PSBA Member SPOTLIGHT
We feature a new member each month. Click here for past member spotlights.
Peter Newland
| On the way to Chimacum, in search of the best apple pie,[1] I stopped in Quilcene to meet with Peter and his wife, Robyn. They are art collectors and art makers. We spent a lovely summer morning tracing their meandering paths to book arts. It felt like a private gallery tour combined with an open case. Fortunately, my iPhone handled the note-taking while I feasted on the artists’ books from their collection. Peter’s story is September’s Spotlight. —Diane Miller |
Q: Peter, can you give us some of the highlights of your path toward book arts?
In 1967, after graduating from Whitman in Walla Walla, WA, I traveled east, first to perform with the Dartmouth Summer Rep and then on to NYU for my MFA in Theatrical Management. Since then, I’ve thought of myself as a producer.
Following graduate school and my Army service in Vietnam, there were numerous career roles. My theatrical training has manifested in many of them. In 1972, I joined the construction business my grandfather established in 1944, and which the fourth generation in America now runs. In 1985, on April Fool’s Day, I struck out on my own by establishing Hill Street Investment, specializing in real estate development. I served two terms as an elected commissioner of the Snohomish County PUD and on the Washington State Arts Commission. I have always been involved in the arts.
In 1992, I met Robyn, who, as Gallery Director of the Snohomish County Arts Council, was staging an invitational woodcarving show that included my Legends of the Forest Carousel featuring five James Toner hand-carved PNW animals. The carousel is hand cranked and has appeared at charity events, schools, and private parties throughout the Northwest for the past three decades. Before the cranking starts, the children are asked to make the sound of the animal they are riding. Pure theater!
During my time as a PUD Commissioner, our headquarters building was doubled in size. With my construction background, I was involved with the design and construction, which included a 165-seat, fully equipped theater/auditorium for staff training, school programming, and community group use. To open the new building, I was the executive producer of an original, award-winning educational stage show called The Electric Circus. We bused in over 3000 elementary school kids to see the show and provided teacher packets and student workbooks. In 1999, I curated The Art of Puppetry exhibit. That show holds the record for the most well-attended art exhibit in Snohomish County history.
My Everett office included a large conference space for community gatherings, conversations, and art shows. My introduction to Artists’ Books was a collaboration with Robyn, creating five boxed portfolios for an exhibit by James L. Davis. As we met more book artists and attended exhibits, we began incorporating the book arts into our community work.
All the projects and artists’ books we’ve made over the years have been collaborations. First, we started collecting, and then said to ourselves this is something we might do someday. Our first book, similar to a Little Golden Book, was used in a campaign to purchase new equipment for three playgrounds in Everett. It turned out fundraising can be fun! There were a lot of people involved in the production. Inside Chance by Linda Smith was one of the first artist books we collected. We also used it for fundraising. It remains a favorite.
In 1999, the Puppeteers of America festival celebrating the millennium was on the UW campus, and I was able to pull together an exhibit featuring the Mantell Manikins, whose first performance was in 1902 at Everett’s Central Theater.
Q. When did you start making books? And then how did you connect with PSBA? After we left the Everett area, we lived in Seattle while we were building the house on Tarboo Bay near Quilcene. We joined BAG (Book Arts Guild) and found our kindred book spirits. By happenstance, we were visiting the Collins library at the University of Puget Sound during an exhibit. And it was a fit for us. What I like best about the design of PSBA is the openness to exhibiting the work of all its members—if you are a member who makes a book and submits it, it will be shown during the exhibition. They won’t say “your book isn’t good enough.” That may be the reason that the exhibit gets better and better. The first book I made on my own was called Moonlight Circus. Puppetry and circuses have been a lifelong interest, going back to kindergarten. The inspiration for the book came from a quick glance at three circus leads I had set up. I noticed that when the light was just right, they became shadow figures on the wall. The book was a limited edition. Seven deluxe versions contain three actual figures. The book was in the 2012 exhibit. |
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I think it’s great that PSBA encourages the field and offers to teach newcomers. |
 | Q: Is there one book you want to share with us? There are two books closest to my heart and closest to who I am. They’re a tribute to my time in Vietnam. Bui-Doi roughly translates to “street children." In the musical Miss Saigon, they are referred to as the dust of life. I spent a lot of time with the kids whose photographs are in this book. Our commanding officers let us help in the orphanages. Because of my carpentry skills, I helped build a roof over the cooking area. The photos were taken with a camera I bought at the PX, shot in black and white, and developed in situ. At Long Binh, each soldier was issued an M-16, ammo, a flak jacket, and a helmet. We took our turns at guard duty behind |
multiple fences and acres of razor wire. That said, the only things I ever shot were pictures. The negatives and slides sat in a box in the attic for 40 years before I was encouraged to use them to tell the story, and then the words poured out of me in a single day. It was an open edition that I gave away to veterans and is held in numerous special collections. I also did this series of postcards, Did You See What I Saw, with cryptic captions like, You never get a second chance to make a first impression. The collection is housed in a facsimile army dress pocket sewn from custom Cave Paper in an edition of 13 for the number of months I spent in country. The event that got this rolling was the tourism industry's PR, selling a Vietnam experience. Not my experience. It made me angry. Robyn speaking about this book: It was important for him to do this work; it wasn’t a closure, but it was a movement in the letting go of that time. This was an illuminating way to be creative in a socially relevant way—both as commentary and witnessing. Q: What are you working on now? I have three ideas on the drawing board. Amulets from My Jewel Box is about the little tchotchkes that I’ve saved since high school. I want to write a short paragraph about each and then build a book that would also hold the pieces. Another long-standing idea for a book is Where’s Clifford? —a story investigating my maternal grandfather, whom I’ve never met. My grandmother always said he ran away with the circus. I’ve researched this guy to the ends of the earth. There’s not enough evidence to prove he did. I want it to be true, but it might have to be partly fictional. The third idea I’m working on is about the environmental degradation of the Columbia River with illustrations from my postcard collection. My time as a PUD Commissioner brought many of those issues front and center. The working title is Seven Ways to Kill a Fish and includes some commentary on corporate greed and environmental insensitivity. Q: When you’re working on something, how do you imagine a perfect day? Don’t think there’s any such thing. The process starts with a lot of questions. I like it when you get to the stage where you can lay out all the pieces and let your mind wander and see how they get pulled together. Robyn: We learned a lot from our improv classes, and these amazing things just spring out of you. You start with a pose, the second person joins in, and the third person completes the movement. It’s the idea, the process, and the resolution, but at the beginning, it’s a blank slate. And so often funny, because it’s unexpected! Q: What do you collect besides books? Puppets, postcards, circus leads, books about puppets, and art. And artists' books, of course. We designed our house to display all these loves. Q: If you’re giving a dinner party and you could include anyone from any time or place—who would you invite? Emily Dickinson (Robyn is a Dickinson scholar), Barack Obama, Jack Freimann (mentor from Whitman), Mary Tyler Moore, Bob Fosse, and Gwen Verdon. Can you imagine Bob Fosse and Emily Dickinson together? Q: Any closing thoughts or advice? 1. Avoid the trap of thinking your next project must be something better than the previous one. 2. Creativity is about play—even approaching dangerous subjects as play. 3. Free yourself or unfreeze yourself to make new associations.
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If you would like to nominate a member for a Spotlight feature or would like to participate yourself, please email info@pugetsoundbookartists.org.