NORBAG NORTH

What happened when two former local NORBAG members discovered that they moved to the same county in Washington State?  First they met for a play date, and later found a couple more like-minded book artists and voila, NORBAG NORTH was born.

Robyn Teske joined NORBAG in 1997 and Bonnie Julien in 2004. During a class taught by Randi Parkhurst at Focus On Book Arts in 2013, Bonnie met Carol Stallard who, like Randi, lived in the Puget Sound area (coincidentally, some years earlier, Carol had even taken some of Shereen LaPlantz’s book art classes in Humboldt County). Carol and Randi joined NORBAG and they discovered that they all lived about 45 minutes from each other and would like to get together for periodic play dates. Randi’s mother, Nikki, is an artist who also dabbles in book arts so she often joins them. The group also has an honorary member, Vivienne Bruce, who lives in Victoria, B.C. While Vivienne does not join the group for play dates, she does participate in spirit and with ideas.

The group does not have a set schedule for their get-togethers, but tend to meet every couple of months. Usually one person will plan a project to work on. Sometimes they’ve even done the same workshop as the main NORBAG group. They’ve greatly benefited from Randi’s expertise in making boxes and beads. One project planned by Carol was for each person to use the same size and style of boards to make their own book. She provided the boards and gave several months to complete the project that culminated with a book reveal and clam feed at her home.

The following photos are from some of the NORBAG NORTH play dates. 

Nikki, Carol, Randi, Bonnie

Nikki, Carol, Randi, Robyn

Boxes taught by Randi

We made birthday books similar to the main NORBAG group

Carol's project with the original prototype on the far left

Books were made by Robyn, Bonnie, Dolores (guest participant), Carol & Vivienne

Randi makes paper beads...lots of beads

Play date beads by Randi, Carol & Bonnie

If you are one of the many NORBAG out-of-town members and are looking for ways to set up a similar play date group here are some suggestions on how to meet people in your area:

• See if your local library has a secure display case and would be interested in having you put up a display of your books. Add bookmarks with your email address and NORBAG's website and blog address for people to take and have a way to contact you.
• Look for book art classes that might be taught in your area...sometimes colleges have extension or other adult classes where you could either take or teach a class. A wonderful example of this is the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at Humboldt State University (http://www2.humboldt.edu/olli/). Several NORBAG members have taught classes there.
• Ask at art stores, galleries, libraries or museums to see if they would let you teach a beginning book art class.