Minnesota Center for Book Arts is proud to present Nouveau, an exhibit of work by teen artists in MCBA’s By Design Program. Nouveau refers not only to the newness of the work presented. A large portion of the exhibition will be work by a new group of introductory students, who joined The By Design Program in September of 2007. The work in this exhibit includes prints, cyanotypes, books, broadsides, zines, and conceptual books. This exhibit is an excellent chance for audience members to view the myriad forms available to book arts.
Artists participating in this session include: Sharon Belmonte (Junior, Humboldt); Molly Erickson (Junior, Loring Nicollet); William T. Hagestad III (Junior, Twin Cities Academy); Mairead Herson, (Junior, Perpich Center for Arts Education); Abby Kallas (Senior, Highland Park); Aubree Mease (Senior, Tartan); Hayley Moore Lindman (Senior, Hopkins); Ana Norell, (Junior, Watershed); Anna Renken (Sophomore, St. Paul Central); Dan Shearen (Sophomore, Twin Cities Academy); and Natalie Walstein (Senior, Hopkins).
This fall students in By Design got a chance to learn from an amazing group of local artists. While some of them were old friends of By Design, and some were new to the program, all of the artists taught workshops on techniques that are reflected in the work in this exhibit.
Monica Edwards Larson, Lori Brink, and Lin Lacy have all mentored multiple times in By Design. This session they each taught workshops and shared their work with the By Design students. Monica introduced students to the presses with pressure prints in October, and then came back at the end of November, guiding the students through letterpress again as they printed a collaborative broadside. Lori introduced students to paper marbling, which was a highlight for many of the students. Lin taught several forms of image transfer which turned out to be a popular choice in the introductory students' final projects.
By Design alumnus Drew Peterson returned to the program as an instructor, demonstrating techniques for making cyanotypes. Now a senior at the University of Minnesota, Drew was in the first By Design cohort.
Jennifer Hibbard has been involved with MCBA for a few years, but made her debut in By Design by teaching the four needle Coptic binding. Perhaps just as valuable was her insight into art schools and application processes, which she shared with students while they sewed their bindings.
In November we took a field trip to the Belfry Center in South Minneapolis and met with Lacy Prpic-Hedtke, a local zinester and zine librarian. Lacy gave students insight into the history of zines and shared her process and work. Several students were inspired to create their own zines, and we created a collaborative zine about dreams.
As winter approached, we intended to have a workshop with Sarah Peters on papermaking, but unfortunately three snowstorms on By Design days in a row meant that this workshop had to rescheduled in January.
The fall session is officially ending with the opening of the Nouveau exhibit, but students are welcome to continue coming to MCBA to work on independent projects or take part in special workshops. This January, all By Design students are invited to come in on Saturdays for open studios and/ or workshops.
Nouveau will be on display from December 15th- January 15th in the Cowles Literary Commons on the second floor of the Open Book Building at 1011 Washington Avenue South, downtown Minneapolis.
Minnesota Center for Book Arts is proud to provide opportunities for teen artists to explore, nurture and develop their own individual artistic visions. By Design was created to serve and nurture highly motivated teens who are not receiving the level of art education they desire in their schools through current art programming. In 2008, By Design will expand to offer multiple entry points for teens at various levels of artmaking experience, creating even more opportunities for teens to explore the book arts.
By Design at Minnesota Center for Book Arts is supported in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts.
For more information, contact Emma Allen at 612.215.2533 or email.
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Foundations of an Open Mind
Aubree Mease
My Grandfather is the kind of person who other people would want in their lives. He is honestly my foundation and by far my biggest inspiration. Every night since I move to Minnesota, my family sits around the table and listens to my conservative grandfather and liberal me debate and open our minds. My project is based off the screen print I did in By Design, which was my favorite activity. While I built the sculpture, I tried to write this in my head and think of what I would say, and what everything meant to me. I came up with the fact that my grandfather will always be conservative and I will always be liberal. However, the fact that night after night we can still open out minds and listen blows my mind. I love my grandfather a lot. He is the foundation that I build my ideas off of and this project represents that to me.
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Facets
Anna Renken
When we were doing cyanotypes, I brought a photograph that I had taken of rain on a window. During the cyanotype process, I photocopied it, and later I sketched over the rain in the picture. I turned the lines of rain into the branches of a tree in the wind, which made me think about things that look like other things. I made a series of similar images by drawing over photographs or other art. Many of these images relate to nature, which was not a theme I had originally intended to use. However, this makes sense to me because various aspects of nature (like water, rivers, trees, and branches) have interesting patterns and textures that resemble other things. I am also personally interested in nature and how it is so closely connected to so many things. Because the content of my book relates to things changing or the similarities between things, I wanted to use a format that reflected the similarities between my images, but also showed how they were separate. An accordion book fits with this idea because each page is separate, but the book can also be unfolded to show all of the pages at once. Being able to try many different printmaking techniques in By Design has helped me to think about layering images or combining techniques in different ways.
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Descending Music
Dan Shearen
Music has always been a big part of my life and I have always enjoyed it a lot. That is why I decided to incorporate music into this piece. Music can inspire visual images quite easily, such the way that visualizers on computers create patterns to music. That is why I chose to make marbled paper to represent certain songs. While I was making this piece I was listening to music so it would influence how I marbled the paper. In the end, the artists that I listened to were Iron Maiden, Mötley Crüe, Pink Floyd, The Beatles, Stephen Jay and Quiet Riot. My experience at MCBA has been a memorable one.
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Flipbook
Ana Norell
I got a gap in my teeth
Like I need more room to breathe
And I can write rhymes
Like you wouldn't believe
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The Oracle
Molly Erickson
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Changing
Sharon Belmonte
I made this piece as a representation of my journey through life. On the first day of By Design, we made a tree and psychoanalyzed each other. I thought it was interesting so I used the tree as a metaphor for my deepest thoughts and emotions. I also thought this project was a good way to use my poems instead of keeping them hidden away from everyone. I chose to do an accordion book because I felt it showed the ups and downs and uncontrollable movement that can be my emotions. It was the first book form we made in By Design and is also my favorite so far. This piece is still a work in progress, and that is okay with me, as long as I know that what I am displaying is the best that I could do. I have learned a lot in By Design and hope to learn more.
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Lucy's Dream
Hayley Moore Lindman
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Who Do You Think You Are?
Natalie Walstein
When I leave for college next year, my life is going to be quite different. Who Do You Think You Are? was created as a way to look back and reflect on what has brought me to where I am now in order to allow me to focus my attention on moving into the uncertain future. It is an interactive version of the journey to self-awareness where letters can be unscrambled to add the final lines to the story. It imitates the trials involved in the transformation into adolescence, an adventure I had to endure in order to become who I am today. In the creation of the book, I challenged myself to leave my comfort zone and express myself in a way I had never done before. I had never bound a book, or made my own box, and I was new to metals. Over-extension in the name of ambition when I know nothing about a process can lead to frustration when experiences do not unfold the way I first imagined them. However, I can't help but smile upon the series of events that have delivered me to the successful completion of an idea when it all eventually works out in the end. This project was like none I've ever created before and because of that, I feel that it has helped me figure out even more about myself.
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Transfer
Abby Kallas
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Story Season
Mairead Herson
No personal force can compare to that of the forest. We know this when we are children, fully aware of our lack of power but full of the possibility of the unimaginable. Our teeny bodies are dwarfed by the surrounding trees, the rocks, the specks of dirt that seem grander than ambition, and the situation is occasionally frightening but generally glorious.
It was in the forest, in the summertime, that I began to understand; it was the same day’s night, flying up the stairs, that I found the book of fairy tales from when I was a child.
Those ideas swirled in my head for a month and demanded a purpose to their dance. One day, though, biking past well-lit window, I glimpsed a coloring book. Coloring books are, so often, the very first place we meet art. This particular book has been made in the hopes that it will remind us, clad in chrome-armor and double-digit birthdays, of how it felt to be so small and so sweet. Humans will never produce anything to match nature’s splendor. This book does not mean to rival it; instead, this book hopes to serve as a reminder of earth’s basic beauty. |
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