Category: friday | Center for Book Arts

Friday Insights: Summer Internship Report

Every summer the Center hosts six undergraduates for an intensive studio internship in book arts. Summer interns focus on producing editions for the Center, and on installing the summer exhibitions. We asked one of this year’s interns, Melissa Green to give us her impressions of our summer show, Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here, from her hands-on perspective.

My entry into book arts is through design. I consider myself a designer rather than a fine artist, and tend to think of my book arts work as an extension of my design work. Perhaps this is why I’ve never submitted my work to fine arts exhibitions—they seem disconnected from the design world of which I consider myself a part—but that’s also why it was exciting to get the opportunity to help install the Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here exhibition here at the Center.

Unpacking the artwork was a bit like Christmas. Most of the pieces arrived in two large boxes, with each work wrapped in it’s own foam sheet and tissue paper, secured with blue painters’ tape. Each package we pulled from the shipment was roughly the same shape, but the contents were all extremely different.

Janis Nedela Typo and Palindrome

There was a wide range of structures from perfect bound, with the spine simply glued to hold the pages together, to sculptural pieces that some may not even identify as books at first glance. Some pieces completely avoided using materials traditionally associated with books. Janis Nedela’s Typo and Palindrome, for example, is made of laser-etched acrylic. There are no pages in the traditional sense, but rather a single solid block, representing a text block. There is no text in the piece, but simply long horizontal rectangles aligned to form wordless paragraphs.

Lynne Avadenka’s One by One

Other pieces look like small, ordinary books at first glance, but then unfurl into long stunning accordions. Lynne Avadenka’s One by One especially grabbed my attention, despite its muted palette of beige and brown and imagery gracing only the lowermost part of each page. It’s quiet refined presence somehow stood out from the array of other books laid out on the table.

Amaranth Borsuk Sunt Lacrimae Rerum

Another accordion, Sunt Lacrimae Rerum by Amaranth Borsuk, combined a traditional book structure with a more sculptural sensibility. When we unwrapped the piece, it was inside a clear acrylic cube that revealed the small accordion inside. There were letterforms cut out of each panel, but it was impossible to read the words. Instead, the effect was a systematically perforated text block with light streaming through holes. Once opened, each panel revealed a phrase cut from the paper, but not completely removed from the page—still holding on at the base of each letter. At first glance, it seemed as if all the pages bore the same phrase, but upon closer look, I noticed that each one was slightly different from the last, varying by only a single word. But by the end of the book, the text had transformed into something completely different.

Amanda Williams Altered Book for Al-Mutanabbi Street

Amanda Williams’ Altered Book for Al-Mutanabbi Street took yet a different approach. Instead of designing and binding a book from scratch, Williams took an existing book and altered it to make a sculptural work of art. The book opened to a spread near the middle of the text block and a large rectangle had been cut out through the most of the pages. The interior of cut out has been painted a dark brown and horizontal slats of book board were glued in to create what looked like tiny shelves.

All of these approaches, while different, came together to create one show. They each represent different interpretations of the form of the book. Somehow this seemed very different from my experience in the design world. Though I love design, I find that there is a certain amount of homogeneity. Everyone frequents the same design blogs, which all post much of the same work; many designers follow the same social media feeds and, as a result, follow a lot of the same trends. These common influences are quite easy to spot if one spends any significant amount of time looking at design work online. There are widely held ideas about the one solution that all clients need these days and anyone strays too far from that golden solution is promptly spurned on Twitter.

Perhaps this is an exaggeration, but recently I’ve begun to find the proliferation of certain design trends dull and underwhelming. It has helped to take a break and see work that is neither design nor online. I sometimes forget how many possibilities are out there and, if nothing else, Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here was a helpful reminder.

-Melissa Green

Friday Insight: Artist Member Interview with Donald Daedalus

Kate Burns returns this week to share an interview with artist member, Donald Daedalus. She delved into the philosophical inspirations in his ideas and work, investigated the chasm between Books, proper and Books, digital, and elicited insight into his new projects. Here’s the interview:

KB: Your website embodies Deleuze’s and Guattari’s philosophical concept of the rhizome, which functions as a metaphor that privileges the messiness of history and its cultural transactions through a de-centered, non-hierarchical model with no beginning and no end. This concept also lends itself well to representing an artist’s pattern of thought and inspiration. What are the risks and the benefits of presenting yourself online in this way?

DD: Great question. That’s something I get passively asked when someone mentions having visited the site. One experience is that a visitor is often turned off by its visual organization and she leaves feeling like she didn’t understand the work. There isn’t the payoff that a front-to-back, beginning-to-end site offers; there isn’t a sense of comprehensively experiencing it. This is partly because there’s a lot of material on there, which doesn’t play well with the fact that many people stay on a site for less than a minute. The majority of artists’ sites I’ve visited on the Information Highway are sort of like an online image-bank—mimicking a portfolio—with business card details like phone number, email address, and a resume. (There used to be “Links,” but we got rid of that about six years.) Whether the visitor immediately leaves or stays, my site is a problem for Google Analytics, which reads it as a bounce.

Another danger is the potential for one who is familiar with the concept of the rhizome to think that all of the work is supposed to be in direct dialogue with A Thousand Plateaus or Anti-Oedipus, which it isn’t.

Marc Ngui illustration from A Thousand Plateus, courtesy of bumblenut.com

While I was creating the rhizomatic map, I was mostly stealing from those mind-mapping exercises of corporate culture. You have an idea that you think is central and make subcategories off of to see if there is a pattern or where to go. Really, I was asking myself what it was that I was doing, how things related, and hoping that the map would give insight. Part of it is a lack of trusting what I deem relevant at any moment, because I get excited about things that I thought weren’t relevant. It wasn’t until I was finished that I started seeing a resemblance to the rhizome.

The benefit, and reason I keep it up there, is that it does more accurately present how I make work, which includes finding a relation between things that interest me, returning to something that I did previously, as well as borrowing and recycling material and ideas. Like the site, there’s an urge to make information into data, to create meaning between things. It’s also surprisingly easy to update it. But the process or working that I’m describing and the webpage together make for a very bad artist statement.

KB: Do you think that the philosophical concept of the rhizome extends and gives hope to the post-structural, post-modern era it grew out of, or have art and society moved in other directions that render these ideas insignificant or even obsolete?

DD: As a question of relevancy, it’s difficult to answer without resorting to theory that is likely dated as well. If you’re asking if post-structuralism is a dominant paradigm within a specific Euroamerican art enclave, as it once was, then I agree many of those individuals have “moved on.” I’m thinking particularly about an academic discourse around contemporary Euroamerican art. Though some certainly have not moved on; some were never exposed to it! I see a strong presence of the Deleuzian/Bergsonsian notion of duration in contemporary art video, as well as the benefit from moving away from linearity. Certainly there are other applications of Deleuze and Guattari, like the IDF in fighting Palestinian forces, and more ubiquitously, how people rhizomatically use the Internet.

But it’s hard to say that any idea is irrelevant. What I find really interesting is how past paradigms get excavated, reworked, made canonical or outdated. I’m interested in how contemporary authors (like Mark Fisher) are proposing to think of postmodernism.

There’s also the question of how information, like non-heirarchic or non-linear thinking, spreads in the world, or doesn’t. Already I’m nearing a contextualist defense to your question, so maybe my answer is “yes.”

KB: Metacontrast (2011), which is the tangible documentation of your interrelated performance works, Doppelgänger Effect and Doppler Shift, subverts and challenges linear reasoning. Can you talk about the connection between these pieces? How do you think each piece functions successfully on it’s own or are they each interdependent on the others?

DD: All three pieces engage Manhattan’s grid, though each approaches the question of experiencing the place in a different way. As live events, Doppelgänger Effect and Doppler Shift both focused on the geometry of the Manhattan Grid as a mechanism that facilitates certain types of human relations. I was attempting to explicate very basic phenomena that occur there—sight, sound, and movement. Each event occurred over the island on multiple dates. Metacontrast took footage from what I had shot while executing Doppelgänger Effect and made the moving images examples of two ways to explain how we see any stimulation—either by filling in or leaving out visual information. As a flipbook, it exaggerates both the form of the book as well as how moving images interlock within frames and lines. Doppler Shift took up the question of moving images specifically and drew out the sequences in lines across buildings, sequences that usually happen in one place.

How a work functions independently seems a question of how a viewer or audience member experiences a work. The live events didn’t consider audience in this way. The audience was created at the moment of encounter. There was deliberately very little announcement of either project. I was interested in the serendipitous encounter over the planned encounter. Because both events were moving and subject to the variables of the city, it also wasn’t logistically feasible to think of the audience in that way. Fortunately, all of the organizations that I worked with on both projects (Franklin Furnace, the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, and the Foundation for Contemporary Arts) were really understanding of the peculiarity of the projects and were really supportive.

A work’s functionality or accessibility, if I can rephrase your question, could also be contingent on when someone accesses the work. The events are now documents; the book is still a book.

KB: You have embraced and explored creating digital artist books. In your artist statement on the Center’s website, you claim, “I’m interested in producing artist books that confront the mechanics, form, and functionality of the medium.” I’m wondering what you have discovered about these cornerstones of bookmaking in the liminal space between books that sit on a shelf and books that exist in the cloud as a collection of 0s and 1s?

I’ve come to appreciate tangible book forms more since working in digital books. The first concession that I made was that both formats are methods of organizing information. So many tangible books are thought of as having linear navigation, though there are great exceptions like Rayuela, and it was up to the narrative structure used by the author to break the linearity of the medium, or an artist to use the form of the book as an object and neglect one of its social roles as a conveyance.

wiPhone (2013), digital book by Donald Daedalus, available on iTunes

Digital books are funny because there is so much referring to tangible book-form. It’s almost a burden. Really, a digital book is more like a website—that’s how they are coded. It’s been with the help of digital readers that the e-pub format has really taken off. But juxtaposing these two things—books and digital books—made me think about what the book-form inherited and from where it inherited it. There’s a lot of discussion about skeumorphism in digital design and representation, and I’m sure that it could apply to the lenders of these digital inspirations.

By trying to remove the constraints of tangible books from digital books, the former’s characteristics also open up. The physicality and opacity of pages, the mechanics of binding, even the scale of content that can be zoomed in on in digital books are interesting to me.

I’ve also been interested in tangible books as sculptural objects that include their own physical laws. The flipbook is an example of that.

You’re spending the summer in Colombia. Will your time there result in new work?

I think a lot about how to make something out of an experience of being somewhere. There’s a fine balance between being receptive to a place and utilizing the information. I’m still finding that balance.

My current plan for the first part of the summer is finishing up work for an exhibition at LA Galeria in Bogotá. The show is entitled Imagined Bonds, Impossible Escape and includes work about how black holes have been visualized and the romantic love of the troubadours. It’s all new work, but a lot was conceived before coming here.

Testosterone (acrylic), new work from Donald Daedalus to be exhibited next month in Colombia

Unchained Melody (transcription on copper plate), new work from Donald Daedalus to be exhibited next month in Colombia

Since I arrived, I’ve been really inspired by the city of Medellín and am filming and writing about what I’m seeing. The city has such a dense history with Escobar that it’s hard to find the nuances where things begin to open up. Something that I’ve been following is how the city is re-inventing itself at the moment as the “most innovative city of the year.” Maybe branding itself is a better term than re-inventing, because that’s how it seems to be implementing the award. Still, there are a lot of aspects to Medellín that resonate with things I’ve thought about while in other cities. At the end of the trip, I’ll be going to some of the cities in the north—part tourism, part remote, part camping, and I anticípate much of that content will likely end up in some digital or tangible book form.

-Kate Burns

Friday Insight: Artist Member Interview with Carolyn Shattuck

Kate Burns had the opportunity to visit artist member Carolyn Shattuck at her Open Studio event, held in conjunction with the Vermont Crafts Council in Rutland, Vermont on Memorial Day weekend. Carolyn candidly spoke about her bookmaking and printing processes as well as her inspirations while allowing Kate and her father, Dave, who was visiting the east coast from Montana, to nose around her workspace and take some pictures. Kate and Carolyn worked collaboratively to develop the following interview.

Shattuck Gallery Open Studio, May 26, 2013 (photo by Kate Burns)

Carolyn Shattuck at her Open Studio event, May 26, 2013 (photo by Kate Burns)

The Center’s website features your bio under its Artist Member section. In it, a special method of monotype printing is mentioned as being an “unusual approach,” incorporating fiber dyes. Can you talk a little about the method and how you arrived at using it?

Almost all my collaged two-dimensional work incorporates the resist between water-based fiber dyes and oil-based etching ink. The process is multifaceted. It combines the regular monotype vocabulary interspersed with independent printings of drypoint. I paint water-based fiber dyes onto parchment paper. After it is dry, I assemble the painted shapes into the composition. Collaged shapes can be pressed onto inked, linoleum-carved surfaces in order to obtain a layering of water-based shape with an oil-based motif. The water-based shape resists the oil-based one. The combinations are boundless. I also employ a drypoint technique at various stages, which is done as a separate printing. This technique is known for very specific renderings— objects are described by lines. The two methods are combined through registration on the press.

This process has been radical in my career development, because I was trained as a painter and the ability to continue painting with fiber dyes onto parchment, plus incorporate a collage approach with an oil-to-water resist method is exciting. I extended this process by adding the drypoint, because I like the juxtaposition of specific line to mass. The fiber dyes are non-toxic as well as the drypoint, which is important to me. Ironically, the process requires un-sized printing paper which is no longer being manufactured.

Walkabout 1,

2010, monotype/drypoint/collage, 27 x 32 inches

(digital image provided by the artist)

Your bio also mentions a trip to China in 1996 to visit your son. What was it about your encounter with the Terracotta Warriors that inspired you? Can you describe the experience of witnessing the warriors?

My family and I visited Xian, China where the Terracotta Warriors have been unearthed over the the past thirty-five years. A farmer discovered the site while digging for a well in the clay-mounded terrain. As I entered the immense arena, which housed the life-sized figures, I was struck by the silent stares of thousands of these warriors. Their purpose was to escort Emperor Qin Shi Huang through this underground palace to an afterlife. More than seven thousand pottery soldiers, well-armed with weapons, are stationed to reflect that Emperor Shi Huang had a military force of one million warriors, one thousand battle chariots, and ten thousand cavalrymen. The Qin dynasty dates back two thousand years. The layouts of the three vaults depict miniature battle formations. These buried, fragmented regiments have been unearthed to allow scholars to reconstruct ancient battle strategies. Archaeologists working on the site consider the mausoleum a sacred and enchanting complex.

Terracotta Warriors (photo courtesy of www.beijingdiscoverytours.com)

After leaving the site I felt compelled to interpret the evocative qualities of this incredible work. The viewing of the warriors in the huge pit was overwhelming because of their numbers, the battle formations, and the unifying color. Some people have referred to them as the eighth wonder of the world. While staring at them in the pit, there was a silence of many faces staring at you that was riveting. Each face had a different expression. It was spiritual and evocative of trying to understand Chinese history.

Is there a direct correlation between the Terracotta Warriors and your interest in New England tombstones and Puritan folk urns? How do these two very different cultural and geographic locations present death?

I never associated a link between the Terracotta Warriors and the Puritan tombstone imagery. The idea of investigating death imagery emerged from a conversation I had with three sculptors, whom I worked with for three years. We organized exhibitions in Vermont and New York State, which showed work called The Country of Souls. We also organized panel discussions with ministers and hospice workers. One time, we held a group discussion with students at Castleton State College, and one of the students spoke about his experience as a grave digger. In 1975, my husband and I lost our 4 year-old daughter, Anna, to an infectious disease. The impact of her death has continued to resonate in my work in some way.

The Urn Book, 2007
cover fold, designed with a continuous hinge printed drypoint on BFK Rives
12.5 x 12.5 x 20 inches open

When we began, we tossed around subject matter until we agreed upon the Puritan tombstones as well as the need to explore our society’s reluctance to talk about death. This was before Bill Moyers, one of the first television documentarians to question our reluctance to speak about the final stage of life. He saw the fear in our society and therefore the need to sanitize dying behind hospital sheets. If we were not confronted by death, we could be in denial. Since the 1990s, I believe that more work has been done to educate and raise awareness of the dying process. It still is a tough topic.
In the midst of visiting cemeteries in Vermont, in order to see and feel the experience of these people who were not allowed to express themselves artistically, I discovered that the connection for me was also being a newly naturalized American citizen. This experience was a ritual or rite of passage to citizenship. I felt I was learning a piece of American history, and therefore it made me feel part of the bigger picture as a new American. Just as the Puritans adapted to a new country when they immigrated to the United States, I also experienced some challenges when I arrived here in 1970. Even though Canada and the United States share many common traits, I discovered that I was to assimilate into being an American and my heritage was not important. I have tried to maintain certain customs and traditions in my family that speak to my heritage. I can only assume that the Puritans maintained certain traditions.

Bright color and pattern seem to be prominent elements in your work that come together in a collaged manner, either through two-dimensional layering or three-dimensionally, as in your pop-up books. Can you tell me about your planning process for making the layers of a pop-up book come together, both functionally and conceptually?

In the beginning, learning about book arts, I followed instructions from Shereen LaPlantz’s books. Basically, they are “how-to” exercises. I was enthralled with the folds, closures, and mechanisms employed to make them close or pop or stand up. I had a love for combining the structures. I felt my weakest point was being comfortable with words. One of my friends helped me by saying that I needed to “just put it down as I was speaking.” That was a start. Further along, I became interested in digitally generated images. I would physically make a collage, photograph it and then bring it into Photoshop Elements for editing and resizing. I printed it and made pop-up books. Lately I have been doing more scanning and copying, such as in The Quilts of Gee’s Bend. Some books, like The Urn Book require a serious mock-up, which took a month to make.

He Had No Words,

pop-up with coil and slipcase, presentation and Lama Li paper,

10.25 x 9 inches closed, edition of 20 (photo by Kate Burns)

The Quilts of Gee’s Bend, Vol. 2

flexagon book, printed on Epson and Strathmore papers,

3.5 x 8.5 x 8.5 inches, edition of 25 (photo by Kate Burns)

How did you come to be connected with the Center for Book Arts?

I’m not sure how I came to be involved with the Center, but Mark Waskow was looking at my work and talked about it. So, I’m betting I got involved based on this conversation. He was on the Center’s board at the time.

What are you most excited about working on next?

I would like to make another flexagon but larger in scope than The Quilts of Gee’s Bend. The subject matter will be honoring Art Deco and/or Art Nouveau designs. I also look forward to making a fabric-covered container for The Triple-decker and exploring the imagery of Australian Aboriginal art.

The Triple-decker, front view (photo by Kate Burns)

The Triple-Decker, back view (photo by Kate Burns)

The interweaving accordion book I call The Tripledecker represents triple-decker houses, which were built in the United States to accommodate newly arrived immigrant workers and their families.The apartments are decorated with textiles, fabrics and tiles that are visually intermingled with those of other ethnic families, signaling a wide range of diversity. Like the flags displayed at the U.N., this represents a melting pot of ideas and tolerance for coexistence.

-Kate Burns

Friday Insights: Collections Photography Volunteer

We couldn’t do all that we do here at the Center for Book Arts without our crew of amazing volunteers. On any given day, we have 1-3 volunteers working in our office, helping us with everything from reception and running errands, to exhibition preparation and generating publicity for our events.

Though it’s always a little sad to see them leave at the end of their volunteer term, we’re grateful for their talent and energy spent here at the Center, and happy to see them progress in their education and careers.

We’re also glad for the opportunity to welcome new volunteers into the Center’s community. If you’re interested in learning about the workings of a small non-profit arts center like ours, and learning a little bookbinding or letterpress printing while you’re at it, consider our work-study program. Click here to read more details and fill out the application.

And for a little insight into what the experience is like, here are some reflections from recent volunteer Emily Holzknecht:

Happy Friday everyone! It’s the last day of my work/study and I wanted to share with you guys what an awesome experience it was.

I came to the center to work as a photographer on the digitization project, photographing artwork in the Center’s Fine Arts Collection for our online collection database – a great resource for artists, curators, and pretty much anyone interested in the book arts. It was very inspiring to spend quality time with each piece as I photographed it, and helped me to really appreciate the creative potential in bookmaking and letterpress.

A few pieces that really stood out to me were Sam Winston’s A Dictionary Story and Kumi Korf’s Hole in My Heart.

I love the creative typesetting in A Dictionary Story, the way the text volleys between being linear and conventional to unraveling across the page, almost as if being blown away by the wind.

What struck me about Kumi Korf’s work, and Hole in My Heart in particular, is how sculptural her artist’s books are. Hole in My Heart consists of an elaborate wooden structure that folds up into an octagon, revealing four small books hidden in cavities in the edges of the structure. I was lucky to meet Ms. Korf when she visited the center, and helped her uninstall her exhibit Red Paper from Tosa.

I’m going to miss the arm and friendly atmosphere here, but hopefully I’ll be back soon for letterpress and bookbinding classes.

Want to give us suggestions or comments? Just want to say hi? Email us at info@centerforbookarts.org, visit us on Facebook (/centerforbookarts) or follow us on Twitter (@center4bookarts). Can’t wait to see you there!

Bonus Insights: Membership & Development Intern

It’s hard to believe that after six months my internship has come to an end. It feels like almost yesterday I was roaming the streets of Manhattan with nothing but a pair of uncomfortable shoes and a folder full of resumes. After having taken a preparatory internship course at my school for an entire semester, I still wasn’t sure exactly where I wanted to intern. I had a vague interest in magazine and book publishing, but after taking a course in International Development I recently found myself considering grant writing. So, like any other twenty year old desperate to find their calling in the city, I turned to the Internet.

While I did find loads of internship opportunities on websites like ideal.com and craigslist.com, not many of them really seemed to include the professional aspects I was looking for in an internship. There were three very important personal goals I wanted to achieve while on internship and after reading the description for the Development Intern position at Center for Book Arts- I knew I’d found them. They were to improve my communication and interpersonal skills, to hone my grant writing skills and use them to help sustain and preserve an art or program and lastly have the ability to do all of these things in a creative atmosphere. And even though I hadn’t taken a course in letterpress or bookbinding, I knew that as an aspiring grant writer the Center would be a place where I could not only help preserve the contemporary interpretations of book art, but also achieve all of my personal goals.

I remember taking the elevator up to the third floor for my follow-up interview and as soon as the doors opened into the studio all I could think was “I am so overdressed.” I had opted for an uncomfortable business casual dress, while almost everyone in the office was dressed in regular t-shirts and pants. In fact the Programs Manager, Sarah, wasted no time in telling me that I should wear something I wouldn’t mind getting a little inky just in case I had to help out in the printshop. Maybe this would have scared away most interns who were hoping for just a comfortable desk job that didn’t require much work, but I was glad for the experience. I almost never had a dull moment at the Center, and from the very first day the Executive Director, Alex kept me on my toes. From painting walls for the opening gallery exhibition to helping prepare for the fundraisers and benefits, he always had a task for me to complete and was open to offer advice and his personal critique. And through the whole experience my supervisor, Myong was a great mentor. During my very first week she showed me how to use our database program, maintain the membership program through acknowledgements and solicitations and also how to communicate with and contact prospective sponsors in the area. And when there weren’t daily office tasks to complete, almost every Friday there was an event like an artist talk or a workshop to look forward to. I even got to be a part of some larger events like The Annual NY Art Book Fair, where I got to represent the Center by selling books, accepting donations and telling people about the courses we offer. It was also pretty awesome to see and talk to other catalog and ‘zine artists at the fair. And at the Center’s Holiday Fundraiser I got to assist with the raffle which, thanks to our guests generous contributions, helped the Center sustain some of it’s general programs and studio maintenance- and again I got to network with some pretty cool people involved in grant writing so I definitely had a good time. And even up to my last day here I got to help prepare for one of the Center’s most important events, the Annual Spring Benefit.

Overall, I learned a lot here at the Center, from my first day to my last. I’m still not certain where exactly I would like to work when I graduate next year, but I’m certain that grant writing is a field that I want to stay in. Being able to use creative writing skills to help preserve something, is what interning at the Center for Book Arts showed me I want to do. And whether it’s a job in the non-profit or some other sector, I know that it was my internship experience here at the Center that led me to it.

– Camilla Jeremie

Want to give us suggestions or comments? Just want to say hi? Comment on this post, email us at info@centerforbookarts.org, visit us on Facebook (/centerforbookarts) or follow us on Twitter (@center4bookarts). Can’t wait to see you there!

Friday Insights: CBA Artist Member Interview

We are reviving the Friday Insights interview segment to spotlight our artist members and their work. Center volunteer Kate Burns compiled her first interview with Brooklyn-based artist Chris Perry. She asked him the following:

Did your educational background focus on book arts? If so, how has your work evolved over the years? If not, what did you initially focus on and how did that lead you to book arts?

I studied to be a painter but found that I spent as much time, if not more drawing. Book arts never entered into the picture until much later, after a disappointing collaborative effort that I didn’t wish to repeat with a new project. I decided the best way to avoid this was to learn bookbinding. I had a large format set of drawings I wanted to make into an encyclopedia of sorts and felt that the only way to get what I wanted was to hand the printer/publisher a book, something that would demonstrate exactly what I wanted to happen inside with the drawings. Before I knew what was happening, the binding process took over. I painted less and less, more and more reluctantly taking time away from the books. Now that’s all I do.

What inspired you to become an artist member at the Center for Book Arts?

I joined the Center for Book Arts after hearing of it online. I was looking for venues that supported book-making and associated disciplines, preferably in the New York area. There are lots of groups and organizations in the country, but the Center for Book Arts was the primary one here. It is mentioned in nearly every website I came across at some point. The first show I had a piece in was through the Center for Book Arts. 30 Ripples appeared in I will cut thrU: Pochoirs, Carvings, and Other Cutting, which ran from July 7, 2010 – September 11, 2010. [Find this exhibition in our archive here.]

28 Ripples, 2010, paper and fabric, 12’8″ x 11.875″ x 1’4″


43 Ripples, 2010, paper and fabric, 8.75″x7’4″x0.875″

Although your Ripples series was originally inspired by flip books, it is also a departure from creating books as containers for content, as it abstracts the action and moves it outside the boundaries of each book’s covers. How has the relationship between form and function evolved in your work?

The large-format drawing project, which spawned my interest in book-making, relied on vellum to allow five images to be seen at once, each successive image fading the farther it is from the top of the pile. As the pages are turned, the next bottom image is visible. The effect is like a flip book with a “preview” of the pages to come before the pages are actually flipped. Vellum is difficult to work with and delicate when handled, so I changed to a hard-press paper and started cutting out the areas to create the effect of a completed flip, that is, being able to see the flip all at once. The movement or shift is 1/10th to 1/20th of an inch for each page. After a while, I felt that there could be more to the flip by extending it outside the covers. After all, who says there has to be a limit? Why are the covers the beginning or end, necessarily? Now, the covers are usually sealed, the pages cannot turn, and nothing is contained within them, except possibly tunnels or containers. The paper I use now is a cold-press, as it is softer and flops around more readily than a hot-press. The flops now set the stage for the shapes I make. As I make more pieces, I learn the choreography that works best for each situation.

Later in the “Ripples” series, you began pushing the book structure to a more sculptural realm. What ties your ideas to the structure of the book?

I find myself calling the pieces “books” less and less often. The books are more like building blocks for structures larger than the books themselves. There are pieces in my studio, both made and planned, that contain more than 50 book units and require hidden steel structural elements to work. The things I want the “books” to say are reaching far beyond what they could say in single volumes. Inner content has never been that important, but rather, it’s always been what the paper, fabric and boards could do, how they could create something never seen before. The words and images that appear in traditional books take one somewhere else- they can entertain or teach, impart new ideas or incite old ones. I don’t want anything that one brings to the viewing to get in the way of seeing something new. The ideas one brings to the viewing by reading words or seeing images changes the viewing experience. I want something clear and without preconceived notions.

Your website lists two new exhibitions for 2013, one in central Oregon and one in upstate New York. Are you continuing to show work in same vein as “Ripples,” or has you newer work taken a different turn?

The Ripples series is the only series I’m working on. The name comes from the slight movement of the flip cutouts. It refers to the ripples made when a stone is tossed into a still pool. The ripples fan out until they encounter something and echo back, bringing information of that encounter with them. The secondary title for each piece helps me to keep them straight, just having a number was too cumbersome and I could never keep them straight. The secondary titles continue the water-based imagery.

97 Ripples: blockage, 2011, paper, fabric, wood, gel acetate, mirror, 15″ x 29.5″ x 14″

110 Ripples: overflow, 2012, paper and fabric, 10.25″ x 22″ x 18″

120 Ripples: flow, 2012, 10.25″ x 26.25″ x 3″

What are you most excited about creating next?

As I work, I sketch new ideas based on things that happen with the flopping paper, feathering filaments or stacking of sheets waiting for the next step. Completed pieces always present new possibilities, new “what ifs,” and the sketch book comes out and new possibilities are drawn out. I find the newer pieces getting bigger, using thousands of pages, requiring metal supports or plates or requiring very careful and balanced assembly. I’m considering blowing the pieces up beyond human scale and shifting into other materials in order to allow the works to have an exterior presence. The paper and fabric will still be the primary way I work, as the large scale pieces would have to be produced by others, but I am also considering 3-D printing as a way of making models for the large pieces. The possibilities seem so open-ended I can’t imagine what I’ll be doing next year.

Chris Perry made his way to New York after graduating from art school. He found it difficult to make a living in the arts and so began a career in the construction trades, most notably architectural woodwork. After 30 years, he returned to painting and eventually found his way to bookmaking, as described above. He lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. Kate Burns made her way to New York after graduating from art school, too. She volunteers at the Center on Fridays.

Friday Insights: New Artists in Residence

It’s a new year, and that means a new group of Workspace Artists in Residence. Our 2013 artists in residence are Cecile Chong, Dahlia Elsayed, Swati Khurana, Kameelah Rasheed, and Jeni Wightman.

Workspace residents receive a tuition waiver for courses for a full year, access to the Center’s printing and binding facilities for a year, as well as material support and a stipend. The purpose of this program is to promote experimentation in the book arts, and to encourage artists working in a range of media to incorporate bookmaking into their practice. Work produced during their residency year at the Center will be on exhibit in spring of 2014.

Our new residents have hit the ground running, and are in the midst of finishing up their core beginning courses in letterpress and bookbinding. This past Saturday, January 26th the women of SAWCC (South Asian Women’s Creative Collective) organized a protest action in front of the New York City Indian consulate on Indian Republic Day, as a “response to the horrific violence wrought upon Jyoti Singh Pandey in India, and on women’s bodies everyday around the world.” SAWCC member Swati Khurana forwarded us pics of the event and of the amazing LETTERPRESS POSTERS participants held, that she printed in Letterpress I the previous weekend. Letterpress agitprop in action, my friends. Take a look:

Swati Khurana printing her posters.

Here is a link to more information about the event, and about SAWCC.

Want to give us suggestions or comments? Just want to say hi? Comment on this post, email us at info@centerforbookarts.org, visit us on Facebook (/centerforbookarts) or follow us on Twitter (@center4bookarts). Can’t wait to see you there!

Friday Insights: Winter Open House

Make an Accordion!

We’re looking forward to our annual Winter Open House, this Saturday, January 26 from noon to 3pm. Join us and watch a demo, try your hand at pulling a print, tour our new exhibitions, and learn all about the exciting programs we have in store for you this season. Artists Aurora De Armendi, Asuka Ohsawa, Stephanie Beck, Kyle Holland, Richard O’Russa, Jennifer Verbit and Roni Gross will be on hand to talk about their work.

Pull a Print!

Visitors will have a chance to see Brother, Can You Spare a Stack? our new winter exhibition, as well as Featured Artist Projects by Candace Hicks and Tomie Arai. We’ll have special discounts for those of you interested in classes. The complete schedule is below.

Noon Exhibition Tour

Noon Jennifer Verbit- Accordions

Noon Richard O’Russa-Hand Set business cards

12:30 Asuka Ohsawa- Linoleum blocks

1pm Roni Gross- Letterpress demo

1pm Aurora De Armendi &

Kyle Holland- Woven Flexagons

2pm Stephanie Beck-Die Cutting

Fun for all!

Friday Insights: Artist Interview

Every once in a while we try to post an interview with an artist who works in the studios here at the Center. This week Letterpress Instructor Roni Gross wrote up a short interview with our Programs & Marketing Manager Sarah Nicholls about her work.

Informational Pamphlets

You were a painter in college and for some time afterwards, how and why did you begin to focus on printmaking and books?
Well, I had a painting teacher in college who also made books, and she recommended the Center to her students. So when I came back to New York I took a class at the Center and liked it. So I started volunteering and things sort of snowballed from there. Printmaking and books replaced painting because it just seemed like I could do and say more with it, to more people. And then I had a studio to do it in, and a community around me that was interested in that kind of thing.

Escapism for Amateurs

Is there something about communication/language/multiples that seems like a better fit for you?
I get to use both sides of my brain. I get to research and write and draw and distribute. The most enjoyable projects that I’ve been doing recently are my pamphlet series, which lets me indulge my tendency to become obsessed with something specific and obscure and then tell everyone I know about it. Multiples are arrogant in a way, in that you’re assuming from the get-go that there’s more than one person in the world who’s interested in what you have to say. But then they also force you to go out and identify who those people are and communicate with them. Which is probably a good thing. I think that the main object in making things is to communicate with someone other than yourself.

Also, with printing I get to use machines, and lift heavy things. I like that part.

Orange books

How do you think your color palette has changed over the years, and why?
My color palette generally tends towards the garish. I went through a hot pink phase. Which was closely followed by an orange phase. I usually have to make a concerted effort not to make everything some combination of those two. Sometimes I have this fantasy where I throw out everything I own, live in a one-room apartment with a mat on the floor, some herbal tea, and one sweater, and only make things in subtle shades of light blue. But this seems unlikely.

When it comes to color, and most everything else, I believe that more is more.

Phosphorescent Face Highlighter

Where do you feel your work is headed?
Straight to hell. I think that I’m getting wordier and wordier, and doing more research than I used to. I have a list on my desk of potential pamphlet topics and they all have something to do with either money or technology, so probably in that direction. I’d like to do more projects that have some kind of event that ties into a publication.

Leisure Activities for Introverts

What’s the next challenge?
This year I’m working on a field guide to extinct birds. Right now I’m reading up on John James Audobon and the history of birding in America.

Roni Gross is a graphic designer and book artist. She is the proprietor of Zitouna and Z’roah presses, and teaches workshops on letterpress printing and book arts regularly at the Center for Book Arts. Sarah Nicholls is the Center’s Programs & Marketing Manager, and has been at the Center for the past ten years, managing our studios and public programs. You can see more of her work here and here.

Friday Insights: Spring Opportunities for Artists

Every year the Center offers a range of opportunities for artists and writers to work here at the Center. Workshops, residencies, portfolio reviews, and exhibition opportunities are all part of what we offer artists interested in the book form. Here’s a short overview of deadlines coming up this spring:

Seminar participant learning to set type.

Letterpress Printing & Fine Press Publishing Seminar For Emerging Writers
Writers! The Center for Book Arts invites applications for our Letterpress Publishing Seminar for Emerging Writers. The next section of this seminar is scheduled for March 20-24, 2013. The seminar is tuition free for participants. Those selected must attend the entire five-day workshop.

Participants will hear lectures from various professionals in the field – printers, fine press publishers, book artists, and dealers, to get a practical overview of letterpress printing and small press publishing. They will learn the basics of letterpress printing, both traditional typesetting and options with new technology, by collaboratively printing a small edition of broadsides. This workshop is most suitable for those with little to no previous letterpress experience. Postmark deadline is February 15. Application guidelines are here.

Work by 2011-2012 Scholar in Residence Sara Parkel

Scholarship for Advanced Studies in Book Arts

The Center for Book Arts is pleased to continue our Scholarship for Advanced Studies in Book Arts. In 2013, the Center will award two to three scholarships to individuals who have demonstrated a commitment to the artistic endeavors in the book arts. The purpose of this 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. The award includes a cash stipend plus a materials budget and 24 hour access to the Center’s printing and binding facilities for a full year. Artists also receive a tuition waiver for courses throughout the year, planned in conjunction with the staff. Scholars will be required to complete an artist project by the end of the scholarship period, with an exhibition in our gallery space and public presentation the following autumn. Artists are invited to submit applications postmarked by May 1, 2013. Guidelines are here.

Summer interns!

Summer Internships

The Center’s Internship Program is designed to provide a comprehensive overview of non-profit management and training in book arts techniques. Every year the Center brings in a small group of students for an immersive internship in book arts techniques and non-profit management. Interns get hands-on experience and come away with valuable technical skills. Primarily aimed at undergraduate students, summer interns can acquire practical skills in the book arts by working on The Center’s book projects and participating in The Center’s Education Program, helping to maintain the studios, produce editions, and installing our summer exhibitions. Interns will also assist in the day-to-day operation of The Center as needed. Deadline April 1, 2013. Details and application here.

Exhibition Guidelines

The Center for Book Arts invites curators to submit exhibition proposals for our Main Gallery. There is no deadline: proposals are reviewed by the Center’s Exhibition Committee three or four times a year, however, the exhibition schedule is planned at least 15 months in advance. Our Exhibitions program is intended to provide contemporary interpretations of the book as an art object and/or related media, as well as to challenge traditional notions of the book arts. Exhibitions that feature a broad representation of media, site-specific installations, and performances are encouraged. Guidelines are here.

Featured Artist Projects

The Center for Book Arts invites artist members to submit proposals for its Featured Artist Projects Exhibition Program. There is no deadline: proposals are reviewed three or four times a year by the Exhibitions Committee. There is no entry fee but only current Artist Members may apply. Call for entries is here.
Want to give us suggestions or comments? Just say hi? Comment on this post, email us at info@centerforbookarts.org, visit us on Facebook (/centerforbookarts) or follow us on Twitter (@center4bookarts). Can’t wait to see you there!