Behind the scenes making books by hand📚✨
If you’re interested in this stuff and in SLO county—come take my class @fieldworkart May 31st. I’d love to have you!
I’ve taught bookbinding, papermaking and printing at both the college level and for the community for over 10 years. It’s exciting to be returning to this work after a couple years focusing on my son and getting settled back into life and being on the central coast again (why did i ever leave?!)
Please reach out if you have any questions about the class!
#bookbinding #boommaking #workshop #handmadejournal #artworkshop
Sunday 5/31 from 1-5pm
Learn the basics of bookmaking and create your own set of hand-bound journals!
This half-day workshop will introduce you to the fundamentals of bookbinding, as well as simple paper patterning techniques to give you the option of customizing your book covers.
Leave with a set of three small notebooks, ready for all your note taking, dream journaling, and ideating needs!
All tools and materials are included, however students may wish to pick up additional papers to work with from the ARTery. Please check in with instructor for any questions regarding papers suitable for bookbinding!
About the instructor:
Allison Leialoha Milham is a book artist, musician and proprietor of Morning Hour Press. She received her BFA in Studio Art from SFSU and her MFA in Book Arts from the University of Alabama. She’s taught workshops and college courses in book arts and printmaking for the last eight years. Her work is held in prominent collections including Yale University Arts Library and The Library of Congress and is represented by Vamp & Tramp Booksellers and Booklyn in NYC.
Ticket link in bio
$100
Had a great time at the @atascaderoprintery selling work. sharing about letterpress, and printing with folks! Thanks to everyone who came by and especially to the Printery Foundation for organizing such an amazing event! Looking forward to the next one!
#letterpress #printing #printery #artwalk #printdemo
I’ve let this page sit pretty quiet these past few years… my life really shifted after giving birth to my son (he just turned 3!)—I am now a bodyworker with a thriving massage practice, based in my beloved hometown of Templeton… outside of that staying plenty busy tending to Ellis and our home and myself as best as possible… but with Ellis recently starting preschool, I’m finding a bit of space for returning to parts of my life that have been put on hold. I’m starting to play music again and am making some exciting connections in the local arts community here which feels soooo good and also healing.
So here I am, reclaiming who am I as a maker, an artist and an educator with 20 years in the world of printmaking and the book arts—traveling around the country studying, making, teaching… it’s feeling pretty great to finally be circling back to all this that i love so dearly.
Expect more of a presence from here—sharing my work and the exciting things in the works here on the central coast of California! 🤲
133 years since Hawai’i was stolen. This day is a reminder that we are still here, still under illegal occupation, remaining steadfast in our call for justice—for a demilitarized/deoccupied/decolonialified Hawaiiʻi.
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I recently was able to look thru an old album kept by my “uncle”, Sam Zap. He was the longtime boyfriend of my Grandmother—Dallas Kealiihooneiaina Mossman Vogeler. They met in the LA theater scene—he was an actor and she was a director.
These clippings are from the ʻOnipaʻa event on Jan 17, 1993 on centennial anniversary of the illegal overthrow. My grandma directed a three-day street theater reenactment of the events surrounding the overthrow. Uncle Sam played Lorrin Thurston, one of the american businessman who played a prominent role in the overthrow. You can see him in the 5th slide bottom left.
Sam passed almost one year ago, on February 2, my grandma’s birthday oddly enough.
Sam was family to us even after he and my grandma split up and after her death. We got to see him last winter briefly in LA, at his place on Edgecliff. The old one bedroom in-law my grandma started renting in the 70’s and that I have so many strong memories from. (he still paid $400..it’s in silver lake)
Anyway, I love and miss him. His thick Bronx accent. His unmistakable laugh. His sincerity and warmth.
I was so glad to find he’d saved so many photos and memories in albums. And thought I’d share these for the 133rd ʻOnipaʻa.
#onipaa #onipaa2026 #soveriegnty #hawaiiansovereignty
A few years ago I was invited to design the album art for this incredible record. A Legacy of Hawaiian Song & String—a collaboration between the phenomenal Hawaiian artist, Raiatea Helm and the Kealakai Center for Pacific Strings—shares Hawaiian music from the turn of the 20th century that was hugely influential on early American country music and beyond. You know that quintessential twang in country songs? That’s the steel guitar, invented by native hawaiian players. You know that large body acoustic guitar, the dreadnought? That style guitar was first designed by the Martin Guitar Company for Hawaiian player Mekia Kealakai for his performance at the San Francisco World Fair in 1915. This was before amplification and the crowds that this Hawaiian band was drawing were so large that they needed a bigger guitar that could project loud enough for the audience.
Our Hawaiian ancestors were brilliant musicians whose influence spread far and wide. My ancestor, Robert Kapua is part of this rich history as a longtime member of the Royal Hawaiian Band. Through working the Kilin and Raiatea on this project, I was able to track down newspaper articles and photos of him that my family has never seen before.
Tomorrow night, I’m going to see Raiatea and band perform this incredible music at the Mondavi Center in Davis, CA. I’m so excited!!!! I’m planning to share more of this project, the work I created for it and my personal connection to this history soon
#hawaiianmusic #legacyofhawaiiansongandstring #raiateahelm #mekiakealakai #kealakaicenterforpacificstrings #mondavicenter
This day brings both grief and joy for me. It’s been seven years since losing my mom, and two years since becoming a mom. In some ways the pain has gotten worse…the happy and special moments with Ellis always have the sting of her not being there. And in the hard moments, I miss her desperately. Having Ellis has given me so much more perspective on my relationship with my mom. It has of course deepened my gratitude and it’s also given me more understanding and empathy—knowing now how insanely challenging this job is, and knowing that she did the best she could with the tools she had, as am I.
I am in awe of all those who mother. And am sending love to those holding the grief of loss on this day 🖤
Our Ellis turned two this month. We celebrated at the Templeton park with friends and family. Everyone says it goes by so fast but dang, it’s hard to believe how quickly time seems to be passing. Trying my best to soak in the sweetness of these precious days🤍
The birds sing the sun up. A spotted towhee, then the California towhees followed by the robins song and yammering of acorn woodpeckers.
I’m feeling a spark (and Ellis is still sleeping) so I’m going to write some scattered musings. Here (rather than in my journal) because… I guess because I miss so many of you old friends, and am wanting to connect and be seen.
I’m almost two years out from giving birth to Ellis…finally starting to find my footing as a mother. My postpartum season has held some dark days. And also of course the immense joy of witnessing Ellis grow and change.. and pride in the ways Dan and I have navigated the challenges of early parenthood, a new marriage, health issues, moves, financial instability, deep loneliness, depression, my episodes of rage, my unhinged and destructive behavior, mothering without a mother, our pain and our grief.
My life has transformed beyond recognition.
A woodpecker is drumming now. I want to see a Lewis’s woodpecker one day…
Crazy how this thing has become our journals, our letters, our conversations… our photo album, scrapbook, the newspaper, the tabloids. sick of all the talking heads on here saying ‘do this’ ‘don’t do that’ ‘you need this’ ‘buy this’. And at the same time love keeping up with dear one’s lives and learning how to eat better foods for where I’m at in my cycle( which I’m happy to share has returned after nearly 3 years of not bleeding), and keeping up with issues that are important to me.
Meanwhile the horrors of the world rage on. Meanwhile people continue to justify the mass slaughter of an(other) people, meanwhile our country is crumbling at the hands of deranged billionaires.
We live in a small one bedroom home. A cottage that was once the guest cottage of Mari Aldon, Hollywood movie star who moved up here in the 50s. We’re in the country surrounded by wildlife. Nestled in the oak woodlands of the Ca Coast Range. Fifteen minutes from the town where Dan and I grew up… where we first became friends in a high school ceramics class. (Cont in comments…)
Huff & Hop together again 🔥🫶🫀✨🌚🌝 We ate the most divine sushi at Goshi’s, caught a Califone show at the super sweet lil intimate bookshop/record shop/vintage store/venue ‘A Satellite of Love’ in SLO, soaked in a hot tub, dug our feet into the sand and hunted for moonstones at Moonstone Beach, drove around, did some house puttering and studio projects, but mostly we just talked our faces off. I love you my Huffqueen ♥️♥️♥️♥️ Let’s not let 3 years go by without seeing each other ever again!!!
“…in our way of speaking, land is inherent to the people; it is like our bodies and our parents. The people cannot exist without the land, and the land cannot exist without the people.”
Remembering my last thanksgiving with my mom and our “truthgiving” reading from Haunani-Kay Trask’s “From A Native Daughter”
Today is a bullshit holiday. In honor of Native American Heritage Month, take some time to educate yourself on the history of (and ongoing) settler colonialism and genocide in this country. Then try to see the connections to what’s happening in Gaza. There is no justifying genocide. Not now not then not ever.
I think one of the reasons it’s so hard for so many Americans to call out Israel, is because it forces us to face our own country’s bloody origins. Until we’re able to do this, to look in the mirror and acknowledge our own history of land dispossession, of racism and genocide, it will be impossible for us imagine liberation and peace for Palestinians or to move towards healing and peace in any capacity. In the meantime, let Trask’s words echo in our consciousness, “Resistance is its own reward”
Very special timing to have this episode of Artists’ Books Unshelved featuring my project ‘Uluhaimalama: Legacies of Liliʻiokalani’ come out yesterday, on the Queen’s birthday🤍🤍🤍
Mahalo piha to @yukapetz for such a thoughtful and well-researched presentation and to the @bimuseum.of.art for all the awesome work being done to share and promote the book arts!
Link to this episode in my bio!
