The Architecture of the Book: An International Symposium · March 7-10, 2007

Introduction · Registration · Symposium Program · Travel & Accommodation
Abstracts & Biographies

Presented by Sir Wilfred Grenfell College Art Gallery and Visual Arts Program:

The Architecture of the Book:

Critical Issues that Inform the Artist's Book

An International Symposium
March 7 - 10, 2007

In conjunction with the exhibition:

The Architectural Uncanny
Marlene MacCallum
Sir Wilfred Grenfell College Art Gallery
February 8 to March 24, 2007


Abstracts and Biographies

Here is a list of proposed presenters, in alphabetical order, pending final confirmation of participation. Symposium program and registration information is also available.



David Scott Armstrong
Assistant Professor, Department of Visual Arts, York University, Toronto, Ontario.

Abstract: Other Than the Book

... decaying vestiges of books. They had long since dropped to pieces, and every semblance of print had left them. ...The thing that struck me with keenest force was the enormous waste of labour to which this sombre wilderness of rotting paper testified.  -  H.G. Wells, The Time Machine: An Invention

In this artist lecture, David Scott Armstrong will explore how his print based work responds to the material and metaphoric threshold of the book. Focused primarily on three projects from the last 10 years of his practice he will discuss the linked relation in his work to existing books (literature), book structure (the page, sequential ordering and unfolding), and material dissolution (contingency, time and erasure). For along side the formal and cultural determinations of both book and print, he will address those instances in his work where technology and utility break down, opening a space in language for vulnerability and “otherness”.

Biography:

David Scott Armstrong grew up in both Saskatchewan and Alberta, and is currently based in Toronto where he teaches in the Print Media Area at York University. For the last ten years his art practice has explored broader questions of perception and threshold through print, bookwork, moving image projection, and installation. His particular approach to “the book” runs parallel to his interest in printmaking and its function within a language of reproducibility and loss.



Tara Bryan
Artist, Flat Rock, Newfoundland and Labrador

Abstract: Building Books as a Quest for Magic

A book is a powerful object. The relationship between “reader” and “book” is necessarily intimate—engaging sight and touch, imagination and the commitment of time. How a book’s structure houses text and images can enhance significantly the reader’s experience. This talk will consider the process of making books whose architecture is an organic part of their meaning, and that create for the reader moments of magic. Examples from my own work, as well as that of several other artists, will be used.

Workshop: Innovative Book Structures

Biography:

Tara Bryan began making artist’s books in graduate school at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. After completing an MFA in Painting she moved to New York, where she took classes at the Center for Book Arts. Through their work-study program, she worked in the letterpress area in exchange for taking classes. Bryan is passionate about collaborating and she has worked with John Hartman, Elena Popova and Luben Boykov, Cecil Day, and others. She is currently completing a project about the Maritime Archaic Burial Mound in L’Anse Amour, Labrador with Robin Smith Peck and Kevin Major. Gros Morne Time Lines, a collaboration with artist Anne Meredith Barry and writer Kevin Major, is used as a focal point in a CBC / Parks Canada documentary about Gros Morne National Park. A trade edition of the book will be available in the spring of 2007.



Stephen Cain
Assistant Professor, School of Arts and Letters, York University, Toronto, Ontario.

Abstract: The Kids of the Book Machinists: Innovative Small Press Books in the Wake of Nichol and McCaffrey

During the mid-1970s, poets bpNichol and Steve McCaffery, writing as the Toronto Research Group (TRG), began to investigate innovative literary practice in non-conventional ways through a series of investigations on such topics as translation, the search for non-narrative prose, and performance poetics. One significant premise of the TRG, arising from these investigations, is the concept of the Book-as-Machine. Considering the book as a mechanism which holds information, allowed the TRG to suggest new ways to “re-engineer” the page, binding, and other elements of book production, leading them to assert that a book-machine has the “capacity to alter function and affect the psychological content of the fictional reality presented” (69). In a series of subsequent reports, the TRG described and critiqued various attempts by book artists and publishers to re-imagine the book form. As well as reporting on discoveries of innovative book design and how that affects reading practices, McCaffery and Nichol also created their own book objects and, in so doing, inspired subsequent generations of poets and small press publishers to “re-tool” the book-machine.

My presentation will introduce some of the TRG’s insights into the book as machine, and point out a few of Nichol and McCaffery’s own innovations, but for the most part I will consider those Canadian small press publishers and designers who emerged in the 1980s and 1990s under the influence of the TRG including: jwcurry (Curvd H&Z, 1Cent, and others), damian lopes (fingerprinting inkoperated), derek beaulieu (housepress), as well as such women poet / artists as Chris Turnbull, a. rawlings, and Jennifer LoveGrove.

Biography:

Stephen Cain teaches Avant-garde, Modern, and Contemporary Literature in the School of Arts and Letters at York University. With Tim Conley, he has written The Encyclopedia of Fictional and Fantastic Languages which has just appeared from Greenwood Press. He was the editor of a special issue of Open Letter on “The Little Literary Serial in Canada (1980-2000)” and his academic articles have appeared in Studies in Canadian Literature, Open Letter, and as chapters in the books Sound As Sense (Peter Lang, 2003) and The Canadian Modernists Meet (U of Ottawa, 2005).



Brigid Collins
Artist, illustrator, lecturer, University of Dundee, Scotland.

Abstract: “a place where thought happens…”

Reflections on the production of an Artists’ Book as a means of distilling the results of a creative collaboration and a comparison between this and the production of artworks to be used as illustrations for the publication of a lecture by the poet, Seamus Heaney.

If, as Gaston Bachelard suggests, in “The Poetics of Space” (1969), the unconscious can be described as a house, what is stored in the words and language and things that are laid down in the cellars of the poets’ unconscious “meet and move in the most unexpected ways” in a poem, according to Seamus Heaney, in his lecture “Room to Rhyme”, published by The University of Dundee (2004).

The books I will be discussing represent an investigation into my own creative process, alongside the creative process that underpins a collaboration between myself, poets, including Larry Butler and a jewellery and metalwork designer, Teena Ramsay, which has investigated ways of articulating the three-dimensional qualities of poetry, as well as attempting to create a 'home' in which each of the poems can 'dwell'. The resulting form I call a ‘Poem-House’. By taking words (lines) from the poem and placing them in this new spatial context we are, by means of a process which can be described as being highly dialogic (Bakhtim, 1981), rendering the borders of that poem more flexible. Eavan Boland has said that the poem is:

“a place, where all kinds of certainties stop. All sorts of beliefs, convictions, certainties, get left on the threshold. The poem is a place of experience and not a place of convictions.” (Boland, quoted in Schmidt, 2002)

The University publication of “Room to Rhyme” is a hardback book, containing images of ‘Poem-Houses’ I made in response to the text of Heaney’s lecture and is a traditional book form. Within the limitations of this form, I have attempted to develop a relationship with the text that goes beyond the traditional remit of illustration. Seeking, and finding, “room to rhyme” - the term used by Heaney to describe the creative process - has ramifications beyond the immediate relationship, between poet and poem, or artist and artwork. Language itself finds space to move within this territory, becoming more plastic, just as the materials of the artist are rendered more fluid, during the creative process.

The Artists’ Book, a place where thought happens…, which can be played with in the hands, houses two books (printed in gold/black duotone), within a concertina-form third book, or 'mother' structure (printed in full colour), implying this notion of 'dwelling', informed by ideas of philosopher, Heidegger, which are a central concern of the work. The nature of this interdisciplinary collaboration is thus reflected in the structure of the book and develops the idea that a poem can be given an actual three-dimensional spatial context which, rather than representing a mere interpretation of its meaning, is more an attempt at liberating it from such constraints, through the creation of a place in which it can be physically interacted with.

Both books are concerned with seeking new ways of looking at the relationship between literary text, in the form of poetry, and the structure of the book.

Biography:

Brigid Collins is an artist and a lecturer at Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art, a faculty of The University of Dundee, in Scotland. Trained as an illustrator in Dublin and Edinburgh, where she now lives, she has created both two and three-dimensional artworks, from book-jackets, posters and magazine illustrations to one-off pieces for cruise-liners such as the QM2.

In 2004, she was commissioned to create artworks for ‘Room to Rhyme’, an illustrated University of Dundee publication of a speech given by the Irish poet and Nobel Laureate, Seamus Heaney. In collaboration with poets, an architect, and a jewellery and metalwork designer, she has developed a unique three-dimensional form - the ‘Poem-House’ - one of which was awarded the Society of Scottish Women Artists (SSWA) Prize at the Visual Arts Scotland (VAS) annual exhibition (2005).

She was commissioned by The Booktrust (London) and The Scottish Booktrust to design and make the award for the inagural ‘National Short Story Prize’, 2006. A recent exhibition of her ‘Poem-Houses’ at The Open Eye Gallery, Edinburgh, in October 2006, also saw the launch of a limited edition Artists’ Book: ‘a place where thought happens…’, the aim of which has been a distillation of the process which lies behind the creation of these ‘Poem-House’ forms.



Jeanne Drewes
Chief of Binding and Collections Care at the Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.

Abstract (joint presentation with Lynn Sures):
Structural Integrity: The Design Foundation in a Collaborative Artist’s Book

This presentation will highlight the conversation needed to create an artist’s book drawing on multiple disciplines. A collaborative work of scientist Rick Potts, Smithsonian Institution and artist Lynn Sures, Corcoran College of Art + Design, will provide the basis of the discussion. The presenters, using question and answer format, will dialogue on key issues of design reflecting multiple participants involved in a designed to appeal to multiple audiences.

How do you create a cohesive integrated whole? How do you draw on the strengths of each partner in developing a finished product? How do you balance structure, text, image and ideas into a unified whole while taking each person’s personality and skills into consideration? In short, how do a scholar and artist come together to make a meaningful artist book that can appeal to both designer and scholar, reader and collector, researcher and visual artist?

Biography:

Jeanne Drewes is Chief of Binding and Collections Care at the Library of Congress. She teaches workshops on a variety of topics including bookbinding, which she taught most recently at Ghost Ranch in New Mexico. Drewes has curated book exhibitions, most notably Wrapped Words: Handmade Books from Cuba's Ediciones Vigia in 2002. Drewes lectures and publishes on a variety of library and book related topics. Her most recent writing was a book review for Artists’ Books Reviews.



Dr. Johanna Drucker
Writer, book artist and Robertson Professor of Media Studies at the University of Virginia, Charlottesville, Virginia.

Keynote Address

Abstract: Book Spaces

The physical structure of a book creates a temporal and spatial experience, but the “space” in a book is a product of relations among its elements. Cultural, social, psychological meanings and resonances are constituted in the dialogue between these literal and virtual spaces. This talk draws on examples by Michael Snow, Jan Voss, Karen Chance, and others, in relation to Marlene MacCallum’s engagement with “the uncanny”.

Biography:

Dr. Johanna Drucker is currently the Robertson Professor of Media Studies at the University of Virginia and Professor in the Department of English. In 2000, she helped establish the Speculative Computing Laboratory, a research group dedicated to exploring experimental projects in Humanities Computing. Her recent work focuses on aesthetics and digital media, particularly graphical communication and the expressive character of visual form. She is well known for her publications on the history of written forms, typography, design, and visual poetics. She has held faculty positions at Harvard University, Columbia University, Yale University and in the SUNY system, as well as the University of Texas at Dallas. She has taught a combination of applied and critical studies in visual art, graphics, and digital media. Most recently she helped craft the core curriculum in Knowledge Representation for the Master’s in Humanities Computing to be initiated at the University of Virginia in Media Studies. Her scholarly books include: Theorizing Modernism (Columbia University Press, 1994), The Visible Word: Experimental Typography and Modern Art (University of Chicago Press, 1994); The Alphabetic Labyrinth (Thames and Hudson, 1995), and The Century of Artists’ Books (Granary, 1995). Her collection, Figuring the Word, was published in November, 1998 (Granary Books). Sweet Dreams: Contemporary Art and Complicity was published by the University of Chicago Press in 2005. In addition to her scholarly work, Dr. Drucker is internationally known as a book artist and experimental, visual poet. Her work has been exhibited and collected in special collections in libraries and museums including the Getty Center for the Humanities, the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, the Marvin and Ruth Sackner Archive of Visual and Concrete Poetry, the New York Public Library, Houghton Library at Harvard University and many others. Recent titles include Narratology (1994), Prove Before Laying (1997), The Word Made Flesh (1989; 1995), The History of the/my Wor(l)d (1990; 1994), Night Crawlers on the Web (2000), Nova Reperta (JABbooks, 1999), Emerging Sentience (JABbooks 2001), the last two in collaboration with Brad Freeman. A Girl’s Life, a collaboration with painter Susan appeared from Granary Books in 2002 and Damaged Spring (Druckwerk) appeared in 2004.



Jacques Fournier
Éditions Roselin (Montréal).

Abstract: The Artist’s Book as Team Work

The history of the Artist’s Book shows it as a very open form of creation allowing many visual and aesthetics experiences. The components of the book form when challenged and rethought by artists have become a unique form of creation.

Éditions Roselin, founded 13 years ago, proposes a site of collaboration between artist, author and book designer. As a bookbinder, I invite visual artists and writers to collaborate with me in the production of artist’s books that help rethink the rapport between text and image in relation to the format that houses them and the role of its audience. I am concerned with the concept and the plan of the book as the proper locus to allow words and images to take their full development while approached and manipulated by the reader/viewer.

The collaborative contribution of the books produced this way allows for a reconsideration of the materials used, of the place and role of its various components and invites all participants — and implicitly the viewer/reader — as a contributor in the process of the creation of the book, while the process of the production and the rituals associated with making sense(s) of the book take place.

Biography:

Jacques Fournier is a bookbinder and director-founder of Éditions Roselin (1993, Montréal). In collaboration with numerous artists and authors he has produced more than 40 artist’s books that have been shown mainly in France and Belgium and more recently in the United States, his work being collected mainly in Europe. He was twice recipient of the Grand Prix des Métiers d’art du Québec (1996, 2000). In 2000, the Musée d’art de Joliette (Sylvie Alix, curator) has devoted an exhibition to his work. He is regularly invited to teach in the Masters Program at Laval University (Quebec City).



Judith Ivry
Hand bookbinder and book conservator, NYC.

Abstract (joint presentation with Susan Mills):

Book makers are often presented with challenges when making photograph albums. In this presentation we will provide an overview of a variety of album structures both new and old, and will demonstrate their method of construction through models and handouts and possibly slides.

Structures such as the 19th century stiff-board adhesive album and the atlas album are formal and period designs. Others, such as the concertina album and flat-back sewn album, are more playful and contemporary. We will address album mechanics, page treatments (hinged pages, window pages), adhesive or non-adhesive, and the different challenges practicing bookbinders encounter when constructing albums for a range of applications. We will also address issues concerned in dealing with the digital page.

Models built to display various stages of construction will allow participants to view the sequence of operations leading to the finished album.

Biography:

Judith Ivry is a hand bookbinder and book conservator in New York City. She studied bookbinding at The London College of Printing and has taught at The Center for Book Arts and The New School in New York and with the Guild of Bookworkers.



Micah Lexier
Visual artist, New York City.

Abstract: Book-Like

Book-Like will be an illustrated artist’s talk in which I will address my relationship to books, both as a maker and as a collector. I have made many sculptures that are influenced by books including a large number of works based on illustrations found in children’s dictionary, an ongoing series based on quotes, and, most explicitly, a series called Book Sculpture, made in 1993. I have also designed a number of catalogues of my work that I consider bookworks and have produced many boxed multiples that have a book-like sensibility. As well, I am a collector of books and my interests run from books with unusual fore-edge printing, to books with significant provenance or evocative titles, to out of print publications of the conceptual and minimalist movements. It is my intention to give an informal talk in which I will address all these subjects, illustrated with images of each of each of the objects.

Biography:

Micah Lexier is a Canadian artist now based in New York City. He was born and raised in Winnipeg, educated in Halifax and lived in Toronto. He has participated in numerous international group exhibitions including Speed at the Whitechapel Art Gallery, London and The Time of Our Lives at the New Museum, New York. Lexier’s work is in many private, corporate and public collections including The British Museum in London, The Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney, The Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto and The National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa. He is represented in Toronto by Birch Libralato, in Calgary by Trépanier Baer, in New York by the Jack Shainman Gallery and in Berlin by the Gitte Weise Galerie.





Marlene MacCallum
Artist, Professor, Visual Arts Program, Sir Wilfred Grenfell College.

Abstract: Recto-Verso: Reading the Strangely Familiar

This illustrated presentation will begin with an examination of selected works by ten contemporary artists that utilize constructive approaches to create imagery that manifests the impact of the uncanny in representations of architectural spaces. These select examples, as well as related writings, will be used to explore some of the ways in which a visual equivalence of the uncanny is initiated. The focus will be on the domestic space as a site of perceptual disruption or disturbance and the recurrence of the bedroom and the window as potent image themes. The presentation will then shift into a discussion of the evolution of the Townsite House book. The broader concepts of image construction will be applied to the structural investigations used to develop this specific book work. The maquettes will be used to illustrate how images, text and book structure are intertwined in order to provide the viewer with a reading experience that echoes the strangely familiar phenomenon that underlies the Townsite House book. The maquettes also provide insight into the process of gathering, editing, discarding and rebuilding that is fundamental to working with a sequentially based form.

Biography:

Marlene MacCallum is an artist and teacher living and working in Corner Brook, Newfoundland and Labrador since 1990. She has been teaching visual arts at the university level since 1985 and is currently a Professor in the Visual Arts Program of Sir Wilfred Grenfell College, Memorial University of Newfoundland. She received her BFA degree in Studio Arts in 1981 from Concordia University, Montreal, Quebec and her MVA degree in Printmaking in 1984 from the University of Alberta, Edmonton. Between 1985 and 2006, she exhibited prints and book works in more than 75 solo, invited and juried group exhibitions in 13 countries. She has been a visiting artist and lecturer in Canada, the United States, Northern Ireland and Brazil. In 1996, she was an artist in residence at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia. Selected awards include Honorable Mention at the Atlanta Book Prize, Nexus Contemporary Art Center, Atlanta, Georgia in 2000 for the book work Domestic Arcana and Grand Prize Winner for the “Biennale Internationale d’Estampe Contemporaine de Trois-Rivières” in 1999 for a group of photogravure prints. Her works are held in over 25 public collections in the Canada, the UK and United States. Marlene MacCallum has been making photogravure prints since 1994. She began researching the process in 1993 along with her husband, David Morrish. As a result of this research, they published Copper Plate Photogravure: Demystifying the Process in 2003 (Focal Press).



Cynthia Marsh
Professor, Art & Design, Director, Goldsmith Press & Rare Type Collection, Austin Peay State University.

Abstract: Song of the South - a discussion about the unique social, religious, political, and cultural traditions that inform contemporary book arts in the rural South (USA).

The roots of creative letterpress printing and the handcrafted artist’s book sink deep into Southern soil. The literary tradition of the Fugitive Poets, the fire and brimstone evangelical broadsides, the self-publishing ventures of Utopian Societies, and rollicking country music billboards adorn the Southern landscape.

Song of the South will uncover and present a number of long-standing Southern traditions. Connections will be made between the rich cultural history of this region the work of contemporary Southern book artists and presses (examples: Susan Leeb, Clifton Meador, Amos Kennedy, Cynthia Thompson, Hoopsnake Press, the Goldsmith Press, Tennarkippi Press, Speakeasy Press, Hatch Show Print and Paradise Press). Can a body of work ever really shed the place where it was born? Perhaps, but once you have dos y dos (ed) with the way of the South, disregarding such a place becomes near impossible.

Biography:

Cynthia Marsh is a narrative artist and the director of the Goldsmith Press & Rare Type Collection at Austin Peay State University. With a BFA degree from Moore College of Art (Philadelphia) and an MFAdegree in printmaking and commercial printing from Rochester Institute of Technology, Cynthia operated an illustration and print studio in Los Angeles from 1975-1995. She won numerous national awards and has been featured in publications both here and in Japan. Cynthia has been on the faculty of UCLA, California State University Northridge, and Otis College of Art and Design. She is currently professor of art + design at Austin Peay State University in Clarksville, Tenn.



Shauna McCabe
Poet, Director of The Rooms Provincial Art Gallery, St. John’s, NL, Plenary session moderator.

Biography:

Shauna McCabe is the Director of The Rooms Provincial Art Gallery in St. John's, Newfoundland and was recently appointed Canada Research Chair in Critical Theory in the Interpretation of Culture at Mount Allison University. McCabe studied at literature, film and communication studies at McGill University and Simon Fraser University. She completed her doctoral research at the University of British Columbia where she explored critical landscape aesthetics in contemporary art. She has produced numerous exhibitions and interdisciplinary research projects, such as Intangible Evidence (2006), Curb Appeal (2005), Beauty Queens (2004), Littoral Documents (2004) and Between Earth & Sky (in knowing one, one will know the other): Geoffrey Hendricks (2003). Recent public installations include what you will think of (2004) and stream/shore (2005). Her collection of poetry, ancient motel landscape, was published by Broken Jaw Press in 2005.



Ted McLachlan
Landscape architect, Professor, University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, Manitoba.

Abstract: Indeterminacy and the Uncanny – a Paradox in Suburban Culture?

When we restrict indeterminacy we deny the essence of being human, of being part of the web of life on this planet. The suburban culture that we are creating lives in fear of the unknown – the unpredictable – the indeterminate. The uncanny associations of art and dialog that get at the heart of the issue are resisted. Our landscape is a book to be read, a representation of our culture, yet we blanket ourselves from this. Reality creeps in and invades the edges. We know that nature will take over but we choose to forget.

Biography:

Ted McLachlan is a Professor in the Department of Landscape Architecture at the University of Manitoba where he has taught for the past 25 years. Re-connecting children and adults with the cultural and natural landscapes of our prairie region has been his primary concern. Through his teaching, research and photography he has focused on a variety of themes that celebrate the unique relationship between people and the prairie landscape. These themes include biodiversity and the reinsertion of urban nature, historic settlement patterns, landscapes of ruin and ethnic cemeteries. Currently Ted is working in the medium of photogravure to create a series entitled Portfolios of Place.



Susan Mills
Hand bookbinder and book artist, NYC, New York.

Abstract (joint presentation with Judith Ivry):

Please refer to the entry for Judith Ivry for the full abstract.

Biography:

Susan Mills is a hand bookbinder and book artist in New York City. She teaches bookbinding at NSCAD University and at Cooper Union and at workshops throughout North America - including one for students at SWGC several years ago. She is on the board of directors at The Center for Book Arts in New York.



jake moore
Artist, Visiting Assistant Professor, Sir Wilfred Grenfell College.

Abstract: Volumes

this presentation will look at wittgenstein's analogy of language to city, perret's metaphor of the building as a bottle, and object nature of language since gutenberg, (nod to mcluhan) and the implied sonorofics of thought extant in the material world referencing my own studio practice.

Biography:

montreal based artist, jake moore, works with large-scale installation and immersive environments, exhibiting at The Walter Phillips Gallery, The Canadian Museum for Textiles, The Winnipeg Art Gallery, Ace Art Inc, and numerous site-specific locations. A recipient of many awards and scholarships from the Canada Council to SSHRC, moore’s practice continues to maintain a DIY aesthetic focusing on the amplification of voices not easily heard and the reinvestigation of mythologies and hegemonics.



Robin Price
Artist, letterpress printer, and publisher, Connecticut.

Abstract: Chance and Randomness in Contemporary Book Arts

A presentation of the diverse approaches taken by contemporary book artists who utilize chance within the concept of their work. Legacies such as the Surrealists and John Cage will be discussed. (For reference, please see Ampersand Summer 2005 issue.)

Artist Presentation: The Joy of Collaboration: Two Decades of Robin Price, Publisher

Workshop: (1) Chance (2) Choice (3) Repeat

Mixing chance and choice, working in an ensemble, and working solo: We will use pre-printed sheets as palimpsest and springboard for one-of-a-kind handmade artists’ books. We will explore the integration of text and imagery, using screenprinting, collage (with drymount press), and paper manipulations. Chance operations inspired by Jean Arp, John Cage, and the state of the internet on March 7, 2007 will be suggested, with participants deciding the final strategy. An invitation to select books from the college library will precede the workshop.

Biography:

Robin Price is an artist, letterpress printer, and publisher who creates artists’ books, primarily in limited edition, that are collected and exhibited internationally. She has a passion for making books by hand, with extensive diversity in content and form. To this end, she seeks out contemporary artists, writers, and artisans with whom to collaborate, striving for synergistic books. She has worked with authors such as Amy Bloom, Yusef Komunyakaa, and the late William Everson, the musician Pepe Romero, and artists Barbara Benish, Daniel E. Kelm, and Joyce Cutler Shaw. The work of the press has become a kind of lifelong, interdisciplinary liberal arts education. A favorite area of exploration is the use of chance in creative work; several recent works involve elements of chance in their concept and/or execution. 2009 marks the twenty-five year anniversary of the press.

Collections include The British Library, The Getty Center for the Arts and Humanities, Harvard University Houghton Library, Library of Congress Rare Books and Special Collections, Metropolitan Toronto Reference Library Special Collections, National Library of Medicine, New York Public Library Rare Books Division and the Performing Arts Library at Lincoln Center, Ruth and Marvin Sackner Archive of Concrete and Visual Poetry, Smithsonian Museum of American Art Library, and The Wellcome Institute Library in London. Clients for commission work include the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery, UCLA, University of Connecticut, and photographer Sean Kernan.



Lisa Robertson
Poet and writer, Paris.

Biography (from Wikipedia):

In 1979, Lisa Robertson moved to British Columbia, where she remained for twenty-three years. During her time there, she was a member of The Kootenay School of Writing, which is a non-profit society that offers an alternative to the mainstream pedagogy of most Canadian universities. Although it is not necessarily acknowledged as much as her ties to The Kootenay School of Writing, she is integrally involved in Vancouver’s art scene. Robertson was a member of the Artspeak Gallery. She has written on and reviewed exhibitions and pieces by Kelly Wood, Robert Garcet, and Billy Haines, among others. She has also written on architecture, as well as sites in British Columbia, such as New Brighton Park and Value Village. Robertson contributed to the “Beneath the Pavilions” column in Mix from 1997-1999. She co-edited the poetry journal Raddle Moon with Susan Clark in Vancouver, and has worked as an arts journalist, a copy editor, an astrologer, a guest lecturer, and an essayist. She has written on the work of Robin Blaser, Denise Riley, Dionne Brand, Peter Culley, Ted Berrigan, John Clare, and Albertine Sarrazin. In 2006, she was a judge of the Griffin Poetry Prize. Robertson is currently Holloway poet-in-residence at UC Berkeley.

Her work is a deep questioning of language, history and gender that can help a reader to feel the world as constructed by words in new ways, sometimes uncomfortable, often beautiful. She intentionally alters her writing style for each book-length work, although tends to not to stray too far from the form of the sentence and the issue of civic referentiality. Robertson refers to pronouns and self-referentiality as masques or puppets. Many poets and writers have influenced Robertson. She has mentioned Djuna Barnes, Mina Loy, the French feminists, Marguerite Duras, Nicole Brossard, Erin Moure, Gail Scott, Lyn Hejinian, Susan Howe, bpNichol, Steve McCaffery, and Charles Bernstein.

One of her best known works, The Weather was written following her six-month Judith E Wilson visiting fellowship at the University of Cambridge. Variously described by others as a collection of poems inspired by BBC shipping forecasts, Wordsworths’s The Prelude based upon a poetics derived from British metereology and its importance in contemporary culture and history, Robertson herself suggests “the weather” can refer to culture-specific customs, the problematic concepts of the universal, sincerity, friendship, the constitution of the English subject, and the historical merging of Romantic conceptions of identity and language. In preparation for its completion, she researched pastoral poetry, metereological prose, and Anglo-centric subjectivity, guided by authors like Wordsworth, Reverend Blomefield, Luke Howard, Thomas Forster, Aikin, Aratus, John Constable, and William Cobbett.



Lisa Beth Robinson
Book artist and instructor, East Carolina University, Greenville, North Carolina.

Abstract: The Structural Troika of Metaphor and Reading in the Artist’s Book

The formal, physical, and material structures of artist’s books are not mutually exclusive. In the creation of an artist’s book, any of these could be used as the initial construct from which the rest of the idea, meaning, and form develop. Depending on which construct the artist chooses the reading experience and interpretation of the metaphor is altered. For example, an unconventional material will affect the physical parameters of the structure and in turn allow the artist to transform the read metaphor from something literal to a more figurative interpretation, much like poetry. If the artist were to begin with an innovative physical structure such as the Jacob’s ladder, the book might function as a house that expands itself or a house with secret passageways and rooms that are only revealed when sought out. Additionally, an uncanny structure or use of materials can function as a physical manifestation of the act of reading by presenting a non-linear form through which the reader moves with all senses alight. As in design and architecture, the artist may face an issue of sustainability: how to work and re-work an idea, how to present metaphor, and how to steer the audience’s reading without depleting or permanently damaging the resource. A mature artist likely has a sophisticated visual vocabulary; by integrating more than one of the structural elements into the book, meaning and the reading experience are transformed from a linear, vessel-based experience to a simultaneously sensual, intellectual, multi-dimensional interaction.

Biography:

Lisa Beth Robinson received her MFA and MLIS at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where she worked at Tandem Press and at the Kohler Art Library under the supervision of Bill Bunce. She teaches Book Arts and Foundations courses at East Carolina University, Greenville, North Carolina. Her bookwork incorporates alternative structures and natural materials as well as fine printing.



Jamie Runnells
Assistant Professor of Graphic Design, Mississippi State University, Starkville, Mississippi.

Abstract: Beautiful Books Digitally

Digitally produced books don’t seem to be taken as seriously as books produced by traditional techniques. While there are as many reasons for this bias as there are book artists, one clear reason is that digitally produced work often results in poor image/type quality (unintentional bitmapping, pixilation, line or moiré patterns, “jaggies,” etc.). The result of technically flawed digital work is that the content and binding of the piece are overshadowed and the viewer focuses only on its poor craftsmanship. Certainly not all digitally created books are poorly crafted, but those pieces that are don’t add credibility to the medium. This 20-minute presentation will hopefully eliminate some of the basic technical flaws common to digitally created/printed books by providing guidelines for input and output as well as discussing paper considerations. Images and examples will be included.

Biography:

Jamie Runnells is an Assistant Professor of Graphic Design at Mississippi State University. Her books have been shown at National and International juried exhibitions. Her freelance design work has been honored with numerous ADDY awards and most recently been seen if PRINT magazine’s 2006 Regional Design Annual.



Lynn Sures
Artist and educator, Wheaton MD.

Abstract (joint presentation with Jeanne Drewes):
Structural Integrity: The Design Foundation in a Collaborative Artist’s Book

Please refer to the entry for Jeanne Drewes for the full abstract.

Biography:

Lynn Sures works in Wheaton, MD, USA in two- and three-dimensions. Her work often addresses the dynamic of the landscape, in its scale, undulation, color and texture. Lynn lectures and demonstrates at many international symposia, offers workshops, and has curated several national exhibitions, including Built by Hand — the Book as Art. Recent solo exhibitions of her art include Lynn Sures: Body Art at the medieval Fortezza Medicea Girifalco di Cortona, Italy; and Lynn Sures: Architecture, at Sandler-Hudson Gallery in Atlanta, Georgia. Her work is in collections including the US Department of State, Yale University, and the American Museum of Papermaking. In 2006 she was an "American Artist Abroad" in Colombo, Sri Lanka, to lecture on her work and to demonstrate, as a representative of the Art in Embassies Program. In 2005 Lynn created a large-scale pulp painting for “Paper Now-2005” in Kyoto, Japan. She was awarded a 2006 Artist Award from the Sugarman Foundation, a legacy of the monumental sculptor George Sugarman. She worked on papermaking during a 2006 residency in Fabriano, Italy. She is on the BFA faculty of the Corcoran College of Art & Design in Washington, DC; and the MFA faculty of the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, PA. In 2005 she was Visiting Artist in Residence in the Graduate program at Columbia College Chicago Center for Book and Paper Arts.



Karen Trask
Visual artist, Montreal.

Abstract: Reading in Bed

I propose a 40 minute presentation of my work focusing primarily on a recent interdisciplinary project. This installation-performance entitled, Lit de Proust: en attente d’un baiser (Proust’s Bed: waiting for a kiss) was presented off-site in a small building in a garden, June, 2006 through the artist centre, DARE-DARE, Montreal. Visitors found the alley location of this installation with the help of the map printed on the invitation card.

Ideas I will draw out in this presentation:

Briefly, this work involved making a daybed similar to the one in Marcel Proust’s bedroom. For over the period of a year or more, I read la recherche de temps perdu, by Marcel Proust. The objective of the project was to create a bed imprinted with the artist (Proust and myself) as both reader and author.

Proust suffered from severe asthma and spent the last years of his life writing from bed. Inspired by the book and by his life, I made special papers from linen fibres for printing selections from the book by ink-jet printer. Once printed, the papers were sewn together like a crazy quilt to cover the mattresses of the bed. Other objects in the installation include a chair, a pillow, two silkscreens on glass and a bound book containing excerpts from a journal I kept during this period.

Biography:

My creative process has developed as a series of poetic investigations exploring human experience through language. It is the ephemeral and transitory nature of words and language which interests me specifically. In my work, the artist book is presented as a physical space to be entered by the viewer. The resulting works in artist books, installation, performance and video propose an intimate relationship investigating time and space.



Gail Tuttle
Director, Sir Wilfred Grenfell College Art Gallery.

Abstract:

Gail Tuttle will provide a curator's tour of the exhibition The Architectural Uncanny. She will discuss the Townsite House project and its relationship to Marlene MacCallum’s comprehensive body of work.

Biography:

The Gallery Director at Sir Wilfred Grenfell College since 1998, Gail Tuttle is an art historian and curator with a research and publications specialty in early and contemporary performance art, and a comprehensive background in art of the twentieth century. She received her M.A. in History in Art form the University of Victoria in 1994. Since 1990 she has organized and curated numerous visual art projects for galleries and arts organizations in British Columbia, Alberta and Newfoundland and Labrador, and has written extensively for arts journals and academic publications. She served as editor and project coordinator for the following exhibition catalogues published by Sir Wilfred Grenfell College Art Gallery: Manifest, 1998, Janet Werner, 1998, Dancing on a Plate: Performance and Installation by Rita McKeough, 2000, Martyrs Murder: An Installation by Diana Thorneycroft, 2003,and as curator and contributor to the publications Merchants, Mariners and the Northern Seas and Artists of the Western Coast, 1999. She has moderated numerous successful symposiums for Sir Wilfred Grenfell College, the Western Front Society and Open Space Gallery and has lectured widely on contemporary art issues.



Janine Wong
Professor of Design, book artist, graphic designer, architect, College of Visual and Performing Arts, University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth.

Abstract: Hybrid Printmaking for the Book Arts

Changes in available print media

Together with old and new technologies, artists and designers are developing new, more expressive approaches to the form of book arts. These new processes have been developed and modified by the printing industry. Cost of material, the processes of production and the impact on the environment are some reasons why we have new materials to work with. These materials and practices provide the artists and designers new potential in printing and book design. However, these contemporary means we have reflect the compilation of methods produced by previous generations.

Emergence of New Print Processes

Along with the innovations in overall technology, means by which books are produced are almost nearly as numerous. But these new modes of printing do not receive the recognition that other innovations receive. Many of the latest changes in book production do not require the large space, complex steps, and ecological worry that other older, more traditional processes do. Instead of the standard "LaserJet" many other alternatives are available for one's use.

Overall Benefit

These methods using hybrid technologies are used by the artist to push the known limits of bookmaking into new realms of questions, developments, and exploration.

Biography:

Janine Wong is a book artist, graphic designer, and registered architect. She currently teaches design and artist's books at University of Massachusetts Dartmouth. Her work is represented in several collections including the Harnett Museum of Art at the University of Richmond, Brown University, and the University of California Santa Barbara. She is a recipient of a Regional NEA Award and was a Visiting Artist at the American Academy in Rome.



Ewa Monika Zebrowski
Artist / photographer, Montréal, Québec.

Abstract: A Circle of Poets: Joseph Brodsky, Robert Frost and Mark Strand

Since 1997 my work has evolved from the world of documentary photography to the realm of narrative images. In my work there is an intersection between language and image, the images inform the written word and vice versa. My photographic work has often been inspired by literature. In the last few years the work of Robert Frost, Joseph Brodsky, and Mark Strand have influenced my way of seeing, bringing me inspiration.

remembering brodsky and Poetry in the Landscape: The Robert Frost Trail are the first two works in a trilogy of three artist’s books: three works: three poets. Joseph Brodsky, Robert Frost and Mark Strand are monumental figures in the world of poetry. Joseph Brodsky, a Russian poet, lived in exile in the United States for some thirty years, received the Nobel Prize in 1989 and was Poet Laureate from 1991-1992. Mark Strand, born in Prince Edward Island, received the Pulitzer Prize in 1999 and the Wallace Stevens Award in 2004. Robert Frost read at the inauguration of John Fitzgerald Kennedy and is the only poet to have received the Pulitzer Prize on four occasions: 1924, 1931, 1937 and 1943. The lives of Joseph Brodsky, Robert Frost and Mark Strand were linked in imagery and in spirit. Mark knew Joseph and Joseph admired Frost. Mark wrote a text for my artist’s book on Joseph, remembering brodsky. A circle of poets.

For me, their work resonates and moves my imagination. I translate their written words into images, representations of a state of mind: Venetian vicoli, New England paths, Hopper-like landscapes, creating my own artist’s books which pay tribute to each of them. My books are small, the images are intimate and the text is integral. I interpret their words with images thus adding another dimension to the poetry. Their words lead me to explore an inner and an outer landscape, my own work representing a sense of place and time passing, my artistic process being nurtured by their poetry.

I have created three small books, a series which brings together these three poets that have added so much to the literary landscape of the English language. The images are small and intimate: black and white for Brodsky and Frost, colour for Strand (as Mark Strand is the poet who is still alive / a living poet). My three books pay homage to them, or their work has led me to discover my own voice.

Biography:

Ewa Monika Zebrowski was born in London, England. She grew up in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, graduated from Helen Bush School in Seattle, Washington, and obtained her B.A. from Occidental College in Los Angeles. After a brief teaching career, Ms. Zebrowski began to work actively in the film industry in 1975. She worked in both film production and marketing as well as organizing various film-related workshops and conferences in Canada and abroad until 1997 when she began her BFA in photography. Ms. Zebrowski completed her BFA in Photography at Concordia University, Montréal in 2001, and in 2003 obtained her MA in Visual Arts at the Université du Québec à Montréal.

Ms. Zebrowski has had eight solo shows: Building the Arch (1998), A Landscape in Transformation (1999), le mois de la photo, Celebration of Place: Chateaufort Community Garden (2001), le mois de la photo, remembering & forgetting (2002), at the window (2003) and most recently, remembering brodsky (2004), albergo (2005) and vedute di venezia (2007). She has participated in numerous group shows including two shows in New York. Her clients include the City of Montréal, the Cirque du Soleil as well as various publishers and magazines, including McClelland & Stewart, XYZ Editeur, Goose Lane Editions, McGill-Queen’s University Press, Eden Entertainment, Geist, Elle Québec, Chatelaine, and Coup de Pouce.

Her artist’s book, remembering brodsky, completed in 2004, was recently acquired for the collections of the Bibliothèque Nationale du Québec, the National Library of Canada, Columbia University, Wellesley College, Smith College, the University of Washington and various private collectors in Canada and the United States.

Both remembering brodsky and Poetry in the Landscape: The Robert Frost Trail will be featured in an exhibit of artist’s books, Works with Paper: Artists’ Books, at the University of the South , Sewanee, Tennessee in November 2006.

In June 2006, tanto tempo senza notizie de te, a lyrical/fictional six foot long photographic work, was added to the permanent collection of the Musee d’Art Contemporain in Montréal.

Ewa Monika Zebrowski has been invited to participate in the 5th Biennale Orizzonte Quebec with a presentation lecture, Un Circolo di Poeti, to be given at the Galleria Grazia Neri in Milan, Italy on November 27, 2006.

Ewa Zebrowski lives in Montréal with her husband and two sons. She is represented in Montréal by the gallery, Art Mûr and by the agency, 2M2.





Image credits:

  1. Marlene MacCallum in collaboration with Barb Hunt, pink story: sinistral/dextral (view of sinistral, unfolded). Two volume hand bound book work enclosed in a wrapper. 2004. Photography by David Morrish.
  2. Marlene MacCallum, Townsite House Book (views of inside back cover and cover embossment). Maquette. 2006. Photography by David Morrish.
  3. Marlene MacCallum, Townsite House - Stairs. Toned fiber based silver gelatine prints. 2006.
  4. Marlene MacCallum, Obvert. Hand bound bookwork with letterpress and photogravure. 1997.



Sir Wilfred Grenfell College Art Gallery
Fine Arts Building, University Drive
Corner Brook, NL    A2H 6P9
Telephone: 709-637-6209
http://www.swgc.ca/artgallery/
Gallery Hours: Tuesday to Saturday, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m.
Free admission. Group tours arranged by request.

We gratefully acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts.
Nous remercions de son soutien le Conseil des Arts du Canada.