The 2024 Contemporary Artists Books Conference (CABC) focusses on “Artists’ Books as Expanded Literacy.” The CABC planning committee asks: How can the artists’ book expand upon ideas of information and visual literacy, conceptions of language, data visualization, methods of presenting research, and beyond?
Mistakes are Everything
Ari Wolff
This presentation will examine the pedagogical potential of social practice and book arts as tools for examining what it means to read. Through an overview of Citation Needed, a publishing initiative devised alongside 3rd-5th graders, artist Ari Wolff will share curricular frameworks and a series of publications that challenge concepts of neurotypicality and expand traditional forms of literacy education.
Use of the Chapbook as a Means for Creative Empowerment among Struggling Learners
John Bonanni
John Bonanni, M.Ed., M.F.A. will present Action Research conducted in a self-contained Special Education classroom, which covers pre- and post-intervention writing attitudes among three middle school students with Traumatic Brain Injury, Autism, and Intellectual Impairment, respectively. As part of the intervention, students engaged in a project-based creative writing unit which then culminated in book arts–a hand made saddle stitched chapbook–through self-publication. Case study implication, advice for effective implementation, and a review of curricula will be provided.
Portraying War and Peace, Dyslexia, Alzheimer’s, Aphasia, Immigration, and Other Human Experiences through Artists’ Books
Warren Lehrer
In this talk, writer/artist Warren Lehrer will describe and show how he fuses writing, typography, primary source research, collaboration, humor, pathos, and the art of the book to evoke human experiences that are often misunderstood, including: reading with dyslexia, being a child of war, walking one’s father to the hospital knowing he has a bullet in his head, working in a fast food joint, searching for words after a stroke, code-switching in and out of multiple cultural expectations on a daily basis, being in the eye of a bipolar tornado, being a fugitive from the law, living and loving with Alzheimer’s.
The 2024 CABC is supported by Center for Book Arts, with additional support from Deirdre Lawrence and the Grolier Club.
