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Suitcase Farming: Travels in Three Volumes
Jennifer Amie & Jeffrey Morrison
The suitcase and travel guide format for this bookwork relates to suitcase farmers of the 1930s; itinerant businessmen whose practices were precursory to modern agribusiness.
Types of Insects
Bill Moran
A 19th century insect guide forms the basis for this fictional recreation. The book shows the effects of mutation and evolution on its contents if left unopened for 100 years.
Bus Parts
Susannah Bielak
Reflecting on the communal and sensory experience of mass-transit ridership, Bus Parts is comprised of 4 components, including Passage, a large-scale installation book with "pages" made up of 4 bus doors.
The Handbook of Practical Geographies
Heather O'Hara
The Handbook of Practical Geographies engages curious viewers with timely lessons in political and cultural understanding. Designed to make learning easy in these confusing times, the bookwork frames each lesson around a quote from a well-loved 1960s geography textbook.
Leaving Santa Lucia
Laura Migliorino
Leaving Santa Lucia explores the story of the artist's grandparents' arranged marriage and immigration to the United States from Italy. Images were layered using Photoshop, juxtaposing old and new photographs, postcards, letters, and immigration documents.
timeuponOnce
Rebecca Alm, Kathleen M. Heideman, and Phebe Hanson
This intergenerational fairy tale project is a multi-faceted endeavor addressing folk and fairy tale tradition. Shared yarns, journal texts, collaborative writings and drawings (created by the artists on handmade paper in the manner of Surrealist exquisite corpse games), and textual contributions solicited via offset printed postcard and broadsheet coalesce in an offset printed book.
MCBA/Jerome Foundation Book Arts FellowshipMinnesota Center for Book Arts (MCBA) and the Jerome Foundation are pleased to announce the fellows chosen for the ninth series of book arts fellowships awarded to assist emerging book artists in creating new work.
Brian Aldrich will create five pieces for an installation titled Correspondence Stock. These pieces will perform the function of a book: telling the user what it is and how to use it. The viewer-user-owner will be a necessary component of this interactive installation.
Sarah Peters has proposed a sculptural book connecting the themes of seafaring expeditions, nationalism and Minnesota's winter landscape. Pole Positions will consist of stacked, unbound "pages" cast out of cotton fiber.
Katya Reka's Art of Distance will explore the themes of love, memory and distance. Containing illustrations, poetry and prose, her book will reflect the process of learning to maintain the harmony of space. In addition to a printed version, Reka plans to create a video as a logical extension of the printed word.
CB Sherlock and Regula Russelle are collaborating on Sidewalk Folios: Poems @ Rush Hour. This series of "found" folios, distributed in boxes in four urban neighborhoods, will contain letterpress-printed poetry and ink wash portraits of people, addressing the themes of city life, kinship cycle, improvisation, jazz, and the sense of "we."
These intriguing projects will be exhibited in the MCBA gallery in October 2008.
On February 19, 2008, the artists will discuss their past and current work at MCBA's Book Arts Roundtable.
Since 1985 the Jerome Foundation has provided MCBA support to fund creation of new bookworks, an important underscoring of the organization's mission to incite enthusiasm for the book as a vital contemporary art form. Under the program, Minnesota artists of diverse disciplines – including printers, papermakers, binders, painters, sculptors, poets, photographers and essayists – have explored and are encouraged to continue exploring the book as a vehicle for personal expression.
Book Arts
Book arts is a dynamic discipline within the larger landscape of contemporary art. At Minnesota Center for Book Arts, the definition of book arts is broad and inclusive. We’re interested in all things “bookish.”
Though book arts often require bookbinding, printing or paper-making to come to fruition, contemporary book artists use these traditional practices and others in surprising and exciting new ways.The creative evolution of book arts is limitless.
In an exhibition a few years at MCBA, visitors were posed the question, "What makes an artist's book an artist's book?" Blank cards were provided for composing answers, which were posted on a board within the gallery for all visitors to read and consider. Two major themes arose out of the ongoing dialogue.
First, the concept of intent was deemed important. Artists' books are such because their creators intended them to be works of art.
Pages may be viewed as paintings and volumes as galleries. Some books may explore sculptural ideas. Still other works may be conceptual in nature. In all cases, such careful intent implies several factors: the artist has a clear vision for the work, content has been adequately considered and refine, and readers/viewers have been anticipated. This last point is perhaps most critical. Art is neither created nor experienced in a vacuum. If work is intended to be art – a form of communication – it is necessary to think about an audience. How will viewers approach the work? What will readers take away? What relevance does the work offer?
A second theme from the gallery postings involved the considerations an artist makes when creating an artist's book. To make the best choices for supporting the content, an artist must consider all elements of a book's construction – physical, visual, and conceptual. The format of the book, binding style, size, paper, typography, colors, textures, and text must work together to strengthen the artistic message. All components should come together in a harmonious whole – one never overshadowingthe others – to create a completed work that is much greater than the sum of its individual parts.
