Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Elaine G. Chu. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.
Elaine, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Learning the craft is often a unique journey from every creative – we’d love to hear about your journey and if knowing what you know now, you would have done anything differently to speed up the learning process.
Though I practice several different crafts, I will focus on bookbinding. I first took a binding class at University of the Arts in Philadelphia and fell in love with the process. Gathering rolls of different color bookcloths and papers, we constructed Japanese stab-bound books, accordion books, hard-cover case-bound books, and clamshell boxes to house photographs. For one final project, I combined music knowledge with binding skills by reproducing the score for a Bach Prelude on a narrow horizontal accordion. Each panel consisted of one single line of music. Throughout the piece, I added color to the tonic, dominant and subdominant chords—a different hue for each harmony. Another final project explored the concept of interior and exterior. Years ago, raw rice was stored in cotton bags. I cut up exterior cloth bags and sewed them as inside pages of an art book. Then glued a large amount of raw rice grains on boards and used the original interior contents as outside covers of the same book.
Upon moving to northern California in the 1990s, I enrolled in a book arts class with Chris Rolik through California College of Arts where we explored collaborative content. One book, titled “Remember,” included cootie bug rubber stamp images and various cut-out portions of the page. Subsequently I took book arts classes with Alice Armstrong. She has influenced my teaching style with her generous spirit, thorough preparation and clarity in presentation as well as being the first person to introduce me to hand-carved blockprints. In 2000-2001, I was one of nine participants in a year-long bookbinding course at San Francisco Center for the Book. We learned traditional binding techniques such as the coptic stitch and rounded-back books and even observed how to carve teflon tools under-water to avoid toxic shavings!
During the years as a freelance graphic designer, I would find time to construct books and boxes as gifts. Through practice, my craftsmanship improved, and I was able to realize my dream of being a guest instructor at San Francisco Center for the Book (SFCB.) The first class was an origami-style folded book with triangular and square panels. It felt natural to present the project and to construct books together with students who were eager to learn. Since then with Zoom as an option, I have taught at New York Center for the Book (CBA,) Minnesota Center for Book Arts (MCBA,) Japanese Paper Place in Toronto, and other venues. On occasion, people have commissioned me to construct a custom book, celebrating a milestone birthday, wedding, bar mitzvah, or retirement. It makes me happy to create a keepsake book which marks a special time in someone’s life and to know that the item is treasured.
In retrospect, I wouldn’t do anything different to change or speed up the process. It has been an evolving experience of learning and creating organically.
As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?
My occupation in the art field consists of two parts: art educator and practicing craftsperson. I first started teaching art by volunteering in the kids’ elementary school classrooms. During the year, we created handmade books and paper art. I prepared materials ahead of time for 25 to 30 students and often had help from other volunteer parents. Am grateful for those first opportunities. Soon after, I started teaching Art+Bookmaking at an after-school enrichment program and expanded to art workshops for adults throughout the San Francisco Bay Area. When the pandemic happened, like many others, I moved online and discovered new connections with like-minded art enthusiasts all over the world.
As a kid, I loved working with my hands, cutting up paper to create paper sunglasses or making rudimentary pop-up cards for family members. Later I studied graphic design, which continues to aesthetically influence me today. As an undergraduate student at Yale University and University of the Arts, I attended design and typography classes where we moved shapes and texts and explored proportions and hierarchy of information. Today as an artist/craftsperson, I still play with form, color and proportions in a perceptual way. My main pursuits now are bookbinding, collage, block printing, and a bit of sewing. Craft events and fairs are good venues to share handcrafted items as well as a way to interact with fellow artists and attendees. I also have an online site with a selection of items: EGChuHandcrafted.etsy.com
Recent experiments with new mediums include crepe paper art, basketry, watercolor, paper engineering, and crochet. What seems to be disparate arts actually still require the same basic skills: seeing, thinking, creating, and reacting visually.
What sets me apart is that I have a dual field in music and art and an ongoing quest to learn. My other ongoing occupation is teaching music (piano.) Originally trained in classical music, I now teach piano students, ages 7 through 60s. We play pop songs, jazz standards, classical repertoire, and seasonal melodies for the holidays. Over the last few years, I started taking jazz piano improvisation lessons with Bradley Sowash, who has broadened my music knowledge in areas not often covered in classical genres. These days, I’m working with my own students to read lead sheets and to add improvisation in their melodies while gaining chord fluency.
Specifically in visual art, I teach bookmaking, beeswax collage, blockprinting, gel plate printing, needle-felting, and crepe paper art. As a chance to connect and do an activity together, I host informal groups to construct a reed basket or to crochet an animal. Each week a friend in Europe and I log online to paint watercolors in spite of a 9-hour time difference. We are both novices; over time, we seem to be improving!
One of the things I’m proud of is developing a new way for students to learn beginning Mandarin. Although born and raised in the U.S., I learned Chinese intensively as a 5-yr-old, when our family moved to Taiwan for my dad’s research work. In seven months, I learned to speak and write, mostly by rote. Flash-forward a few decades: I wanted to try a fun, alternate way of introducing Mandarin through hands-on art projects. Together, we learn colors while playing with LEGO blocks and creating paper caterpillars and butterflies. I am especially thrilled to come up with new project ideas to expand vocabulary. We created large paper emojis glued to popsicle sticks and on the back of each, we wrote Chinese characters and pin yin (alphabet pronunciation) for “smiling, crying, laughing, freezing, sleeping, surprised, and angry.” One student spontaneously launched into a monologue while using all the emojis he had just drawn. For another project, we used Post-It Notes and paper plates to construct flowers (hua) and leaves (yeh). Afterwards, the kids decided to plant them in real soil! The goal is to give students exposure to a new language by developing effective, engaging methods that enhance their experience. Response has been positive and personally rewarding. Students ask excitedly, “What are we doing next week?”
What do I want people to know about my work?
Whether it’s an art piece or class project, I would like people to know that much thought and effort has gone into creating each piece. There is attention to detail through colors, composition, craftsmanship, and structure of the piece while sharing universal themes of identity, family/community, and love. Content-wise, my Asian background is an underlying theme. With an accordion book timeline, I described my grandparents’ lives and family history, spanning decades. I incorporated Chinese calligraphy in collages and educational projects by encouraging students to write the “love” character and to express what that means or what makes them grateful. I explored cultural traditions through structures such as the Chinese Thread Book (zhen xian bau,) taught by Paula Krieg and Susan Joy Share. This duo shared how to construct stacked, folded sewing notion packets—designs originally developed in China provinces perhaps a century ago.
What’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative in your experience?
Being an artist or creative person means I am inspired by what I see or learn and in turn, can share skills and techniques with others who make personal interpretations. Museums, art groups, social media (Instagram and Facebook) are valuable resources that spark ideas for me to explore my own paper and sculptural objects. I have been fortunate to learn from many excellent art educators. To mention just a few: designers Hans-Ulrich Allemann, Kenneth Hiebert; bookbinders Dominic Riley, Julie Chen, Hedi Kyle; artists Helen Hiebert, Alice Armstrong, Lynn Dolan; paper engineer Kelli Anderson; basketry artist Peeta Tinay, and watercolor artist Diva Pyari.
Inspiring and enriching someone’s life through art is most rewarding. After I had volunteered teaching graphic design in the San Francisco Unified School district, several fourth and fifth graders announced they wanted to be designers when they got older. Another adult class participant, going through a difficult time, expressed that working with paper and melted beeswax in my collage workshop resonated for her and was therapeutic. After-school students who had never held a needle and thread before, learned how to sew their own sock creatures. Upon completion, the kids paired up and created theatrical skits, using their newly sewn creatures as main characters. Two boys reenacted a wild duel!
For me, creating art is like breathing. I make something almost every day and yes, I post much of it on Instagram (@egchu1) as a visual diary. During the pandemic, art online was what connected many of us to the outside world. Thankfully things have opened up considerably, allowing us to gather and create in-person again. However, I am still grateful for online options—both to teach and to learn as a student within a community.
Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?
I had extensive music training as a young child through my early adult years. At age 10, I was expected to practice piano two hours a day. In the context of many hours that kids put into sports these days, two hours is not extreme, but at the time, it seemed substantial. Later as a teen, I performed as a piano soloist with local orchestras, then majored in music in college. Senior year at Yale, I signed up for Intro to Graphic Design, taught by Philip Burton and Color Theory, taught by Richard Lytle. Both courses completely changed my life and convinced me to change direction to delve further into visual art. After receiving a B.A. in music, I attended University of the Arts in Philadelphia and received a B.F.A. in graphic design.
With a decade-long hiatus from music, I worked at corporate design studios in New York, Hong Kong, followed by freelance work in the San Francisco Bay Area. When our two kids arrived, I pivoted again and focused more on handcrafts. Over the last years, I’ve been extremely lucky to embrace both music and art by continuing to do what I love—teaching and creating together with people of all ages. Thank you for reading about my journey!
Contact Info:
- Website: EGChuHandcrafted.etsy.com
- Instagram: @egchu1
- Facebook: facebook.com/EGChuHandcrafted
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C_ZClMN6f0A&t=34s&ab_channel=SantaFeBookArtsGroup
Image Credits
Elaine G. Chu, Esther J. Hill