Jody Alexander
CV

Jody Alexander is an artist, bookbinder, papermaker, librarian and teacher who lives and works in Santa Cruz, California.  She makes paper, in the Eastern-style, and uses her papers to bind books with exposed sewing on the spine in a number of historical and modern binding styles.  She combines these books with found objects, wooden boxes and drawers, metal, bones, etc. to create sculptural works.  Her pieces celebrate collecting, storytelling, and odd characters.

Exposed Spines

With her characteristic reverence for all things book, Alexander "exposes" the beauty, variation and craftsmanship of book bindings, carefully wrapping them in cotton batting and celebrating their natural quality. The works are exquisite and endearing. They spotlight a part of books seldom seen and taken for granted.

The term “exposed spine” is one used in bookbinding to describe a book that is bound with the intention of leaving the stitching on the spine exposed. However, this term continually conjures up different images to me, usually bodily. At the same time old books with their cloth or leather spines giving away to expose the stitching and the ambered glue continually attract me. I find beauty in the book’s decay. In my Exposed Spine series I want to honor this part of the book that holds the pages together but is rarely seen.