On today’s episode of the Craft Industry Alliance podcast, we’re talking about blurring the lines between art, craft, design, and poetry with my guest e Bond.
e makes digital spaces by day, handmade books by night, hangs out with trees on weekends, and writes something close to poems in the spaces between. Under the studio name roughdrAftbooks—created in 2003—she makes one-of-a-kind artist books, printed pieces, and abstract drawings that merge and blur the boundaries of art, craft, design, and poetry. e holds a BFA in graphic design and art history from Moore College of Art & Design and an MFA in Creative Writing and Book Art from Mills College.
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We begin this conversation talking about where e grew up and she split her time between her mother and her grandmother’s home, both very creative women. We also talk about e’s unusual first name.
e always knew she wanted to become an artist and went to school to get a degree in graphic design because she loved the interplay between illustrations and text.
After college she took a class on making artist books and got hooked. She opened her ecommerce site, roughdrAftbooks, and we talk about why the letter “A” is capitalized in the name.
e talks about her day jobs working as a graphic designer. She’s worked for several large companies including Anthropologie and Gap. She talks about those experiences and how they contribute to her creative life, as well as teaching at the college level and pursuing her own art practice.
We talk about her CreativeBug classes and how that teaching experience differs from teaching in-person. e has some really great perspectives to share on how artists and makers can use Instagram as a creative tool. And, finally, we talk about e’s first fabric line, Glyphs, with Free Spirit Fabrics. She explains how she connected with Free Spirit, how she created the 16 prints in the collections, and why she decided to name them after Black women writers and poets.
In this interview, we reference:
And, of course, I ask e to recommend great stuff she’s enjoying right now. e recommends:
- The Slowdown poetry podcast
- Natural History: The Ultimate Visual Guide to Everything on Earth
- Fineline masking fluid pen with Wite-Out Correction Tape
Keep up with e on her website and on Instagram.