Cloth Bound Book Binding with Joel Freeman — Sep 27 - 28

Dates: September 6, 2025 → September 7, 2025
Times: 10am-4pm with a one-hour lunch break
Level: All levels

Workshop Description:
Learn the basics of bookbinding through this foundational book structure. In a two-day workshop students will be guided through a simplified Bradel binding, leaving the class with a cloth bound, flat-backed book of their own. We will cover such foundational skills as folding, marking, and punching a text block, sewing onto supports, working with bookcloth, and casing in. Though some bookbinding familiarity would be helpful, this class is well suited for beginner and intermediate binders.

About the Instructor:
Joel Freeman, originally from Fayetteville, Arkansas, has been living and working in Los Angeles since 2012. He has found his work in the city's art industry; fabricating, installing, teaching, and making art. His own practice ranges across mediums -- through printmaking and ceramics, photography and bookbinding -- and is spurred by deep engagement with what their methodologies have to teach him. How working these materials shapes his engagement with the world. Having begun binding books as a kid in Fayetteville, Joel now considers the medium to be the backbone of his art practice. His books are quietly experimental. Often crafted using traditional methods and materials, his books foreground structure as a materialization of content. He has been teaching workshops and semester-long classes in bookbinding for the past five years.

Required Materials: $40 to be collected by the instructor on the first day of class. Cash is appreciated.
- pencil
- ruler, cutting knives (X-acto or Olfa or equivalent) for paper

Optional Materials:
- decorative papers