Book your spot now
By Breeana Laughlin
For the TODAY
What originally started as a get together between people with similar hobbies and talents has grown into one of the most-anticipated longstanding events on the Central Oregon Coast.
The Newport Paper & Book Arts Festival celebrates its 25th anniversary from Thursday, April 21 through Sunday, April 24.
The expanded four-day festival is returning to offer in-person learning experiences following a virtual festival last year.
A dozen one and two-day workshops are being offered throughout the weekend, including mosaic collage and Japanese screen structure. Techniques such as colorful surface designs, soy wax batik and natural pigments on paper are also being taught. Many of the workshops already have a wait list, but a few slots remain open for registration through Thursday, April 14.
“Most of the registrations occurred within the first few hours of registration opening,” said Sara Siggelkow, arts education manager for the Oregon Coast Council for the Arts and festival event organizer.
Those who have been involved with the festival look forward to it and plan far in advance.
“It started as a way for people who enjoyed similar things to get together and learn from one another,”Siggelkow said. “It has grown from that into something that is planned for. Some participants only see each other once a year and they really look forward to it. I’ve already had people asking me about the dates for 2023. They might be the most loyal and engaged people I work with.”
Those unable to attend upcoming workshops can sign up to receive newsletter alerts for future festivals on the festival website. Anyone who is interested in learning more about paper and book arts can also visit an invitational exhibition that celebrates the work made by instructors spanning the festival’s 25-year history in the Runyan Gallery at the Newport Visual Arts Center. This exhibit will remain open through Saturday, April 23.
Paper and book arts encompass anything that could be made out of or with paper and incorporate homemade techniques, unlike commercially made book and paper products.
Paper has been made and used to produce creative works since as early as the 8th Century. Paper made for fine art writing, drawing and printing has seen a revival in recent decades and continues to offer a wide variety of creative surfaces and building blocks for art works.
“The book arts part is pretty straightforward,” Siggelkow said. “It’s a handmade book made with hand-stitching, hand-folded paper bound together in some form or another. It can also incorporate box structures. The paper part can be anything from handmade paper to surface design such as marbling or batik, or collage, for instance.”
The festival is made up of longtime teachers and volunteers, as well as some new additions, and come from a broad range of locations.
“We have three brand-new instructors teaching at the festival this year” Siggelkow said. “It's a group of people from all over.”
A virtual instructor is teaching from Nevada, two others are coming from Alaska, a group drives up from the Eureka area and a handful live on the Oregon Coast.
The group of participants is also geographically diverse.
“One of the people taking the virtual course is from Connecticut,” Siggelkow said. “I also have people coming to the festival from California, Alaska, Washington and Arizona. There has been someone who comes from England. It's a broad variety of areas. The last time we had an in-person festival I asked who was the furthest person away and one person said they had registered from a cruise ship in Antarctica, so she thought she qualified as the person from the most far away.”
Though many workshops sell out within the first hour, an extended registration period opens select workshops to new participants — with or without experience.
“Ninety percent of the workshops that are still available would need no experience,” Siggelkow said. “A lot of it just requires creativity and looking at things in a new way. They might be known more in the book world but frequently if someone does any art form at all, they have at least three quarters of what might be required for the class.”
The Newport Visual Arts Center is located at 777 NW Beach Drive and is open Tuesday through Sunday, noon to 4 pm. For more information, go to coastarts.org or call 541-265-6540.