2017 Scholarship for Advanced Study in Book Arts

This group show features new works created by the 2017 Scholars for Advanced Study in Book Arts during their year-long residencies at Center for Book Arts. The purpose of this project-based program is to provide opportunities to emerging artists committed to developing careers in the book arts field, and to further the growth of this artistic profession.

About the Artists

Amber Heaton‘s scholarship project at the Center for Book Arts, Countdown, builds a system of images that compose the geometric polygons of the numbers one through ten. These geometric shapes form the basic building blocks of many patterns found in natural systems. Like a mandala, the prints constitute a diagram or map of the basic composition of the cosmos broken down to its simplest forms. From Ten to One, the prints get progressively simpler, but each circle and color in the prints become more layered. The circles in the images were letterpress printed with one woodcut that was carved reductively, and the geometric designs were printed with photopolymer plates.

Norah Maki’s Navigational tools for the end of the Anthropocene considers the (im)possibility individual action as we prepare for and exist in a period of rapidly shifting relationship with our environment. These works repurpose various tools (visual symbols, maps, rituals) that humanity has traditionally used to explain and control our natural environment as unauthoritative reference materials for the future.

Maria Veronice San Martin’s principal aim is to question power relations in the World Order, creating in the viewer the idea that things could be otherwise and thus the desire of change. More specifically, the subject matter departs from violence in dictatorship Chile (1973-1990) vis-à-vis the United States’ involvement, addressing memory as a pivotal factor for the understanding of the neoliberal, globalized present.

Related Programming

Talk & Reception with Artists
Friday, March 23, 2018 at 6:30pm

Support for Center for Book Arts’ Visual Arts Program is provided, in part, by the New York State Council on the Arts, with the support of Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council, and by the National Endowment for the Arts.