I just completed an extensive roadtrip this past July with my partner Matt to visit book and paper art centers and community art centers and spend time with directors, artists, craftspeople, and other interested parties. We talked with with participants about their thoughts on what roles art and craft can fulfill in building community and how centers function in building these relationships. A secondary component of this trip was be couchsurfing—staying with and relying on the hospitality of others for our resting place as a way to experience the impact of gifting more directly. In return for the generous assistance needed in this project, I will be making a gift for everyone that participated in any fashion – advice, an interview, couchspace, fills out a survey.

I started with an interview with Steve Woodall, the director of my local bookarts center, the Center for Book and Paper Arts at Columbia College.

Once we got on the road, our travel route was:

June 29th: Chicago, IL to Grand Rapids, MI (Matt’s hometown)
July 1st: Saugatuck, MI: Ox Bow open studios, then back to Grand Rapids
July 5th: Ann Arbor, MI: Hollander’s,
and then to Detroit, MI & lots of places and people: community gardens, the Heidelberg project, Dabl’s African Beads and Theatre Bizarre, Lynne Avadenka and Francine Levine.
July 7th: Cleveland, OH: The Morgan Conservatory
July 8th/9th: Rochester, NY: Genesee Center for the Arts (with a stop over to Niagara Falls!)
July 10th: Aurora, NY: Well College Book Arts Center Summer Intensive
July 11th: Treadwell, NY: Bright Hill Press and Literary Center
July 12th: Rosendale, NY: Women’s Studio Workshop
July 13th: Montgomery, NY: Pergamena), then a visit to Salem, NY & Ed Hutchins
July 14th: Salem, NY to Northampton, MA: Steve Daiber/Red Trillium Press, then to Boston, MA
July 15th: Boston, MA: Julie Shaw Lutts (hostess/book artist!) and the Boston Paper Collective
July 16th: New York City, NY: Dieu Donne, Mimi Schaer, The Center for Book Arts, and other fabulous places!
July 19th: Princeton, NJ: Judy Tobie
July 20th: Philadelphia, PA: University of the Arts/Philadelphia Center for the Book
July 21st: Silver Springs, MD: Pyramid Atlantic
July 22nd: Washington D.C.
July 23rd: Roanoke, VA (with a big thanks to Erin and Jenny)
July 24th: Asheville, NC: Oakmother’s Papers of Intent and Asheville Book Works
July 26th: Blue Ridge Mountains: Penland
July 27th: Atlanta, GA: My grandparents and the Georgia Tech Paper Museum
July 28th: Gordo and Tuscaloosa, AL: Glenn House and the University of Alabama Book Arts program
July 29th: Huntsville, AL: my hometown and Green Pea Press
July 31st: back to Chicago, IL

I was successful in fundraising the costs of travel (gas + oil changes) for this trip, so thank you everyone!
this sort of journey isn’t possible without people like you. <3

View roadtrip in a larger map
(Also, google is being a cranky pants and no longer shows the whole route on one page. You’ll have to go to Page 2 at the bottom to see the second half of the trip!)