Tiny Books Big Fun

I am seduced by the digital realm, I admit. But there is something about working with paper that floats my boat. I had a great opportunity to be reminded of this recently at the Tiny Books Exhibit and Workshop at Riverviews Art Space here in Lynchburg, VA. It added to the festive experience that it was very well attended in no small part due to great local newspaper coverage.

The Creativity Caravan was in town. Artists Amy Tingle and Maya Stein explain, "In 2013, we co-founded Food for the Soul Train (now The Creativity Caravan) with a desire to build community through creative action, and to deliver creative experiences to people everywhere." The Tiny Book Show is a traveling exhibit of miniature books and workshops. Prepare to be impressed when you see how much territory they covered this summer.  We were very lucky Lynchburg got on the map too.

The first thing I did when I arrived at the event was take a look at the 350 tiny books in their exhibit, most smaller than a 3 inches or so. We could handle them and read each one but way too many for that.

The workshop was about to begin and I needed to find a seat. Lots of people in attendance including family groups and artists like myself. It was like musical chairs to find a seat. I wanted to be surrounded by kids which I accomplished. It was all very enticing because copious supplies were laid out on the tables. I am always a sucker for scraps of interesting paper.

Amy did the demos and lead us all through each step of the process to make three books. The first book was one I was familiar with from origami. In this case, one five inch square piece of paper is folded and cut into a book with seven pages and back and front cover. Here is mine...it's so cute. It was fascinating to see a large group of people, kids and adults tackle these projects. Making these books required following a very specific sequence of events to get a desired result and it wasn't always easy. The pay off was each book could then be personalized. I added some postage stamps to mine that were among the supplies provided.

Hole punch gives you an idea of scale...it's 2.25 inches tall.

The second book we learned to make is known as a Dragon Tail book; others call it the flower book. Squares of paper are folded and glued together to make a chain of paper. Amy had a gorgeous sample with cutouts and B&W ink drawings on each page.

My dragon tail book.

Amy was kind enough to demo for my friend Jill and I a third book format. This is reminiscent of a map.

I thoroughly enjoyed this community art making event and am most appreciative of the time and energy Amy and Maya put into this tour and Riverviews for bringing it to Lynchburg.

Have you participated in a community art making event that stimulated your creativity?

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