Anne Covell - Bookbinder, Papermaker and Book Artist
We are so excited to get to talk to one of our favorite bookbinders, Anne Covell, who is currently based out of Southern California. Many of our readers will recognize her most for her wonderful contributions to Suntup Editions, as she was the bookbinder for some of the most iconic editions Suntup has released, including Blood Meridian Numbered, The Road Lettered, Exorcist Numbered and Hex Numbered (among others). She is known for her incredible bookbinding and papermaking expertise, especially when combining these skills into original and challenging art pieces. Anne has a passion to use her work for good, bringing light to political and ecological injustices through her work and we are grateful that she was willing to sit down and give us a little more insight on her background and philosophy of art.
Q: We would love to hear where your origin in book arts began and what led you to eventually decide on the program at the University of Iowa - Center for the Book. Did you have any personal relationships or experiences that paved the way for this eventual career and was there a moment that you knew you would be devoting your life to this art form?
My path into book arts took a somewhat circuitous route. I obtained a dual degree in Art and Art History from San Diego State University in 2004, after which I began a position as an Education Fellow at the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego (MCASD). I always knew I wanted to pursue my graduate degree, but with a mutual interest in both the history of art and the craft of making, I was unsure what educational avenue to pursue. It was around this time that I stumbled onto the University of Iowa’s joint Masters in Library and Information Science and Graduate Certificate in Book Studies. This program seemed like the perfect melding of my interests, and so I packed up and moved to Iowa City.
My intention at that point was to pursue a career in Special Collections Librarianship, and I was fortunate to spend two years as a Robert A. Olsen Fellow in Special Collections while I obtained my degree. However, it was my coursework at the Center for the Book that set me on the path to my career today.
As someone with a broad range of interests and pursuits, the Center for the Book had everything I was looking for: a hands-on approach to the craft of bookbinding, hand papermaking, and letterpress printing, combined with a deep appreciation for the history of the book and its place in contemporary practice. A couple of years after I obtained my MLIS, the certificate program at the Center for the Book was promoted to an MFA program, and I was offered the opportunity to return to obtain my MFA in Book Arts on an Iowa Arts Fellowship. This fellowship allowed me to pursue my degree full-time and gave me the space and freedom to devote to building my craft. I haven’t looked back since.
Q: Many of our readers will know you from your work with Suntup Editions, but you are not only an edition bookbinder, but a book artist and papermaker as well. What of these areas did you initially begin with and how did this evolve into the other disciplines that make up your entire area of interest now?
My trouble has never been finding interests, but rather narrowing down the many interests I have. My father was a shop teacher and a woodworker, so I grew up around the smell of sawdust. As an undergraduate I moved around the art department, first focusing on painting and printmaking, followed by woodworking, and eventually chose metalworking as my area of emphasis. I think the reason the field of book arts resonates with me is that it encompasses so many disciplines under its larger umbrella.
As an MFA student, I was able to simultaneously build skills in bookbinding, papermaking, and letterpress printing, which has allowed me to use each of these disciplines to create work exactly as I envision it. I am also able to draw on my background in wood and metal for specific projects. I find that there is a thread that runs through these allied crafts - there is something in the precision required in the act of making that is balanced by the creative freedom that I find deeply satisfying.
Q: With your time being split between book art, edition binding, paper making, and a host of other special projects, have you found a rhythm that allows you to organically move from one area to the other? What does a typical day in your studio look like and what do you do to create an environment conducive to your creative process?
In addition to being a book artist, I am also an avid gardener. My husband and I bought our home in 2016, and have been rehabilitating it from a concrete jungle into an urban homestead over the last several years. My hope is to not only grow food for our kitchen, but to also grow plants for papermaking and dyeing to use in my work and in teaching.
I am an early riser (I have chickens to care for after all), so I spend my first hour of the day in the garden. I find that this is the perfect way to start my day - it wakes my senses up and puts me in a good mood to start work in my studio. The rest of my day is determined by the project at hand. It takes a lot of organization to juggle multiple projects at once, so I typically batch my work so that projects are completed before moving onto the next thing. When I take on larger binding projects, I have a personal policy to reserve one day per week to use solely for my own artwork. This allows me to keep forward momentum on my own creative pursuits, and it is also a great way to break up the monotony that sometimes comes with editioning.
Q: Following your personal projects, it is very apparent that your bindings and book art pieces are intensely political and ecological, with a clear concern for how humanity coexists with nature. How have you found the book arts to be a particularly powerful medium to express this and what does it mean to you that you get to contend with these massively important topics through your art?
These are the things that keep me up at night. I am observant by nature and have always been interested in small details or the inner workings of things. The natural world is endlessly fascinating and is our greatest teacher if we choose to listen. Unfortunately, in today’s climate, environmental stewardship has become a political act. The two are inextricably intertwined, and so they are in my work as well.
The work I make is a reflection of my own observations, changes I wish to see made, and/or personal acts of protest. The codex is a perfect format for telling a larger story. There are endless ways in which structure, form, materials, and content can all be designed to create impact. I love that as a papermaker I can create a specific substrate with the exact color, opacity or translucency, and texture required for the project. Likewise, by having knowledge of the history of the book and endless binding variations to draw from, I am able to design a structure that allows the concept of my work to unfold in a measured and crafted way that creates the greatest impact.
Q: Though you are not primarily an edition binder, you have been one of the most consistent collaborators with Paul at Suntup Editions and have designed some of the most stunning productions that they have produced (The Road – Lettered, Blood Meridian – Numbered, Hex – Numbered, The Exorcist – Numbered, etc.). I know you are both in Southern California, but can you tell us a little bit about how you first met Paul and how that ongoing collaboration started?
I met Paul at the Los Angeles Printer’s Fair several years ago. I had a booth where I was selling my artist books as well as some workshop binding models and other letterpress paraphernalia. We had a lovely conversation about different book structures, but I didn’t think much more of it at the time. Some months later he contacted me to see if I would have interest in binding the lettered edition of The Road. That is when I learned of the wonderful work he is doing with Suntup Editions, and was honored to be given the opportunity to bind such an important work.
Q: As an enormous Cormac McCarthy admirer, I’d love to hear a little bit more about the development of The Road and Blood Meridian, arguably two of the most admired productions in Suntup Editions’ wonderful catalog. How did you decide on the open binding style, the materials, and the overall aesthetic approach to these two projects?
All of the binding work I have done for Paul has been a collaboration. With each project, he has come to me with a specific idea in mind and I have worked to bring that vision to reality. In some cases, I’ve built binding models to work out structural variations and/or hybridized binding styles to achieve a specific look without compromising on structural integrity. For example, Blood Meridian borrows from sewing and lacing techniques found in Medieval wooden board books and casing-in techniques found in modern case bindings.
I have a love for exposed spine bindings that highlight the aesthetic qualities of what are often meant to be the inner workings of the book. They are the perfect example of where form meets function. In both The Road and Blood Meridian, the binding was designed so that the spacing and weight of the thread would complement the thickness of the board and the cover material to give the book an ideal weight in hand. As you know, it is important that these special editions not only be aesthetically pleasing, but also hold up to the rigors of use. It is a point of pride for me when structure and design come together seamlessly.
Q: Your work has been exhibited and held in collections all around the world including over sixty different universities, and special collections at renowned libraries, as well as museums. When you first started in bookbinding and the arts did you ever think you would get this kind of reception and what does it mean to you to be featured in so many incredible collections?
I am so appreciative of the reception my work has received over these last several years. Having worked in contemporary art museums, I have witnessed the difficulty artists face breaking into the art world. I have not found that the same level of gatekeeping exists in the field of book arts. There are many reasons for this, of course, but one aspect of the field that lends to this is the collectible nature of the artist books. Works are often editioned rather than one-of-a-kinds, so they can reach more hands and be seen more widely.
It means a great deal to have my work in so many institutions, not only for the prestige it carries, but because I know it means the work is being used. There is an incredible network of librarians and curators that collect artist books to not only be housed in their institutions, but also to be used in teaching. I love that artist books are a medium that are meant to be touched and experienced, and that editioning my work allows it to literally reach the hands of so many.
Q: You seem to be consistently pushing yourself to expand the boundaries of bookmaking and many of your projects would be considered books by only the loosest definitions. As you approach a new project, do you know from the start if this is going to be a more traditional bookbinding project or if it’s going to lean more towards book art that speaks through different means? How does a project like your most recent In the Dark or Cult of Relics differ from a more traditional bookmaking process?
It is a time-honored tradition for book artists to debate what makes a book a book. You are correct that I have a loose definition in that regard. To me, anything that tells a story, or requires some form of entry or paging through can be seen as a book. Perhaps my work would better be described as book art objects rather than strictly as books.
I will often sit with a project for some time before I begin work on it. There is a wonderful balance between making art and edition binding that I find incredibly fruitful. The act of repetition allows time and space for the mind to wander. I find that I come up with most of the ideas for my work or am able to troubleshoot problems with a project best when edition binding.
More often than not, the concept dictates the structure. My most recent work, In the Dark, uses redactions from the Mueller Report as a stand-in for the overwhelming sense of lack of justice present in politics today. However, what we are experiencing today is nothing new. I chose a Medieval girdle book structure to anchor the work to its larger context in history. This structure meets all the traditional definitions of what makes a book a book, but the material within is what contextualizes it as art. There are no words to be read within, but rather only the blank space where the redacted words should reside. The hand-cut pages leave the reader with an overwhelming sense of loss, but in order to be experienced the book must be paged through.
Q: If there was one piece you could put on display to represent your personal mission in the book arts, what would that be? Also, what was the most challenging piece that you have ever worked on and why?
I suppose the work that most represents my personal mission in book arts would be a piece from my thesis body of work, Towards a Just Landscape. This piece is titled, Vanishing Point, and it concerns the international boundary that spans the Waterton-Glacier International Peace Park shared between the US and Canada. This work straddles the line between political and environmental justice that I find most important today. The book is a double gatefold structure that is letterpress printed on my own handmade gampi. It includes two changing landscapes, one of vanishing glaciers and one of vanishing Native American lands, that overlap through the paper's translucency and tell similar stories set 100 years apart.
As for the most challenging piece that I have ever worked on, that would have to be my most recent work, In the Dark. This piece draws on all the areas of expertise I have built to this point - hand papermaking, papercutting, and historical bookbinding - to create a book object that I hope translates as a work of art. This project has been a labor of love requiring a tremendous amount of time and dedication to see it through.
Q: If you could choose one piece of literature to create an original edition binding and got to design in collaboration with any fine press, what would that be? Why would you think that would be an appropriate fit for your approach?
The title that comes to mind is The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck. Not only does this work of literature speak to my personal interests in history and the perils of human intervention in the natural world, but I have a personal connection to the story. My paternal grandparents spent their early lives in Oklahoma and Texas, and moved to California following the Dust Bowl seeking opportunity for a better life out West. It would be an incredible undertaking to design a binding that tells this story both with respect to its original intention and as it relates to the wider context of current political and environmental exploitation.
Q: We would love to know what you are currently working on either inside or outside of the book arts world. What can we be looking forward to in 2024 and beyond?
Thanks for asking! I am currently working on a new artist book that concerns the changing climate we are experiencing both here in California and internationally. Wildfire will be at the core of the work, though other severe and changing weather phenomena will also be touched upon. The book will tell two stories simultaneously - one of the restorative nature of fire and its importance in the ecosystem, and one of catastrophic wildfires that continue to plague communities on a global scale. The book will be a dos-a-dos book that can be read in the round and will have interesting structural elements that allow these two stories to be read at once. More to come!
This interview was done in a series of communications back and forth and we want to give our sincerest gratitude to openness and generosity of time. If you want to keep up to date with what Anne is currently working on you can check out her website or follow her on Instagram to stay on top of her inspiring binding work and see what wonderful creation she will come up with next!
Interview by: Zach Harney a contributor to the Collectible Book Vault
Anne’s work is outstanding. I am not always a fan of open spine designs, but I think Anne’s designs are amazing!
Interesting interview, thank you. Anne’s work is amongst my favorites in my collection. I would love to see she and Paul collaborate on a Suntup production of Grapes of Wrath!
Congrats to our winners of the giveaway:
1st Prize (Hex Numbered from Suntup) - Matthew Stepan
2nd Prize (Handmade Journal from Anne Covell) - @suchmeow
Thanks everyone, until next time, which won't be long!
Love the interview as always! Extremely generous giveaway as well! All of the books look incredible!
Really great questions asked and loves the thoughtful answers.