My name is Annie Fain Liden (Annie Fain is my first name) and I have three major loves in life: dance, music and art. I grew up on a small sheep farm in Murphy, North Carolina near the John C. Campbell Folk School, a not for profit, non-competitive, traditional craft and music school. My family was involved in the creative community surrounding the Folk School which was an added bonus to my rural North Carolina upbringing. By sixteen I had taken over the house with my elaborate art projects, was addicted to modern and traditional dance and had begun learning to play my mother’s five string banjo. I was in constant contact with my mother’s sheep, wool and natural dying profession, I sewed many an intricate dress from historical Folkways patterns, and had begun apprenticing with a local production weaver. I believed I was on the road destined for the land of fiber arts.

A year into college (where I had created an interdisciplinary studies degree in Appalachian Studies and Folklore) I attended a fabric and surface design class at Penland School of Crafts. It was there I met my “long lost sister,” a bookbinder and, believe it or not, a fellow banjo player who inspired my first steps into the world of book arts. A few years later I returned to Penland for a concentration in book arts and papermaking with Julie Leonard and Anne Marie Kennedy where we ate, drank and slept book and paper arts for two months. I was hooked.

My main reasons for choosing book arts have to do with the interdisciplinary potential of the medium. You can incorporate many other forms of art within the structure of a book; fiber arts, metal and woodworking, drawing, painting, collecting and assembling. Also, once a blank book is bound there remains a whole new level of intimate participation left to the artist/writer/bride who chooses to use the book as a space for sketching, journaling or organizing memorabilia. Creative journaling is also a powerful educational tool for children and can be found in multiple Across the Curriculum school programs.

I am really enjoying making a business from one of my loves. I’m honestly excited everyday by the potential my ideas might hold, by working with my hands and the realization that networking, marketing, bookkeeping and all that goes into a honest to goodness business can be incredibly creative processes as well. Good things are happening it’s just a matter of keeping up!