Craft Around the Country

A Library That Holds More Than Books

In Los Angeles, Heavy Manners Library offers affordable craft workshops and a space for creative meandering.

By Jacqueline Huynh Young
March 3, 2026

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Photo courtesy of Heavy Manners Library

Heavy Manners Library is located in Echo Park, Los Angeles, just off Sunset Boulevard.

Tucked along a modest block of storefronts in Echo Park, Los Angeles, Heavy Manners Library is easy to miss if you’re not looking for it. From the sidewalk, its signage stretches across clerestory windows, each letter set in its own pane, while a teal door recedes into the facade below.

If the exterior is a bit understated, the interior is expansive in purpose. Inside, Heavy Manners operates as a lending library and artist-run DIY space, offering an alternative to more cost-prohibitive forms of arts education.

Near the entrance, a wooden platform holds a collection of used books and zines. To the left, a rotating selection of artwork runs along the wall, while farther back, shelves hold rare and out-of-print art books. In the rear corner, a TV–VCR combo rests next to a stack of classic skateboarding VHS tapes and a worn leather couch. It feels like a neighborhood skate shop where teenagers linger for hours and flip through magazines, free from the imperative to purchase anything.

Photo courtesy of Heavy Manners Library

The library's cozy interior encourages patrons to hang out and meander.

Similarly, Heavy Manners resists the usual pressures of consumption. For co-founder Matthew James-Wilson, that laxity is by design. “Libraries are rewarding to your curiosity,” he says. “If you’re interested in something or can give your time to that book or that topic, then that’s valuable.”

Through a doorway in the back is another room for workshops and events. On any given afternoon, a group may be hammering designs into leather, building masks from papier-mâché, or scanning collages into a risograph printer.

Classes are also affordable, averaging around $65 per session, and events are often sliding scale or donation-based. Cyanotype, beading, printmaking, protest poster design, embroidery, and more rotate through the schedule. C&J Goods L.A. teaches an introductory leatherworking class, and artist Emma Palm shows students how to bind books using Coptic stitch. Mending workshops by Chiara Barlow have also become a recurring draw. “Everybody has a piece of clothing they want to save,” James-Wilson says.

Photo courtesy of Heavy Manners Library

LA-based leather company C & J Goods teaches introductory classes at Heavy Manners.

Photos courtesy of Heavy Manners Library

Posters advertising workshops and classes at Heavy Manners.

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The library offers a source of inspiration for students when they need it. “People use the books during workshops,” James-Wilson says. “They’ll scan materials or cut up stuff from damaged books in the collection.” He loves seeing someone latch onto an idea from a book and follow it, step by step, to completion.

The idea for Heavy Manners began during the pandemic, when James-Wilson and artist Molly Soda were working on a book project about how the internet has shaped artmaking over the past 30 years. A small grant from Koyama Press helped them begin acquiring research materials. As their collection grew, so did a question: What if these books were available to others?

For James-Wilson, the value of the space is something you notice as you move through it. “The internet has this ability to make the library seem less important or less reliable,” he says. What’s been lost is the experience of being with other people while browsing a collection curated around a specific subject. “Technology has moved in this direction of things being frictionless,” he says. What concerns him most are the consequences of eliminating the challenges essential for learning. Without friction, there is little reason to linger; without lingering, fewer unexpected connections take root.

Photo by Jacqueline Huynh Young

Heavy Manners co-founder Matthew James-Wilson in the library.

James-Wilson believes this slower way of looking is more generative: following a spine for its typography, pulling a monograph for its scale, discovering a small-press zine beside a canonical art book. There’s an improvisation to it. Patterns emerge across artists, materials, and eras, and, over time, readers build a mental archive.

This kind of access stands in contrast to the realities of formal arts training. James-Wilson attended The New School’s Parsons School of Design and quickly learned how costly a formal arts education can be. Studio access, tuition, and materials demand financial resources not everyone has. At the same time, online tutorials make technical knowledge widely available but isolate learners from one another. “Coming out of the pandemic, people were interested in practicing together and finding a way to have experiences that are more tactile,” he says.

Photo by Jacqueline Huynh Young

A selection of zines.

“Coming out of the pandemic, people were interested in practicing together and finding a way to have experiences that are more tactile.”

— Matthew James-Wilson

Heavy Manners’ variety of programming—craft workshops, live music, art exhibitions, poetry readings, and film screenings—brings a number of different audiences through the door and allows for a porousness of knowledge and collaboration. Someone might arrive for an exhibition and stay to flip through a book on printmaking. Another may come for a bookbinding workshop and discover an artist through the shelves.

For James-Wilson, the value in craft lies in its resistance to passivity. As AI tools become more common, creative labor can begin to feel like a chore. He believes in the necessity of friction in life and the effort that goes into taking an idea and seeing it through. “It’s so much easier if you’re angry to post something online,” he says. “But to actually make something that distills that emotion is therapeutic.”

James-Wilson recalls a short documentary the library once screened about Japanese American sculptor Ruth Asawa. A line of thinking she touched on in the film continues to inform the space: “Making something with your hands shows you how powerful you are,” he says.

Photo by Jacqueline Huynh Young

Books and DVDs provide inspiration to workshop attendees.

Jacqueline Huynh Young is a Vietnamese American artist and writer based in Los Angeles.

Learn more about Heavy Manners Library online.

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This article was made possible with support from the Windgate Foundation.

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