Words tossed up in the air and falling into sentences to form concrete thoughts about the subject I am passionate about — artists' books — words like prayer, meditation, ecstasy, addiction, perfection, frustration, fantasy, longing, color, shape, form, light, dark, history, story, fact, fiction, deception, betrayal, line, sequence, text, structure and image, all floating on the spine of tradition and bound into the present. A culmination of fragments in time caught for a moment in the tangible form of the book. God is hiding all over the case tray. When I sit to compose the lines of type, I feel reverential, peaceful and know there is order in the universe. I start on the composing stick’s lower left, notch in the lead type facing away from me. Letter by letter I set the words that make the sentences and poems that others and I have written. I experience the magic of assembly when I print the page. Then I do it in reverse, letter by letter, word by word, distributing the type back into the case, so they can emerge again in new poems, new prose, new ideas, embossed on paper and bound in my heart.

Sibyl Rubottom holds her M.F.A. from Yale University in Painting and her B.F.A. from Rhode Island School of Design. Currently she is proprietor of Bay Park Press in San Diego, a fine arts press specializing in Artists Books and fine intaglio prints, and her books are in major public and private collections. In addition, Sibyl holds the position of Artist-in-Residence at the Athenaeum Music and Arts Library in La Jolla, California and teaches Book Arts there and at University of California San Diego Extension. She also conducts creativity workshops and leads tours to Mexico with book arts as a focus.