Trinity offers a course where students can learn how to bind books from scratch. It draws students from across disciplines —offering a hands-on approach to learning. Audrey Crawford, senior English and religion double-major, has taken the course three times. The bookbinding course has gotten harder and harder to get into, she said.
One of the bookbinding professors, Léo Lee, visiting assistant professor of art and art history, touched on why the course seems to resonate with students.
“In a digital time, we forget how we are embodied and art is embodied, and I think that’s a big part of what people like about book binding in itself, is that it’s not a digital textbook,” Lee said.
The course offers students the opportunity to engage with physical materials and explore creativity in a tactile way, with lots of cutting and folding, according to Joy Ingrum, junior geoscience major. Both Crawford and Ingrum said creativity is important in a student’s education.
“Just giving myself the space and the time to do something that’s different from academics has been really fulfilling,” Crawford said.
While Crawford said that it is important to pursue creative work outside of academics, Ingrum focuses on the artistic aspect of the class. According to Ingrum, she valued the perspective that views books as art.
“Another really interesting aspect is introducing this whole idea of art in the objects that we take for granted, and looking at the process and the beauty that comes from the craftsmanship of these objects that we interact with in our daily lives,” Ingrum said.
Bookbinding is open to all students. The course has no pre-requisite requirements, and it fulfills student’s arts and creative expression pathway. Lee said the course is very interdisciplinary; they’ve had students across the board: engineering, law, medicine, chemistry and math. Lee said everyone connects to it differently, but that everyone can be involved in bookbinding.
“So who’s not welcome in a book? Who’s not able to participate in a book? Pretty much nobody,” Lee said. “Everybody has a place where they can make that potential conceptual communication while building the object.”
Crawford and Ingrum both described the course as very precise and structured — with lots of folding and cutting.
“You can bring in so many different types of art and different forms and mediums, and different creative expressions, in ways that I never imagined,” Crawford said. “Through paper-making or through different cover designs, it shows your artistic abilities in a completely different way that I’ve never been able to visualize until this.”
With the help of Jon Lee, assistant professor of art and art history and current professor of bookbinding, Crawford is progressing further in her studies and is in the process of applying to graduate programs in bookbinding. While Crawford had no experience in bookbinding prior to her first time taking the class, Ingrum said she came into the class with some background, having worked as a bookbinding apprentice in high school. She said the arts can be intimidating, but that the bookbinding course does a good job at appealing to people who are less creatively inclined.
“There’s a novelty that comes with bookbinding. It’s not something that people usually think of when they think of creative expression classes,” Ingrum said. “I think some painting classes or drawing classes come with a heavy creative weight. And if you feel like you don’t have the skill or don’t have the ideas to be able to do it, you can get very turned off to it quickly. And I think bookbinding doesn’t necessarily have as much of that pressure.”
Some students, like Crawford, have returned to the bookbinding class multiple times. Students said they found value in the tactile, reflective nature of the work, both inside and outside the classroom.
