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!

Last week, the UANews interviewed me about why book art matters and why our might Collective promotes old printing processes like letterpress. Here is the video the reporter put together from the interview during one of our binding workshops. (Note: ignore the photos of my Talking face. It’s not pretty.)

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.

Over the next few weeks, we’ll be making some small – or perhaps large – changes to our site, contributors and general face-life things. Stay tuned.

If you happen to be in Michigan between now and June 15th, make your way to Ypsilanti (the eastern part of the state) to see this awesome new show at the Ford Gallery (Eastern Michigan University). According to the site:

The exhibition investigates the role of the book in the contemporary art world. For this show, the curators have expanded on the traditional definition of a book: they have defined the term ”book” loosely as a vehicle for information that is organized into ”sections.” The exhibition includes unique traditional books, altered books, sculptural books, digital books, and installation-, photography-, and performance-based books.

The idea of this show seems important for a few reasons. First, while I’m somewhat ambivalent about the book entering into the gallery (books are meant to be held, touched, experienced, after all), I think it’s important to elevate them to the level of the gallery in terms of of cultural perception. Museums seem to imply culture and history for us (ie. importance), so of course books should live there. (Print is not dead.) And then, the concept of the artist’s book seems to be to challenge traditional notions of what a book might be. Or what it might contain. Or what it might do. Materials, form, scale, palette, content all work to provoke these questions.

Murmur Study from Christopher Baker on Vimeo.

One of my favorite pieces is this documentation called Murmur Study by Christopher Baker, which records Twitter feeds of “common emotional utterances” like ewww. Receipt, running record as book. Twitter meets book. What can this mean? Perhaps this piece is a way for humans, the human brain/body, to absorb the pace of something like Twitter. Anyway, if you can’t make it to the show, definitely check out the website, which links to all of the artists involved. The idea itself just makes me want to hop a plane.

To kick off a new column on our blog (showcasing new publications in artists’ books), let’s start with none other than our very own Philip Zimmermann, a book artist, teacher, thinker and all-around interesting human.

Started seven years ago at the Border Art Residency in New Mexico, Sanctus Sonorensis emerged from Phil’s interest and observations in the landscape and the complex issues surrounding border crossings. The first edition of the book was published in 2006 while at a residency at Light Work in Syracuse, New York, and was printed by inkjet.

Because the book consists of a series of landscape photographs by Phil, he envisioned another edition in the form of a board book, which allows images to span the gutter without the interruption of a sewn signature. But also, Phil likes to push the borders of what a book is and what a form can do. Here are some of his own words:

“I decided to emphasize the missal-breviary-beatitude idea by making it look like a sort of high tech version of those Catholic book forms. I added gilded edges, the rounded corners and the gold-foil stamped titles to have a visual association with religious books. The text is meant to be read out loud as if by priest or an acolyte standing in front of a congregation (and maybe even repeated back by their flock), and I wanted the book to have the right kind of look (or bling) for that task.”

Two-page spread from book’s interior. (Source: Philip Zimmermann.)

The book becomes a sort of prayer; a really beautiful, slow meditation whose point of departure perhaps originated at the border, but ends in a contemplation of humanity. Phil presents a kind of sympathetic view towards all of the involved humans, while clearly asking us to reexamine our own value systems. And I’m happy to have it in my collection.

You can read more about the process of making the book here and you can purchase the book directly from Phil for $50 (+ tax and shipping) by emailing him. I highly recommend doing this.

I’m guessing you’ve probably seen this by now but I love this video so much, I thought we should post it here. This is a video by Abigail Uhteg, taking us through the making of an artist’s book at the Women’s Studio Workshop in upstate New York, which I had the pleasure of visiting a few years ago. A dedicated little place, with deeply interesting bookmakers and beautifully crafted book-forms.