Unfortunately it's my duty to tell you that the ability to show amazing films such as "sleepy kitty", "panda sneeze", and "darling puppy play" has been disabled. We will be forced to do what they did in the pre-digital age and merely spend a few moments daydreaming about what it might be like if a kitten fell asleep in a shoebox. I'm terribly sorry, but your imagination thanks you.
Let's get this pony show on the road.
Artist of the ...relatively short period of time
This time we are proud to have one Amos Paul Kennedy Jr. as the spotlighted artist. Ardea Art Collaborators state that he was once a computer programmer, but has since rejected the dark insidous forces and become a proveyor of luddite knowledge...a.k.a. letterpress printmaking. We're going to have to take that as truth, or at least until he comes to visit and lecture on Friday, October 26th where we can, in a unified voice, ask him the validity of this statement.
Kennedy (as far as I can tell no relation to J.F or R.F. ) has a studio in Akron, Alabama called Kennedy Prints! where he insures us that if you give him some text, he'll print you some posters...seriously. I believe one tagline goes a little something like this "Give Us Your Text and Go Home and Pray." Another one reads "We guarantee no two prints will be the same." I have to say this is my kind of printer!
Here is his web address. http://www.kennedyandsonsfineprinters.com/ Perhaps you should check it out.
The man also happens to be a papermaker, a bookbinder, and a performance artist. He has been in numerous national exhibitions and een finds time to curate some with his most recent being We, Too, Are Book Artists which opened July 21and unfortunately closes on the 22nd of September.
Let's look at some of his work okay?
Proverbs Are Little Gems of Wisdom
Put the Message In the Hands of The People and Move On (Tirade Announcement)
Jesus Says (Anyone Seen This one Before)
So his work has a political or social edge to it. Something to invoke an emotion and cause people to act...even if it's only acting differently. There's more out there, you just have to go and look. Oh, Thanks to http://www.kennedyandsonsfineprinters.com/ for the images. I swear they are all legit and on the site.
So let's recap: Amos Kennedy is pretty cool. He has his own printshop with not enough woodtype in Alabama. He wants you to send him type. Please, He likes to break the rules by making his own designs and not yours. Apparetly he tells people opposed to his work that he's got "...a long memory." He teaches and travels a lot and will soon grace us with his presence.
Some Things of Interest.
Here is a typograpical video using a nice little quote from Samuel L. Jackson in the wonderous movie we call Pulp Fiction. *Warning* a fair share of f bombs be dropped. Delicate ears are advised.
For some other great examples of typographical movies go to the link directly below this sentence. Particularly "The Lions Roar" by Hush Sound.http://infosthetics.com/archives/2007/08/typographical_motion_graphic_movies.html
Brian Dettmer:
Brian Dettmer is a graduate of Columbia who makes some pretty fantastic artist's books and book sculptures. He cuts into a book from the cover and works his way through the pages creating a topographical or mined image. Check out his site. Hey, he's even on wikipedia so it must be awesome.
Oh, yeah...he came to an artist's book class taught by Melissa a couple of years ago.
http://www.haydeerovirosa.com/index.php?modus_id=1&page_id=44&type_id=1
Hey Have You Heard This One
Some good noise from our fellow book artcentric school of University of Alabamahttp://www.bookarts.ua.edu/podcast/montgomery.mp3
A Little Bit O' Meador Will Do Ya Good. (Part 1)
Some knowledge to disseminate from the hand, mouth and brain from Clifton himself.
Disciplining a Craft
By Clifton Meador
From a talk originally delivered at the November 2006 Pyramid Atlantic Book Arts Conference
By Clifton Meador
From a talk originally delivered at the November 2006 Pyramid Atlantic Book Arts Conference
There is more interest in book arts now than ever before: dozens of colleges and art schools offer classes in book arts, and centers of book art have been created in nearly every large city in America. Opportunities for education in the book arts abound, and it seems as though something significant is changing in the way people talk about the book arts. A discipline is evolving, a conceptual framework for thinking about making books is emerging.
How are we building a discipline in book arts?
What does it mean for book arts to be a discipline?
It is not obvious what the term "book arts" means: it seems to describe crafts, but it is not self-evident which crafts. In order to understand what the term means, it seems reasonable to start by looking at where the book arts are transmitted, where people form their ideas about what they are doing as they are learning how to do it. There are two main arenas for the transmission of the book arts in America: one is the informal world of workshop instruction, usually (but not always) at nonprofit centers for book arts, and the other is formal academic study at a college, art school, or university. There have been book arts classes in the university much longer than there have been workshops that teach classes in the book arts. Porter Garnett’s Laboratory Press at Carnegie Mellon was founded in 1923, for example. There are many other examples; for instance, 10 of the 12 residential colleges at Yale had letterpress shops for student use and Scripps college press has been around since the 1940s. While there have always been printers and handbinders teaching their crafts, the founding of the Center for Book Arts in New York in 1974 marks the beginning of the contemporary period of workshop-based book arts instruction.
Since institutions are the places that support and create disciplines, let’s examine the institutions that teach book arts to better understand what people mean by the term "book arts." The two main arenas are quite different in their approaches to instruction: centers of book art have an interest in bringing in the greatest number of people to support their operations and therefore develop courses that are clear and attractive to a large number of people. Academic institutions do not have the same pressure to expand and develop audience and are subject to entirely different forces that shape programming. We might expect academic institutions to frame book arts quite differently.
First I will examine workshop instruction, and then academic institutions.
For this examination, I picked three places that are from geographically different areas of the country. I will look at their workshop offerings from fall of 2006, by title and course description. The purpose of this examination is to understand what most people mean when they use the term "book arts" and to understand the scope of activity.
The Center for Book Arts in New York was the first center of its kind and it is, without a doubt, one of the field-defining institutions. They teach hundreds of workshops a year and offer multiple levels and sections of workshops in letterpress printing, binding, paper decoration, printmaking, conservation, calligraphy, and workshops that deal in artists’ book making. For the fall 2006 workshop schedule, they listed 56 different sections of binding classes, from bookbinding I to boxmaking along with classes dedicated to specific structures, like long-stitch binding classes, Coptic binding, and leather bound books. They offered 30 sections of printing classes, 22 of which were dedicated to letterpress and eight of which covered printmaking topics, like Japanese wood block printing. They taught six sections of paper decorating classes (suminagashi and marbling), six sections of calligraphy classes (copperplate script to handwriting for books), five sections of conservation classes (including a master class with Gary Frost), and seven classes that are hard to categorize, like Comic Book Weekend, Editioning Mail Art, or Make a Limited Edition Book in a Week, which was a printing class combined with binding.
The Minnesota Center for Book Arts is another large center for instruction in the book arts, which also provides studio space for artists, publishes a book every year and creates exhibition programming. During fall 2006 they taught eleven sections of binding classes, seven sections of letterpress classes, two printmaking classes, three sections of paper decorating classes, one papermaking class, a Japanese calligraphy class, and a book art sampler (three Wednesdays: an introduction to papermaking, printing, and binding). One of the interesting threads in the MCBA’s fall schedule was a group of three classes dedicated to making jewelry from left-over bookbinding scraps. MCBA also offers classes designed particularly for teachers, usually held in the summer, which cover binding techniques for teachers, as well as classes on topics designed to help teachers introduce book arts into the classroom. MCBA clearly has primary and secondary education as part of its mission; they also regularly offer classes for families and even preschool children in book arts topics.
The San Francisco Center for the Book is a decade-old vibrant institution in the world of workshop instruction, teaching an ambitious workshop program and creating interesting exhibition programming. During fall 2006 they offered 15 classes in printing, all with a letterpress emphasis, 11 classes in binding (one of which was a class in how to teach book arts to children) and another 10 classes in a category the center calls "related arts": they range from a paste-paper class to a class in writing for artists’ books. The SFCB characterizes this third group of classes as the "creative heart of bookmaking, where concept, materials, form and content come together."
There are many other centers of book art instruction all over the country. Pyramid Atlantic is one of the few centers that offers classes in any depth in papermaking. The Columbia College Center for Book and Paper Arts, which is the host institution for the graduate program where I teach, also offers workshops in printing, binding, and papermaking. There are so many other great places: BookWorks in beautiful Asheville North Carolina, Garage Annex School, and Penland, are only a few. They all offer a range of classes, generally, though not always, with a technical orientation. All of the centers offer some non-technique-oriented instruction. The SFCB, for example, outlines a programmatic ambition to support artistic activity through the "related arts" series of workshops. But the focus in these centers, at least as defined by how much time is spent doing what, is on teaching craft.
Based on this not-very-rigorous survey of centers of book art instruction, I conclude that in the fall of 2006, at places that use the words "book arts" as part of the definition of what they do, binding is at the heart of book arts, closely followed by letterpress printing, based on numbers of classes. There seems to be a constellation of other crafts—paper decoration, papermaking, calligraphy, and printmaking—that are taught in the context of the book arts, but at a very low frequency. It seems important to point out that while the world of papermaking has an intimate relationship with the book arts, papermaking is a medium on its own terms. Papermaking supports other activities (sculpture, for example) and crosses into many other activities, but is not offered at book art centers with anywhere near the same frequency as binding or letterpress classes. Of the three centers we examined in detail, none of them offers extensive programming in papermaking. There are places that offer many classes in papermaking, but they tend to be specialized studios. The classes that all of these institutions offer are a carefully considered blend of what they can do, given the facilities they have, and what they think their communities will choose to support. It is important to reiterate that centers that teach workshops must offer classes that will fill and run: it is pointless to offer a seminar in narrative book theory if nobody will take it. When we talk about book arts, it is important to try to understand what those words mean to the people who take these workshops. This is clear: to a lot of people, "book arts" means the crafts of hand binding and letterpress printing.
The academic world of book arts is larger than you might expect. In nearly every art department there is some kind of activity involving books, usually as part of a printmaking program. Typically (or perhaps not untypically), artists’ books are mentioned in an upper-level printmaking studio as a potential outcome of printmaking. There are not very many dedicated departments of book arts, but there are a surprising number of colleges that offer one, two or more courses in the book arts. I collected course descriptions from 23 colleges that teach more than one class in book arts, and I found a very different approach to teaching book arts from the way workshop approach the field. Instead of classes with techniques as their subjects, making it easy to count which crafts are taught as book arts, most classes at schools have a conceptual framing, a title that talks about the ideas in making books, rather than techniques in how to make books. This is indicative of something important, but for now let’s try to use this information to understand what is included in the category "book arts." It seems reasonable to look at undergraduate introductory classes as the place in the academy where the field of activity would be delimited. In other words, intro classes ought to offer a definition of the book arts as a part of the activity of teaching students to make books. So, here are some phrases culled from course descriptions from introductory experiences in the book arts at nine schools, picked almost at random. Frequently, the first class (where there is more than one class) is a class called artists’ books.
From Mills College
This is one of the few schools with a stand-alone undergraduate book arts focus. They offer a group of at least 15 classes in the book arts, a concentration in some depth:
Introduction to Book Arts
…an introduction to the techniques, structures, tools, materials and processes used in creating artists’ books. Students will explore a broad range of studio practice, including letterpress printing, hand and computer typography, simple book structures, and basic relief printmaking as they examine the relationship of verbal, visual, and structural content in books.
From California College of the Arts:
Bookmaking
In this class, we will concentrate on recognizing the book within your own work and making it real in your chosen media. Basic book structures and letterpress printing from handset type will be introduced and more advanced instruction will be tailored to individual needs. 5 The Bonefolder: an e-journal for the bookbinder and book artist Volume 3, Number 2, Spring 2007
From the School of the Art Institute of Chicago:
Artists’ Books
In this multi-level course we investigate the use of books in the context of studio practice. Bindings, such as pamphlet, side stitch, accordion, and codex forms and variations are introduced and practiced. Strategies for utilizing material and form in relation to content, and for articulating pagination, such as pacing, juxtaposition, and simultaneity, are addressed in individual projects.
From Wells College
Wells College, another of the few schools with a dedicated undergraduate book arts department, offers two introductory experiences:
Hand Bookbinding I
This course introduces students to traditional bookbinding techniques by familiarizing them with the tools, materials and techniques of the craft. Students are expected to produce a set of book models that are clean, structurally sound, and consistent with the class demonstration.
Letterpress: Introduction to Typography
Demonstrations, readings, and assignments on the mechanics of handsetting and printing from metal type. Traditional and artistically innovative approaches to using this medium will be covered. Each student will create her or his own individual projects: postcards, broadsides, book, etc.
From Wellesley College:
Book Arts Studio
In an interactive setting, students will gain hands-on experience in bookmaking, with an emphasis on the creative possibilities of ancient craft and contemporary art. In the Library’s Book Arts Lab, students will learn to set type by hand and print on hand presses. Students will create limited edition broadsides and artists’ books.
From the San Francisco Art Institute:
Artists’ Books—Structures & Ideas
This class uses the form of the book as a source of inspiration and as a medium for expression, building upon many traditional bindings and newly created structures. Students will acquire technical skills and explore different media as they create a series of contemporary artists’ books. For each book, emphasis will be placed on the interactions between words and images and on using materials and a binding that support the theme or meaning. Conceptual approaches, sequence, design, editioning, and experimental books will be discussed.
From the School of the Museum of Fine Arts,Boston:
Artist’s Books: An Introduction
An in-depth introduction to one-of-a-kind artists’ books. This course is for artists of any discipline who want to work in the book format. Students learn many book structures, including portfolios pamphlets, multi-signature, concertinas, Coptic and clamshell boxes. We also explore a variety of image and text-making techniques. During open studio time students develop ideas and complete ‘a book a week,’ which may include edible books, altered books, books made of natural materials, visual books or books that tell stories.
From Middle Tennessee State University:
Book Arts
The Book Arts Program offers two classes in book arts (ART 3550 & ART 4110) and two classes in letterpress printing (ART 3770 & ART 4770).In Book Arts I and II students learn various book binding and book designing techniques and skills. The concept of the artist’s book is explored and students are encouraged to work with both traditional and non-traditional book forms and materials. In Letterpress I students learn the basics of letterpress printing using raised metal type to form text and relief printing processes to create images
From Smith College:
The Book: Theory and Practice I
Investigates (1) the structure and history of the Latin alphabet, augmenting those studies with an emphasis on the practice of calligraphy, (2) a study of typography that includes the setting of type by hand and learning the rudiments of printing type, and (3) the study of digital typography.
Of these nine schools offering introductory experiences in book arts, eight schools promote the technique of binding as central to the practice, six of the nine schools use letterpress as the method of choice for creating text, six of the nine list artists’ books either as the title of the class or as a potential outcome for the class. It is really fascinating to note that seven of the nine approaches frame book making as an expressive or artistic form and talk about conceptual issues in making books. The relationship of form to content seems to be at the heart of much of this activity; at these schools, the focus is on the book as a place to make art. Wells College uses the terms "artistically innovative approaches" to letterpress printing, signaling an intention to use letterpress as a mode of art making. Smith College alone does not use any language explicitly talking about art or expression, but Smith also teaches a class called The Artist’s Book in the 20th Century, so The Book: Theory and Practice (just look at the name!) is clearly taught in a historicized and theory-rich environment. (to be continued)
(be here next time for part 2 of "a little meador will do ya good")
TidBits and BitTids.
* Book x Change opens on October 5th at the student gallery "The Galley" opening is from 5
until 7. The show runs from September 29th through October 28th.
*Sheets, Planes, & Pulp Works On (and Out of) Paper runs through October 21st and features the art stylings of alumn Benjamin Chandler, current grad student Kirstin Demer, and current
professor extraordinaire Melissa Jay Craig. Here is the info (Evanston Art Center2603 Sheridan
RoadEvanston IL847.475.5300 Gallery hours, Mon - Thurs, 10am - 10pm Fri - Sat, 10am - 4pm Sun, 1-4pm)
*Special Congratulations to Kirstin Demer who won best in show at this show HOORAH!!
*Fictional Characters curated by Audrey Niffenegger A show coming up with a star-studded cast including Kevin L. Cuasay, Jen Blair, Jill Huntsberger, Elisabeth Long, Jennifer Thomas,
Ami Trosley, Meredith Winer, Benjamin Chandler, Stephen DeSantis, Ken Gerleve and April Sheridan. The opening reception is from 4-7 on Saturday October 6th at the Lil Street Gallery. Here is the info (Lillstreet Art Center 4401 North Ravenswood Chicago, IL 60640 Hours:Monday-Thursday: 10am-7:30pm Friday-Saturday:10am-6pm Sunday:10am-5pm)
*Drew Matott will be presenting Pulp Politics: Dissent and Intervention at the Friends of Dard Hunter Annual Meeting in Washington, DC onOctober 19-20. The presentation features his experiences conducting streeet interventions using pulp as an interactive medium. He will also perform his People's Portraits of Bush "street intervention" on October 18th at the Pyramid Atlantic Center. These presentations continue Drew's artistic theme of using street art media and communitycenters as a means to produce political, dissenting and interventionist art.
*Also Drew has been selected to exhibit at Northern KentuckyUniversity (September 27 - October 26) at its "On Its Feet: Contemporary Letterpress Book Art - A National Invitational Exhibit",and has been invited to show at the Book Arts Exhibit in the Fine ArtsGallery at SUNY Oneonta from January 21 - March 7, 2008.
*Joseph Lappie will have work represented by Allegoric Space gallery from October 11 - 14th at the Bridge Art Fair in London's beautiful Trafalgar Hotel. Also he will have a series of drawings in the Poetry Journal Ocho, tentatively scheduled for October 5th.
*Have information for the bittids section? Openings, anecdotes, interesting shows or sites? Anything really just send it our way at either pulpinkthread@yahoo.com or pepticrobotpress@hotmail.com
That's it for this round. Come back soon where we'll talk more about stuff and stuff. Also I'm sure that there are errors on this blog (hopefully only grammatical) but please feel free to point them out to me. I'll fix them at the quick pace of a turtle. Take care.
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