Thanks to all who joined us at the Opening! Stay tuned for the word on the next round of Traveling Books, and enjoy the photos.

Wednesday, April 20, from 6:30-7:30 pm

in

Crossett Library on the Bennington College campus.

Also, if you’re waiting till the last minute to send, walk, throw, float, or otherwise deliver your traveling book to the library, make sure to do so by Wednesday morning if you’d like folks to see it at the opening. Afterwards, all the books will become part of Crossett’s permanent collection, so if you can’t make it, just stop by any time and check them out!

Detail from Addition by Subtraction, a book where nothing becomes something, conceived by Evie Garfin Lisbon, Portugal, and worked on by Shirl Buss and Leslie Stone in Sausalito, CA. Check out more new photos on our Flickr stream or our Facebook group.

When opening a new book, I’ve always felt a flutter in my stomach, an eagerness at the prospect of gaining access to whatever lies between the pages, simultaneously propelled by my curiosity and respectful of the shadows that typically enfold its contents. Even with run-of-the-mill paperbacks, telephone books, users manuals, I find myself searching for some kind of spark–be it verbal, visual, textural or structural–that will connect me, the reader, to the person who wrote/compiled/designed/made the book. I read in constant pursuit of ignition.

Opening up the traveling books that have begun to trickle back to Crossett, then, is a show of fireworks for this humble reader. First, let’s talk material: there are books made of delicate tissue papers, books of rugged cardboard, books with bright drawings, books with postmodern minimalist text next to plastic-covered straight pins. Books whose covers are made of My Little Pony DVD boxes painted pink. Books with pages that are cut to let the light in. Books where there are no pages. Some of these books are complicated to open. Some won’t stay closed. Touching them is surprising and satisfying. In this way, every new ‘reader’ who opens a book creates his or her own relationship with its contents, becoming both a witness and a participant.

Each book, too, is a document of the sparks that already flew between collaborators. I invite you to continue what I’ve started, each bookmaker has said in his or her own voice. Some books have playful, mysteriously open-ended themes–see Bon Bons–and others, like The Alphabet Book, have more definitive guidelines. Whether each participant adds to a new page or alters a pre-existing contribution, my inner reader is delighted by the moments of entanglement that arise–sometimes it’s impossible to tell who has ‘authored’ what part of the book, whose handwriting is whose, where that strange green fabric (impersonating lettuce in Sandwich) came from. Ugliness is allowed, as is confusion. In our world of copyright law and clean typefaces, this type of book seems bizarre at first; but with the messiness and disorder of collaboration comes the kind of rare beauty that I crave as a reader.

Open up, I say to each book, knowing that it could just as easily lead me into a raucous Bacchanal as to a quiet reflective pool. And with the generous collective spirit of those who made it, it opens. Let the sparks fly.

Today, I got wind of Karina Cochran’s MAILBOX Project, a soulmate to The Traveling Book Show. On its Facebook Page, Karina writes:

“Letters are all kinds of good.
The speedy communication of today is replacing the thoughtfulness, time, and creativity of the post. I started this project to breathe life into a dying art, spread warmth, and foster creativity.

I invite all friends, family, acquaintances, teachers, and people I have never met to participate in this project.

YOU+ME
Either give me your address and I will write you, or write to me and I WILL respond at:

Karina Cochran
One College Drive
Bennington, VT 05201

Any artful or interesting bits will be posted on my tumblr:
birdthatwhistles.tumblr.com
Follow or check for future updates!”

Inspired and inspiring–way to go, Karina! Keep us post-ed.

It strikes me now that February’s close to closing, hard as it is to believe–the books I’ve seen so far this winter have been exciting, beautiful, messy, thoughtful, bizarre, wild, hardy, [ ]. I want to know about your books. Have you gotten one or several? Do you have one now? How about that one you’ve been hoarding in the bottom of your closet for a month? Whatever the case, now’s the time to finish cutting up old science books and compiling that list of things you ate for breakfast, walk over to your local post office, and mail that sweet collaborative goodness to:

Crossett Library
Bennington College
1 College Drive
Bennington, VT 05201

If you have updates, photos, stories about making books, ideas for what to do once the books come back, or want to vocalize your desperate desire to hold onto a book for a little while longer–here’s the place and now’s the time: just comment on this post.  And remember–it’s never too late to collaborate.

Dorothy

The Traveling Book Show Flickr Pool!

Sign up for a flickr account here if you don’t already have one.

A book I got from Oceana Wilson!

Three Cheers for Dorothy Allen, inspiring the world with Traveled Books!

Check it out for yourselves!

And it starts with

YOU!! Collaborating with friends and strangers through the Postal Service.

How? Make a book (a foldable, mailable book out of recycled cardboard, folded paper, and a needle and thread). You decide what it centers around–an idea, an image, a question, a set of instructions–and you mail it to someone, who works on it and mails it to someone else, who works on it and mails it to someone else–

Check out the DIY zine to get started, and then check out “Get Involved” to learn more about the Winter 2010 Traveling Book Show.