Asheville’s biggest bookmaking bash is coming up later this month.

by Ursula Gullow . photo by Matt Rose

She wanted to live by the book, and Asheville spoke volumes to Jessica White. “I was looking for a community of bookmakers,” says White, a 36-year-old book artist who moved to Asheville from Iowa last August. Even before she moved, she had heard about BookOpolis, the annual handmade book extravaganza hosted by BookWorks in West Asheville. So when she got to town, she called up BookWorks to see how she could get involved.

The book arts have been gaining popularity over the last decade, and Western North Carolina has an unusually high concentration of book artists. This is due largely to craft traditions here, and craft schools like Penland and the John C. Campbell Folk School have helped popularize the trend, offering classes in papermaking, printing techniques, and bindery. Bookmaker Laurie Corral says she opened BookWorks, a 3,000-square-foot book arts workshop in West Asheville, in response to the growing interest in book arts in the region.

Visitors to BookOpolis get to see just how varied the art form is. Last year’s event included more than 150 different books by local and national artists, including The Bad Sparrow, by White. In scroll format, the book is 25 feet long and has 16 hand-colored, letter-pressed panels. The Bad Sparrow, like many of her books, is filled with her nostalgic drawings of forest animals like squirrels, rabbits, birds and deer. A selection of books from BookOpolis will be on display through December 2010.

White, whose mother is Chinese, was born in Taipei, Taiwan. She got interested in books as a sculpture major at East Carolina University in Greenville, North Carolina. But she didn’t discover bookmaking in the art department. Appropriately, it was at a job in the school library, where she fixed book hinges and torn pages and erased a lot of pencil marks. Afterwards, she got a job repairing White House landscaping plans from the 1880s. The gig required her to paste narrow strips of archival Japanese paper with wheat glue to mend tears in the plans. Soon, she was hooked on the idea of constructing books herself and got an MFA in printmaking from the University of Iowa.

Now that BookWorks has lured her to Asheville, White has started coordinating exhibits at the center’s new gallery. She’ll also be teaching letterpress and bookmaking workshops at BookWorks and at Warren Wilson this fall.

To see more of Jessica White’s work, check out heroesandcriminalspress.com. For more on BookOpolis, which runs September 24-25, go to www.ashevilebookworks.com.