Bill and Vicky Stewart of Vamp and Tramp, Booksellers (based in Birmingham, Alabama), visited the Book Arts / Printmaking program. They showed some of the artists’ books that they are selling and talked about their love of the books, their criteria for choosing the books they sell, and how the run their business. As usual, they combine realism with inspiration.
For more pictures and information about the visit, check out Danny James Resch Blog
MFA Book Arts/Printmaking students took an intensive workshop given by artists Shanna Leino or Johnny Carrera. Shanna Leino’s workshop was titled Ethiopian Binding: Leather covered wooden board binding. Johnny Carrera’s named his “The Art of Sampling.” He focused primarily on printing found texts (from the UArts collection), addressing both printing techniques and how working with cuts is a complex collaboration with an unknown entity.
The workshops were in conjunction with "Johnny Carrera & Shanna Leino: Extreme Bookmaking," an exhibition in the Printmaking Gallery, through December 9, 2011. Carrera publishes works through his imprint Quercus Press, most notably his Pictorial Webster's: A Visual Dictionary of Curiosities, a 400-plus page volume using the original wood engravings as a visual reference of 19th century America. Leino specializes in historic bindings and builds hand tools. Working with leather, vellum, bone and wood, Leino makes sculptural books that reveal the fine binding process.
MFA II BOOK ARTS / PRINTMAKING
- Work in Progress Show
THE UNIVERSITY OF THE ARTS - GALLERY 224 ANDERSON BUILDING - 333 S. BROAD ST. - PHILADELPHIA
OCTOBER 20 - NOVEMBER 4, 2011
IN PROGRESS presents the working ideas of eight young artists. They take the risk to transform the gallery into a lab where prints, books, and words in space test their potential. FEATURING:
Victoria Burge shows a series of subtle prints which catch the play of light on water;
Sarah Bourne's prints walk through the opacity of thoughts, in order to unravel minimal sentences;
Anna Boyer translates a choral song into space, with soft threads and line drawings; Frances Osugi perform personal letters, and leaves the imprints;
Danny James Resch questions the frontiers between two and three dimensions with crumpled, rain-flattened papers;
Ángela Sánchez de Vera reproduces one corner of Lombard Street to hide an edition of poetry in a pile of trash;
Brian Patrick echoes the wheels of his bicycle into abstract prints;
Gregory Toumi shapes delicate small flight machines from everyday discarded materials.
IN PROGRESS comes as a risk for the artists and a challenge to the visitor.
See the show blog at http://worksinprogressuarts.blogspot.com
Liberature is a new literary genre that integrates text and the material form of the book into a meaningful whole. Its major representatives, Katarzyna Bazarnik and Zenon Fajfer, will present their ideas about writing and show examples.
To wind up Zenon will read from his latest bilingual volume dwadziescia jeden liter/ten letters, which explores the tensions between the visible and the invisible, the material and the virtual, the author and the reader. Since the final shape of some of his poems needs to be arranged by the readers, the audience will have a chance to join in. The evening will close with the presentation of his electronic film-poem “Primum Mobile,” the final part of ten letters.
The term Liberature draws on the Latin “liber” meaning “the book” to stress the unity of the text and the physical shape of the book, deliberately designed by the author. It also resonates with “liberation,” pointing to writers’ freedom in choosing their material, format, and typography to suit their expressive needs, and liberties authors take with editorial conventions.