As part of the 25th annual Mountain Harvest Festival celebration last month in Paonia, several artists demoed their process. For KVNF, Laura Palmisano interviews North Fork Valley artist Laura Zick, who showcased bookbinding.
Palmisano: What are you doing here today?
Zick: I'm making leather journals and demonstrating how to actually sew the signatures in and put the beads on.
Palmisano: Describe your process to us. I see you have pages and a mallet, and you're opening one of your books. Tell us what you have in it.
Zick: This mallet is actually to put the hole in the leather so that I can then go through and sew. What I've got here are a bunch of signatures. I take each signature and sew it through those holes. Each signature is a set of four sheets of handmade paper folded together. Then each book has eight signatures.
Palmisano: Do you have one you're going to hammer in a minute?
Zick: I don't, because I've actually been able to get all the holes in there already. But I brought this mallet so people could see the feeling of it, how easy it is, and kind of satisfying. You can get super creative with all the holes that you do, and then you can sew whatever all around. Leather is hard to sew into, but punching those holes makes it very doable.
Palmisano: How did you get into leatherwork?
Zick: I actually had a vision. I love riding my motorcycle across the country and writing, and I had a vision of a leather journal that I could put in my rucksack, go across the country, and write. I went into a store, saw a leather journal that I loved, and the artist was teaching a class. I took the class, and I've been in love with it ever since. I've been doing this for about 20 years now.
Palmisano: And are you from the North Fork area?
Zick: I grew up in Conifer, and I've lived here for about eight or nine years.
Palmisano: Do you teach classes yourself on this process now?
Zick: I don't teach classes, but people have recommended that I teach them, and I would love to move into that. I've taught people how to do it so they can help me, because I've had to get help periodically through the years. But as of yet, I haven't taught a formal class.
Palmisano: Do you tan the leather yourself and make the paper?
Zick: I don't tan the leather or make the paper, but I buy handmade paper, and I have a lot of fun picking out the leather. One time I went to the leather market in León, Mexico and I had a blast picking out leather. It's a very tactile experience. You have to get the thickness, the color, and the level of oil just right for it to work well for these books. I used to just do brown because I always thought of books in brown, but then I veered into bright colors, and that's been more my thing.
Palmisano: How has business been today?
Zick: It's been really good. Today I'm doing things a little differently. Usually I'm focused on selling, but today I really just wanted to show the demonstration. People have been very interested, so that's been fun.
Palmisano: What do you enjoy about Mountain Harvest?
Zick: Oh, this is what originally inspired me about this town. It's harvest season, it's creativity, it's the food, the community, the talent. I think seeing artists do their work is very inspiring.
