Abstract Index Conference Index

ABSTRACT

1. Type of Presentation: Workshop, 2 hours.

2. Title of Presentation: Arts Workshop: Making a Book for a Dream

3.Presenter: Betsy Davids, California College of Arts and Crafts

Bio: Betsy Davids, M.A., teaches book arts and writing at California
College of Arts and Crafts, where she chairs the Printmaking program. Her
narrative writing and artist's books are based on dreams.

Notification: Betsy Davids
1729 Ninth Street
bdavids@ccac-art.edu

4. Summary of Presentation:

This workshop will introduce making books as a way of honoring and
expressing a memorable dream. Each participant will make a book structure
and fill it with words, images, and objects that evoke the dream. Tools
and materials will be provided, but participants are encouraged to bring
relevant materials.

Limited to 20 participants.

5. Learning Objectives

1. Understand several ways of making a book from a dream.

2. Experience a few bookmaking processes and structures.

3. Experience a deeper awareness of the dream's expressiveness.

Evaluation Questions

1. How did making a book change my experience of the dream?

2. What bookmaking processes and structures did I learn?

3. How has the workshop affected my understanding of the book form ?

8. Abstract

The book as a cultural artifact has long been understood as a container
for memory, insight, and preservation of knowledge. For dream memory, the
book form is especially appropriate because the book is a traditional site
for combining images (the dominant mode of dream experience) and words
(the dominant practice of dream documentation).
Making a book by hand can be a fulfilling way to honor a memorable dream
and a powerful site for creative arts dreamwork.

The workshop process will draw upon familiar methods of personal
bookmaking (such as journals, scrapbooks, photo albums) and new creative
possibilities explored by artists books. The workshop leader will breifly
show some examples of artists' dream books and introduce two or three
quick and intriguing book structures. Participants will have the
opportunity to create a personal dream book using the tools and materials
provided (such as gel pens, rubber stamps, stencils, collage materials, a
range of papers, colored pencils, etc.) as well as any relevant materials
they have brought. (such as photocopies and photos). At the conclusion of
the workshop session, a few moments of sharing the book-in-progress with a
partner will bring the acknowledment of the workshop community to the
creative act.

10. Additional Required Documentation for Workshop Proposal

My qualifications for offering this workshop derive more from teaching
experience, artmaking experience, and longterm participation in dreamwork
and dream study than from specific training or credentials. I am an active
book artist and Professor (Humanities and Fine Arts) at California College
of Arts and Crafts, where I have taught bookmaking since 1972. For the
last ten years, I have also taught undergraduate humanities seminars
focussed on creative writing from dreams and studio art courses working
from dreams. In the workshop format, I led a dream bookmaking workshop at
Pyramid Atlantic (Riverdale, Maryland, 1993) and two dream writing
workshops at ASD conferences (with Sarah White as co-presenter, 1996 and
1997).

My dreamwork background includes three years in a therapist-led dream
group (with Zoe Newman) and nine years in a peer dream group oriented
toward creative arts (with Richard Russo, Diane Rusnak, Betsy Wood, Thea
Adams, and Melinda Nelson). I have attended 11 ASD conferences, usually as
a presenter. I participate in BADG and the Bay Area Dream Artists group.

This premise of this workshop proposal is that artmaking practice can
function as a noninterpretive form of dreamwork. Materials applied with
hand, eye, and heart to content of inner significance usually become a
medium for insight. The process of making a dream book will deepen the
experience and value of the dream, and the book's persistence in the
material world after its making will renew the insight over time.

The emphasis will be on remembering, honoring, expressing the dream
through the bookmaking process. As workshop leader, I will characterize
myself as an artist (rather than therapist) and will not introduce
interpretive approaches or raise therapy expectations. Participants will
be encouraged to keep remembering the dream as they fold, cut, glue,
stamp, write, draw, staple, trim, make, make, make, until hand and heart
synchronize. The aim is, minimally, a heightened experience of dream
memory, and optimally, an experience of greater wholeness.