Minnesota Center for Book Arts Newsletter: Fall 2007

ALTERED BOOKS

What happens to a book when it outlives its purpose on the shelf?

If it falls into the right hands, it is transformed into an art object that may or may not resemble its original form as a book. Early in 2008 a series of exhibitions throughout Minneapolis will showcase altered books created by national artists as well as members of the Twin Cities community. In addition, artists of all ages and abilities will have the chance to explore the making of altered books in a variety of workshops scheduled for the fall of 2007 at MCBA.

Earlier this year, the Exhibition Review Committee of the Minneapolis Public Library expressed a desire to host an altered books exhibition at Central Library and sponsor a community-wide series of altered books workshops and exhibitions at multiple sites. An Altered Book Committee was formed and members began reaching out across the community to involve artists and organizations. Collaborators with the Minneapolis Public Library include Minnesota Center for Book Arts, Minneapolis Public Schools, Homewood Studios, and mnartists.org. Two of the collaborators – MCBA and Homewood Studios in North Minneapolis – will host altered book exhibitions as well as lead workshops.

Included in the project is a juried exhibition in the Cargill Hall gallery at the Minneapolis Centeral Library. Betty Bright, a book arts historian and independent curator, will evaluate and select submissions from a national call for artists for this altered books exhibition.

One of the altered books workshops, taught at MCBA, is directed toward K-12 teachers, who will then take their knowledge to the classroom in the fall. Youth will be invited to submit their altered books for a juried community exhibition at Homewood Studios in North Minneapolis and in Minneapolis Public Library branches.

Also at MCBA will be an altered books workshop designed specifically for teens. Led by Tom Cassidy, a correspondence artist, writer and performance artist, the workshop is open to teens of all artistic abilities. The workshop is scheduled for Friday, November 9, from 6 to 9 pm. At the end of 2007 MCBA artistic director Jeff Rathermel will curate an exhibition of altered books submitted by teens from the Twin Cities, to be held at MCBA.

In November visiting artist Doug Beube will be leading an altered books workshop for adults at MCBA. A nationally recognized mixed-media artists who works in collage, bookworks, installation and photography, Doug teaches, curates and exhibits his work throughout the United States. In his workshop at MCBA participants will create bookworks incorporating a variety of techniques such as collage, mixed media, writing, and painting.

In addition, the public will have an opportunity to learn about altered books during a hands-on family day workshop at MCBA. This free workshop, on Saturday, October 6, from 10 am to 1 pm, is open and free to all ages. Participants will see how existing books can be changed in a variety of ways to express new meaning and communicate new ideas.

At Homewood Studios in Northeast Minneapolis there will be a free workshop for youth, families and community members on Saturday, October 13 from 1 to 4 pm. For more information, visit the Homewood Studios website.

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UPCOMING EVENTS AT MCBA

AN EVENING OF FINE WINE AND FINE BOOKS
Tuesday, August 28; 6-9pm
MCBA studios
Free and open to the public
Join book artists, publishers and collectors at our second annual Evening of Fine Wine and Fine Books. Sample delectable wines and fine cheeses, and preview new work by local, national and international book artists.

CELEBRATION OF MINNESOTA CHILDREN’S BOOK AUTHORS AND ILLUSTRATORS
Saturday, September 8; 12:30-5pm
Anderson Center, Red Wing, MN
Free and open to the public
Join MCBA for a fun-filled afternoon celebrating of Minnesota’s finest children’s book authors and illustrators. Highlights include readings, book sales and signings, face painting, marble playing, food, ice cream, balloons and more. For more information, visit www.andersoncenter.org.

CHILDREN’S BOOK FESTIVAL
Saturday, September 8; 10am-5pm
Hyland Lake Park Reserve
Free and open to the public
Visit MCBA’s booth and make an accordion book at this family-centered children’s book event. Activities include musical performances, signings by authors, arts and crafts, book sales, food and more, all while enjoying a late summer day outdoors at Hyland Lake Park Reserve. This event is free and open to the public.

WALDSEEMÜLLER WOOD ENGRAVING EVENT
Saturday, October 13
10am: Discussion and demonstrations at MCBA
1:30pm: Tour of Elmer Anderson Library
Free and open to the public
In celebration of the 500th anniversary of the publishing of the Waldseemüller globe gore map, the Associates of the James Ford Bell Library invite you to join local wood engraving luminaries Gaylord Schanilec, Bill Myers and Joann Price for a day of discussion, show-and-tell, demonstrations and a tour of the Elmer Anderson Library to view examples from masters of the craft.

TWIN CITIES BOOK FESTIVAL
Saturday, October 13; 10am-5pm
Minneapolis Community and Technical College, Downtown Minneapolis
Celebrate our region’s literary culture with MCBA, Rain Taxi Review of Books and members of the Twin Cites book community. Stop by MCBA’s tables for children’s bookmaking activities and shop among a variety of items for sale, such as broadsides, prints, supplies and gifts. For more information, visit www.raintaxi.com.

24-HOUR COMICS DAY
Saturday, October 20
MCBA studios
During this annual event, cartoonists around the world each try to create 24 pages of comics in 24 hours. Members and friends of the Minneapolis cell of the International Cartoonist Conspiracy will be meeting in MCBA’s studios.

WAYZGOOSE
Saturday October 27; 6-9pm
MCBA studios
MCBA’s Wayzgoose is a celebration of the book arts and a way for us to say “thank you” to all our members and supporters for helping us grow and prosper.

6TH ANNUAL BOOK ARTS FESTIVAL
Saturday, November 10; 10am-5pm;
Sunday, November 11; noon-5pm
in MCBA’s studios
Free and open to the public
Over 40 artists will be selling handmade journals, artists’ books, paper, prints, and many great bookish gifts. Festivities will include demonstrations throughout the day, free holiday ornament making, and special sales in The Shop. If interested in exhibiting in the sale, please contact the Shop Manager at 612.215.2546.

 

2007 Winter Book
Exploring the World of Visual Literature

MCBA’s 2007 Winter Book will be as surprising as an 80-degree day in Minnesota in December. Except for its availability in three editions – deluxe, standard and reader’s copy – almost every aspect of this year’s Winter Book is dramatically different from any other Winter Book MCBA has published.

This year’s Winter Book is an anthology. Nothing new there. However, the eclectic amalgamation is of visual literature, a broad term for the disciplines of visual poetry, concrete poetry, and post-language writing. The work from more than 20 international poets was selected by editors Tom Cassidy and Scott Helmes, who together enlisted legendary poet/curatorJohn Bennett to write the foreword. All three, who met via mail-art and have corresponded with one another for decades, are not only knowledgeable about the literary art form, but also practitioners with an international reputation.

Printers Allison Chapman and Monica Edwards Larson will be using many methods to reproduce the work, including letterpress, digital printing, and relief printmaking. Their challenge is to stay as true to the original form as possible, given that many of the poets have used media such as rubber stamps and collage to create the pieces featured in the anthology.

Another challenge will be to “bind” the disparate pieces. “In terms of the design and execution of this project,” says MCBA artistic director Jeff Rathermel, “I’m exploring a variety of Fluxus publications and boxes as we design volumes to actively engage the viewer/reader.”

 “I’m on sheer adrenaline when it comes to this stuff,” admits editor Tom Cassidy. He describes the poets represented in the 2007 Winter Book as “individual art movements.” Many of the poets, particularly the mail artists, do their work without regard to whether or not it will be shown in an exhibition or collected. The main impulse behind the work is to exchange thoughts and ideas with other people.

“It’s exhilarating to me,” Cassidy adds. “In a better world, everybody would make art every day and everybody would be more effusive. We wouldn’t need museums and coded vocabularies.”

Cassidy and Helmes have assembled a contributors list with as many well-known figures (i.e. Richard Kostelanetz, Marilyn R. Rosenberg, Carlos M. Luis) as those heretofore unsung. The mix of established practitioners with lesser-known, outsider artists makes for an unprecedented line-up.

“Some of the poets I selected will probably never see their work printed in a book again,” says Cassidy, adding that members of the correspondence art community are not really interested in receiving recognition for their work or vision. “To me, correspondence art is an essential way of interacting with a confusing world,” says Cassidy.

 “What most impressed me when we received the initial submissions and spread them out on the table was how much it looked like a mail art show. The collected work had a similar energy. Everybody was kind of together on the logic and very individual in their approach.” The overriding goal is the freedom of expression, not in staking out or protecting territory. Cassidy anticipates this year’s Winter Book will generate a similar kind of electricity among viewers/readers as the abstract expressionists did in the 1950s.

In the spirit of visual literature, the 2007 Winter Book will be engaging and participatory, with a companion e-page on the MCBA website. The publication party – on Saturday, December 8th – will consist of far more than just a reading. Given the adventurous nature of the editors, we anticipate nothing less than a spectacle.

“It’s exciting to me to connect with people in such nontraditional ways,” says Cassidy. Bennett, Helmes and Cassidy recently read some of the Winter Book pieces in a performance at The Black Forest. “You can imagine how insane that would be, but we’re the right folks to pull it off. It was cacophony broken up by consonants. If I were given a wish, I would ask for more vowels – to ease the pain in the world.”

 

BOOK: UNLEARNED
2006-07 MCBA/Jerome Book Arts Mentorship Exhibition
Opening reception Saturday, October 13, 6-9pm
Artists’ presentations 7pm

A poet. A muralist. A photographer. An installation artist. A sculptor. A fiber artist. Six emerging artists, six unexpected explorations into a new and limitless artistic discipline. MCBA is proud to present Book: Unlearned, an exhibition of new work by artists selected for the inaugural series of MCBA Jerome
Foundation Book Arts Mentorships.

Since 1985, the Jerome Foundation has provided major support for MCBA’s artistic programs designed to support emerging artists in the creation of new work. In July 2006, MCBA and the Jerome Foundation announced the first in a new series of Book Arts
Mentorships, targeted at artists working in various other media to expose them to the book arts.

After a statewide call for applications, MCBA selected six proposals by artists whose primary form of creative expression was not book arts: photographer Julia E. Babb; mural and mixed media artist Bethany Kalk; drawing and installation artist Cherith Lundin; sculptor and mixed media artist Cecilia Ramón; fiber artist Kathleen Richert; and poet Molly Van Avery.

The projects represent diverse interpretations of the book, from Japanese hanging scrolls and large-scale transparent photography to DVD animation.

 

MCBA PROFILE: Artist-in-Residence Javier Corral

In the past few months there’s been a lot of graffiti on the walls of Open Book. We know who’s doing it. And MCBA fully sanctions these artistic expressions. Graffiti artist Javier Corral, who first came to MCBA through our By Design teen artist program, has been artist in residence since April 2007.

His project Cynical/Aspiration is an exploration of the positive and negative aspects of Javier’s life thus far. “Since I’ve been at MCBA,” says Javier, “I’ve come to terms with what I want to do with my life. Before MCBA, my life was pretty negative. Now I have a brighter life.”

On two adjoining canvases Javier is spray-painting images, icons and lettering in a graffiti style. The monochromatic “negative” canvas, with images suggesting aggression and frustration, is based on Javier’s experiences while living in Los Angeles. The graffiti letters are intertwined in a twisted relationship with one another. The “positive” canvas is full-color, with images associated with Javier’s brighter outlook on life. Like Javier’s graffiti alphabet installation in the Fall 2006 By Design exhibition, the lettering on the “positive” canvas uses several graffiti styles.

Working on Cynical/Aspiration has been a much different experience for Javier than creating graffiti art in public spaces. There are no drips on the canvas piece; since he is working on-site at MCBA, Javier has to be much neater. The advantage of graffiti as fine art, he said, is that there is no pressure to finish the work quickly to avoid getting caught. He feels a lot of freedom in being able to return to the work day after day, study it, and make changes along the way.

Cynical/Aspiration is currently on display in MCBA’s bindery. MCBA’s Artist-in-Residence program is designed to support selected artists by providing resources, space and equipment to assist in the creation and promotion of their work. In turn, artists provide technical and educational assistance to MCBA. Residencies can vary from two weeks to four months in duration.

 

MCBA PROFILE

Interview with Chandler O'Leary
Graphic designer at Words at Work
MCBA member since 2004
Winter Book illustrator in 2004
By Design mentor since 2005
Co-op member since 2006
Artist-in-residence in 2007

MCBA: How did you find your way to MCBA?

O’Leary: I had been making one-off books in college. I was attracted to the book as art when I was living in Italy for a year and everything I owned was in one carry-on suitcase. I couldn’t make gigantic art because I had no way to bring it home. I had to distill the artwork into something I could hold in my hand, yet would also have depth. So I made books. At the time it didn’t occur to me that other people editioned books, that in fact there was a whole community of people that made books. After college, during an interview with Words at Work in Minneapolis, I showed Charlie Quimby my sketchbooks, and my portfolio was also in book form. Charlie told me about Minnesota Center for Book Arts and said that night there was a publication party for their annual Winter Book. I went and it completely blew my mind that books were being editioned, that they were all made by hand. I also liked how the process was democratic. There were master craftspeople in charge, but volunteers were actually helping to make the books. At that point I knew I had to get involved, even if it meant just waxing thread. I’d been a lowly volunteer before, and I was willing to do it again. I started working at Words at Work in January 2004, and simultaneously started taking workshops at MCBA. It had been impossible to get into letterpress printing classes at [Rhode Island School of Design], so I started by taking Regula Russelle’s Introduction to Letterpress workshop. Regula and Paulette Myers-Rich were also offering an Advanced Project letterpress workshop, and I took that, too. I made my first editioned book through that workshop. I discovered not only that I loved editioning books but also that other people did, too, and this could be a possible career avenue, not just a private obsession.

MCBA: How do you balance your graphic design work with your bookmaking?

O’Leary: At first I thought it would be hard to maintain graphic design during the day, bookmaking at night. It would take up so much of my mind and my life. It would be overwhelming, and I wouldn’t get as much done as I would like. But when I took the plunge and did it, I realized it wasn’t hard to balance after all. I couldn’t NOT do the bookmaking. I’ve always been a multi-tasker, anyway. RISD has a really insane workload so I was used to taking on a lot at one time. I’m happiest when I’m busy and occupied. Once I took the plunge I realized it wasn’t really a stretch to do both because the two areas are so related. I use type and printing terminology at work. Even though the techniques are different, I encounter a lot of printing at work and go to press checks. At home or in the studio I apply the same methods, disciplines, organization, terminology and design knowledge that I use in my job. My graphic design background helps me plan out and design the book and more accurately budget my time. They’re such related areas that it’s not a stretch to make a switch between the two. It wouldn’t work as well if I were a painter or sculptor.

MCBA: What do you get from making books that you don’t get from your graphic design job?

O’Leary: The ability to work with my hands and the satisfaction of doing something by hand, from start to finish. When I’m working on a computer, it’s a tool that comes between the finished product and my hands. I’m basically a Luddite. People who know me through book arts are surprised to find out I’m a graphic designer, that I spend so much time at a computer. I take a huge amount of pride in making things that are painstakingly laborious, that take a level of craftsmanship that is rarely seen these days. I get satisfaction in knowing I made this thing by hand, that it was really difficult to do and took a lot of time, and that it looks great.

MCBA: What do you get from graphic design that you don’t get from your bookmaking?

O’Leary: One big thing that ties the two disciplines together is precision. Graphic designers all have the same anally retentive quality that bookbinders have, where everything needs to be precise, within a 32nd of an inch. There is something very satisfying about the precision of graphic design. Even though the viewer might not notice, the designer knows that everything is intentional, everything has been thought out to the finest degree. But there’s more of an immediacy to graphic design. If I want to change something, I can use command-z and it’s done. If I want to move something around and see how it looks, I can do that on the screen and experiment. To do that by hand would take a lot longer. And I might not be able to change it later. I’m allowed to be more indecisive in graphic design. In my book arts I’ve evolved to a point where I start my book projects in sketchbooks and then lay them out on the computer. I can get my ideas onto the computer and make decisions that aren’t set in stone, even before I set type or cut paper or buy book thread. When I did my first book, all type was set by hand, all drawings were made by hand, and I did everything by trial and error. Some things worked out and some didn’t. Now I’m at the point where I make a digital mockup of the book project before I even touch any of the actual materials I’m going to be using.

MCBA: During your first year or two at MCBA, you took a lot of classes. Did you have a plan or did you just enroll in classes that sounded interesting?

O’Leary: I didn’t have a plan. I tend to be the type who sits back and observes and lets things soak in until I have a response. I wanted to learn as much as I could. I knew once I had that groundwork laid, then ideas would start coming to me. I didn’t really entertain the idea of editioning my own book until I had taken five or six workshops here. My projects are very involved, and I do only two or three a year. I spend a lot of time researching, sketching, observing and figuring out what imagery appeals to me before I come up with anything concrete. Right now I’m moving in a direction where I want to incorporate textiles into book arts. I’ve always been interested in textiles, but don’t have any formal training. I have all these ideas, but I’m not ready to implement them until I get some groundwork. That’s what I’m doing now. I’m about to take some classes, and I’m doing research. Ideas come to me more clearly when I have some knowledge first. Words at Work reimburses me for some of my education fees, and that’s been very helpful.

MCBA: You were artist-in-residence at MCBA earlier this year. How did that experience affect you as a book artist?

O’Leary: It gave me a lot more structure. That structure was important because I suddenly had a deadline for my project. It was a collaboration with my father, and he was great to work with because he kept saying don’t worry about when the book is done. But I need a deadline. When I became an artist-in-residence at MCBA, I had a finite amount of time to plan a public reading and finish the project. Also, there is an air to being a resident artist that gives you clout when you’re announcing a new book or reading. People are more interested if you’ve been artist-in-residence. In addition, it was a point of pride in knowing all of the work I had done was recognized by an institution and not just by people I knew. As a resident artist I had an intern, and that was new experience for me. I’m not the kind of person who can relinquish control easily, especially in an area so precise and unforgiving as book arts. In some ways the book arts are intuitive, but if you make a mistake, it can be very hard or impossible to correct it. Knowing how much time had gone into even the preliminary stage of making the book, it terrified me to trust someone else to help me get it done. I chose Brita Light, a former protégé from MCBA’s By Design Teen Artist program. I refer to her as wunderkind. She’s so much more than a 15-year-old. Brita has the same level of perfectionism and attention to detail that I expect from myself. I could trust her with the most nitpicky details, and I knew she would be on top of it. I could never have finished the book on time without her help. Plus she opened my eyes to things I hadn’t seen before, asking me tough process questions. In some ways Brita was a collaborator with me. But it was also an important experience for her. It was a step beyond the By Design projects she had worked on. Although she had taken on complex projects and seen them though, they were on smaller scale than this project. I think it was very valuable for her to see an artist bring a huge project to completion. This will be a great experience for her when she is in college and beyond.

A print from the Deluxe edition of Chandler's artists' book "The Faery Gardener," sold in The Shop @ MCBA.

 

MCBA BOARD NEWS

We are pleased to welcome eight new Directors to the MCBA Board:

Dr. Betty Bright, an art historian with a specialty in book arts

Samuel Demas, Librarian, Senior Lecturer and Director of the
Laurence McKinley Gould Library at Carleton College.

Luca Gunther, Associate Director, Laird Norton Company.

Jason Inskeep, founder and principal of Adsoka, a marketing agency.

Katie Lawler, Human Resources Director for metro banks at U.S. Bank.

Douglas Nathan, Associate Director of Alumni Relations at the
Minneapolis College of Art and Design.

Dr. Marguerite Ragnow, Curator of the James Ford Bell Library
at the University of Minnesota.

Cathy Ryan, an emerging book artist and printmaker.

 

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