community ^ makers
The ReBookery, an art and business B y day, Gina Johnson teaches middle- school science. Coincidentally, it was Story ADRIANNE DEWEESE Photos PATTI KLINGE
regularly explored thrift stores and estate sales. She often found herself pulled back in that same direction as she did upon finding the middle-school science textbooks that were so close to being thrown out for good. “I was just like, ‘There’s got to be something that we can do with books that are no longer in use. There’s just got to be something,’” Johnson said, adding that she often felt drawn toward books in particular that had substantial wtear and tear, but still had some life left in them. An avid scrapbook hobbyist, Johnson felt the medium was “a little sterile,” and she wanted something with more creativity and freedom of expression. A stack of Little Golden Books ultimately led Johnson to cutting out the pages and using them as her scrapbook. As those pages came together to form the pages of a new book, Johnson’s business, The ReBookery, took form. The “light-bulb moment” came in 2014 as Johnson and her husband, Brett, were driving back from Springfield, MO, and she contemplated what she was going to do with her thrift-store haul of old farm receipts, cookbooks and sewing patterns.
makers, particularly her grandparents. Both sets of Johnson’s grandparents had a significance influence on her in developing her early interests in vintage. “They were junkers. They would go to – at the time – auctions. They were big-time antique col- lectors, so I just kind of grew up with that,” Johnson said of her paternal grandparents. Additionally, her maternal grandmother sewed, while her maternal grandfather was a woodworker. “They were always doing something, making something,” she said, “so it’s just kind of been in my blood.” A resident of Peculiar MO, Johnson is in her 22nd year of teaching, currently 8th grade science at Summit Lakes Middle School in Lee’s Summit, MO. Over the years, as her children grew up and her own childhood interests expanded, Johnson
her own experience as a self-described “rebellious” 7th grade science student that inspired what many years later became Johnson’s junk journal side business. In seeing a stack of decades-old textbooks that were headed to the landfill, the 1980s middle-schooler swiped one of the books. She took it home and turned the unfilled spaces on the pages into her diary. “I liked it because it looked like it was just a science book on my shelf,” Johnson said, “but yet, I would pull it down and I would write in it, my little 13-year-old secret.” The book is since long gone, and Johnson set aside her junk journaling-related inter- ests for many years – but among her family members, she found herself surrounded by
8 VINTAGEKC WINTER 2017
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