Entering M.J. Linford’s studio is like stepping into a book – a rather unusual book.

There are written fragments, like the cryptic list on a bulletin board:

Stains on the soul;

emotional geography;

drowning in a sanican;

stealing your child.

There are also visual elements – jars of feathers, pencils, plastic boxes full of hand tools and iconic-looking artifacts of shells, wood and bone.

Text and image merge in Linford’s world, because she is a book artist – joining written and visual arts in formats loosely defined as a “book.”

Linford shares these skills at a workshop at Bainbridge Arts and Crafts next weekend, when she’ll teach children and their parents how to make a flip book that seems to open by itself – and introduce them to an art form that thoroughly blends words with images.

Book artists, explains Linford, see books and painting as opposite ends of the same continuum. The point at which a “visual work with text” becomes a “book with illustration” can be hard to pinpoint, but Linford does not care about such definitions.

“The blurry line between the two is unimportant to me,” Linford says. “It’s what the work demands. When it works better as a book, that’s what I do.”

Linford became interested in the book arts in 1987, after taking a book art class from Hazel Koenig at the University of Washington – but she decided not to commit herself to the new art form immediately. “I stopped because I decided I was a ‘jack of all trades,’ too unfocused,” she says. “I decided to spend an entire year doing nothing but drawing.”

The discipline was helpful, Linford says, and when she came back to book arts in the early 1990s, it was with a deeper understanding.

“I went to the Special Collections at UW and looked over lots of books there with curator Sandra Kroupka,” Linford says. “I’ve just been working on book arts ever since.”

“People told me that I would never ‘make it’ if I did multimedia work and they’re probably right, but I don’t care about ‘making it,’” Linford says. “There’s the art teaching, the part that pays the bills – and I wouldn’t have it any other way.”

Linford, who has been a dedicated art teacher in the public schools for a decade, currently runs the art program at Sakai Intermediate School.

She says that although she had qualms when she left Blakely Elementary, she has found teaching Sakai sixth graders rewarding.

“They’re just the right age group,” Linford says. “They’re so ready for self-expression; they’ll try anything.”

Linford’s upcoming flip book workshop coincides with the BAC exhibition of children’s art opening next week.

BAC education coordinator Mary Louise Ott says that both the exhibit and the workshop grew out of the interest parents have expressed in knowing more about the art their children make.

The pairing of child and parent will make the workshop a shared experience – but the grown-ups get to make their own books.

“I’ve had adults at previous workshops say, ‘now I get to do the same thing my kids do,’” Ott says.

As for Linford, the workshop is not just a side-trip from her own art, but the heart of her work.

“I think it is so important for an art teacher to be a practicing artist,” Linford says, “and so I am really aware of how the creative level demanded by teaching siphons off some of the creativity for my own art.

I guess it’s a trade-off. Because I love what I do with kids.

“If I won the lottery tomorrow, I’d be back – I might have a full-time aid, but I’d be back.”

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Award-winning book artist M.J. Linford shares the secret of making a flip book that seems to open by itself in the Bainbridge Arts and Crafts workshop, “Magical Self-opening Flip Books” 9 a.m. to 12 noon Jan. 12 at the Sakai Intermediate School art room.

Parents and children will each leave the workshop with a complete book and patterns for making more at home.

The workshop costs $55 for BAC members and $64 for non-members, with $5 materials charge. For more information or to reserve a space, call 842-3132.