We’re happy to announce the official opening of our new lab, freshly adorned with four Vandercooks and a C&P: the Jack Sinclair Letterpress Lab. And to commemorate the opening, we’re having an exhibition. We welcome your work, books or broadsides or any other sweet letterpressed thing. If you’d like to participate, email our president John with images of your work. Looking forward to the show!
This Friday, I am ridiculously excited to announce that one of my book art heroes is coming to Tucson, Julie Chen. I think this must be what regular people feel when they find out they’re meeting … the Kardashians? Or someone else.
Julie Chen, True to Life
Since 1987, Julie has published limited edition artist’s books under the imprint, Flying Fish Press. Her work is not only meticulously crafted, but seamlessly combines interesting writing and concepts with lovely, often abstract imagery and a sense of play.
Julie Chen, True to Life (detail)
Anyway, the Book Art Collective is hosting an artist talk this Friday @ 4pm with Julie at the University of Arizona’s Poetry Center. The Poetry Center was gracious in co-sponsoring the event with us, and we thought the space would be fitting for Julie’s lyric work.
To promote the event, our co-president, John, designed some posters and we letterpressed them yesterday on one of our trusty Vandercooks. The style sort of parallel’s Chen’s use of games in her work. We printed the posters on various French Papers, this one their Pop Tone Whip Cream, Cover #140. It’s pretty. For ink we mixed some metallic copper with brown and then violet. It was…experimental, to say the least.
If you’re in Tucson or nearby, come to the talk and reception after. Meet Julie. Meet the rest of us. Eat food. Hera are the details, yo:
Artist Talk with Julie Chen
Friday, November 5th @ 4pm
Poetry Center, University of Arizona
Reception to follow in Book Art Lab
[Note: I'm cross-posting this on my personal site, here.]
We are pleased to announce that well-known Chicago book artist and binder, Karen Hamner, will visit the School of Art on October 19th at 5:30 pm. She will give an informal presentation in Room 205 in the Art Building.
Karen is in town for Guild of Book Workers Conference and has generously offered to talk to students, faculty and the our very own Book Art Collective. There will be a hands-on look at her books and she’ll answer questions about her work, which has been shown around the world.
Karen is an expert binder and has just come out with a new book Nevermore, Again: Poe Exhumed. She is probably best known for her flag books, one of which is in the University of Arizona Special Collections.
We hope you’ll join us to talk with Karen and see her work!
This weekend, the Collective had the pleasure of meeting the master of Vandercook letterpress machines, Paul Moxon. Paul was in town for a week or so, offering demonstrations, workshops and a lecture on Vandercooks to the Book Art Collective, our ever-expanding club, as well as members from the community. All of this, it should be noted, was made possible by designer/educator Karen Zimmermann, whose excellent fundraising and organizing made the event possible.
It’s basically understood that Paul knows everything there is to know about Vandercooks, proof presses made by Vandercook & Sons beginning in 1909. In addition to working as a printer and artist, he maintains a website, VandercookPress.info, where anyone can access information about presses.
In the 59 years the company was in business, about 30,000 presses were manufactured; there are currently about 1,500 Vandercooks documented in existence. And what do you know, 23 of them are in Arizona; 4 are kept by the Book Art Collective. Last year was the Vandercook’s 100th birthday and Paul orchestrated a Centenary Print Bundle with lovely prints from shops throughout the country.
The workshop this weekend covered basic operating procedures of the presses and we brought him in not just to teach, but also to fix up our new machines. This summer, the Collective acquired three new presses, one of which seems to have been outside for, well, years.
Paul covered typesetting, adjusting furniture, proofing, measuring, inking and, finally, printing.
Paul was gracious enough to travel here from Alabama on the weekend of his birthday. So happy birthday, Paul! Thanks so much for spending some time with the Book Art Collective. We hope to have you back soon.
This weekend, we set up up shop for the first time at the Tucson Festival of Books, a huge gathering with book lovers of all kinds. The festival was held on both Saturday and Sunday, and attracted droves of humans with author appearances, signings, talks, panel discussions and of course vendors.
To prepare for the big event, a group of us got together beforehand with intentions of binding some of the most beautiful notebooks ever to grace earth with their presence. Well…we did bind notebooks, and they were quite lovely, if I do say so.
Using some fresh paper from French, as well as a few of our pastepapers from Curt’s workshop, we made twenty or so pamphlet stitch notebooks, both single and double, hard and soft covers.
After a day of binding, we were ready for the event. We packed up our notebooks and some work from members and set up shop in our booth.
The festival was a really interesting experience for us. Ultimately, the main goal of our being there was to raise awareness of our presence at the university and let humans know about book art in general. At the same time, we did raise some money from donations (notebooks accompanied donations) and promoted an upcoming sale we are hosting with the UA Print Club in April.
Phil was signing his most recent publication, Sanctus Sonorensis, which is totally beautiful and local artist and writer (and member) Alice Vinson had interesting books there too, both blank and filled with content.
So! Overall, the event was a success. We now have a big list of interested humans to whom we will send newsletters and, in the meantime, we will bind more books in preparation for our Book & Print Sale later on this spring. Thanks to all who came by to see us and we look forward to meeting again!
Copyright 2010, Book Art Collective.
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