraits I try to pull the divinity and the beauty out of each person. The circles one might see in my portraits are halos usually made with chalk and watercolors. By making these halos I’m trying to conceptualize godliness with every person. The subjects have blank empty eyes but the halos are vibrant and colorful juxtaposing the grayscale face. In my mind, godliness is synonymous with phlegm or emotionlessness. Usually, when I’m making art I have an intense emotion that I want to abolish. In addition, I don’t try to aim for contemporary beauty. I try to showcase flaws because despite my search to be godly. I can’t become a god without giving up my humanity.
So to put it into shorter words. I’m trying to understand myself, society, and how to go about living as, not just a black man, but as a human.
RUBY MERRITT
Teaching artist extraordinaire for the Book Arts Center and a Gadzooks & events volunteer! If she looks familiar, you’ve probably created art with her at a Printing Partners workshop, or out in the community at an event!
What she’s been up to…
I have found myself using this time to sort and organize. This state of mind, I have given a name, it’s called organization-station and when it gets real serious, it’s organization-station-nation.
Sorting through what we keep as artists I believe is a practice that evolves with our current sense of being and is controlled by the environments in which we reside or use. As an artist or a maker, we are always filtering the identity of an item through our lens of “what can I do with this, do I need it, can it sit on my self and inspire me, or can I post it on my corkboard with a pin? Perhaps it’s a tool or a material, and when we ask those questions about practice or mechanical things the collecting truly starts to begin. I find myself reminiscing about organizing the basement studio at 468 with the Gadzooks, as I sort through my materials and my beloved printmaking tools, each one special for its own tiny details. My mind slips, to think now more important than ever we need Gadzooks influence people to sort through, to clean, to help spread awareness with ourselves and the objects we encounter and keep.
When I caught myself feeling creative, my first explosion was with the brush to some canvas but my hands desired the methods of the printmaker. I found some coasters from Liquor & Letterpress where I gave a demonstration on the platen printing press to make insta take home coasters! I used it like a stencil, allowing my material to ooze and make stamped monoprint impressions. The paint does this very organic and so very luscious Max Ernst pattern creation. It’s a base layer in the moment; I saved my coaster-stamp for next time, now it will have even more texture to make a print.
Read on…>>
I miss my workshops with the community. There is great joy and energy in being around with other creators. Watching different techniques, or a resistant hand overcome and succeed at a new task; as a teacher, or better said a sharer, of my experience the results that are present in the space are as much fascinating as they are true moments of pure smiles-or a witness of wonder at its peak. How the parent adapts to performing with their young child, and reading the body language of the groups are reflections of the whole atmosphere I facilitate.
Having this time away, my memories can steep and in the warm, soothing space of reminiscing, I thought lets learn something new that I can share, practice a new fold and use up some of those prints I found during my organize-station-nation moments! I wanted to create ‘learn the technique of a Japanese Folding Fan’. I began experimenting with prints from my collection of photographs of my evaporated drawings. I took many in progress photographs of the particular series, Strata-Stratum-a collection of folded open paper cups. These printed out photographs became the structure for a new exploration, and that journey included a pair of scissors and my trusty bone folder along for the ride. Front side and back side of the paper became a new aspect to ponder, so I began cutting into the folds and reversing their sides, so now you see the back of the paper and the front at the same time. Late in the evening, I light a few candles and only until I noticed the shadow did I see another exploration for my folded and cut creations. At a certain point art reaches a place where words are merely description or didactic explanations, but there is a point where the visual spectacle is simply enough.
Take a look inside my quarantine world creations, blessed with time to experiment and art giving me moments to escape the anxiety and terror of a pandemic. I’m longing for the day to smell the oil and the ink in the studio; to come in and chop on the guillotine paper cutter while gathering the materials that make it extra fun or add a twist to the traditional workshop. Mostly I’m longing to share and create with my community, I’m sure we will all have fantastic oral tales of new discoveries and “you’ll never guess what I used to make…”
Keep sweet and most importantly safe and then creative, Your Book Arts teaching artist, Ruby Merritt