MCBA/Jerome Foundation fellowships

It's been so beastly cold lately (-11 this morning) that I think I've only left the house in the last week for food, work-related activities and the celebration of Jody Williams' award. I did pick up some new Chiyogami at Wet Paint and hope to make some boxes this week to sell at MCBA's shop.

Yesterday, MCBA sent out an email reminder that the February round table was last night and that it would be focused on presentations from the five MCBA/Jerome Foundation fellows for this year. Every other year, the Jerome Foundation partners with MCBA to provide grants for emerging Minnesota book artists. (In the off years, Jerome and MCBA partner to provide funding for book arts mentorships, an effort to encourage artists working in other media to learn more about book arts.)
About 14 people braved the cold last night to hear these artists talk about their past work and the process they are following to create their new work, funded by the fellowship. There are four projects and five fellows. Regula Russelle and CB Sherlock (who couldn't make the round table) are partnering on a public art project called "Sidewalk Folios." Four Twin City neighborhoods will be chosen and each will have five simple boxes (much like the "take-one" boxes of pamphlets on coffee house bulletin boards) of letter-press printed poetry available. The individual can find one poem on its own, or all five and create a "book" from these free and unexpected gems. These letterpress poems move from their usual home in the studio or gallery to the street, and hopefully become less "precious" because they become available to anybody.
I've known Regula for years (we took our first box class together in the old MCBA building) and I always find her inspiring. She and CB have produced some lovely books together and even though they work hard to make them price-accessible, they are not inexpensive. Moving from fine letterpress to public art is a huge leap for the two of them, but one that I'm very excited to see.
I didn't know the other three artists, and that made their presentations even more interesting to me. It was fascinating to hear their process (often very intuitive and totally non-linear). And the group assembled had great suggestions for next steps, or constructive feedback on particular obstacles that the artist was struggling with.
These grants and the roundtable are another reminder to me of how strong our cities' artist communities are. Of course, we can complain that they should be stronger but these five artists have all been encouraged to take a big step forward in their work thanks to MCBA and the Jerome Foundation.

Need + desire=Joy

I nearly swooned when I first saw the Apple iPhone. I am a total sucker for Apple's design ethos. Then they layer on nearly intuitive programming and I'm ready to drink the Apple kool-aid. David Pogue (from the NYT) agrees:

But when the phone came out last summer I wasn't working, my own cell functioned well and need for the sweet device was nearly "0," even if desire was strong (click on chart to see details). The extra cost of the ATT network and the reports of its poor network performance kept me smart. A friend thought I would cave pretty quickly, but I hung back even if I did read (obsessively?) every mac rumor and post about the iPhone. In September, Apple introduced the iPod Touch...an iPod player with Safari (a web browser) but without the phone and I looked a little closer. But still the need was pretty low. This January they added the Mail program and it began to really make sense for my new work life. I'm out on the streets looking for a job and I often miss having my contacts and calendar in one place. And I've become incredibly dependent on using the internet for, well, for almost everything. My destiny was clear. In the words of David Pogue (see the video) "I want an iTouch." And when I made the final decision to get one on Thursday, I'm proud to say that I did not jump in the car immediately to go and get it, but waited until I was at the mall on Saturday to bring it home.

Isn't it pretty?

Art Distraction Disorder

Sometimes I think I have a new form of ADD, maybe something I'll call Art Distraction Disorder. It's Sunday and my day is pretty open to me. The perfect opportunity to work on some boxes or a book I have in mind, yes? No. Instead there are a whole new slew of techniques and ideas I want to try.
Embroidery has been on my mind a lot. I stumbled across this blog yesterday and it turned my interest up another notch. I went to my bookshelf and refound this incredible book: The Art of Embroidery by Francoise Tellier-Loumagne...over 300 pages of remarkable photos, ideas and techniques. It's published by Thames and Hudson, a company that publishes books that are just beautifully done...they are wonderful to hold in your hand.
But that's not all. My favorite way to organize papers to keep is by assembling a binder with sheet protectors inside that can hold my papers by topic. But I really hate the poly-vinyl binders that are ubiquitous and have been searching high and low for binders covered in cloth. In my online search I stumbled on instructions for purchasing a binder at a thrift store, cutting it apart and recovering it in material of your choice. So I have the 3 parts of a binder on my table waiting.....
What else? I've been using a roll of Kozo paper for a number of different tasks lately. I bought it first with the idea of using it to back fabrics for bookcloth. Then I found it was a great paper to back the pieces of a box that are hidden. (This is a technical thing. When you glue one side of bookboard, it can warp from the moisture. Backing the other side with paper and glue reverses the warp and makes sure it won't warp again in high humidity. Since it's not seen you don't want to waste "good" paper; you also want to use something thin. I should also add that not everyone does this. But I've learned through enough, um, failures that I can't skip this step.) Finally when I wanted to include some text in my boxes I cut the Kozo into pieces small enough to go through my ink jet printer. The quality of the paper compliments the rest of the materials used and is cheap enough that I can experiment with it easily. It also glues beautifully. So that leads to other ideas: goccoing some original designs on the paper? can it hold stitches? And I stumbled across a very cool way to melt designs into this paper using encaustic wax. As I said, "Art Distraction Disorder." I just can't settle down and work in one area very long.

A recent box with a poem by Mary Oliver inside the lid.

Situations

Begats and Begets, Jennifer Hibbard

MCBA opened a new show in its gallery two weeks ago, entitled Situations, an exhibition of book-inspired installation art, and I think it's one of my favorite exhibits that the center has done. MCBA Artistic Director, Jeff Rathermel, writes the following to explain these wonderful installations and their relationship to book art: "All (of these) works have content: they tell a story, express an idea, or speak of art traditions. Each has a narrative to be interpreted by viewers/readers. Each work is contained, either physically or allegorically. Whether elements are "bound" by a set of rafters or unified in a bowl, the space of each piece is defined. Drawers become pages, cabinets function as covers, pins serve to bind and walls evolve into spines."
I've always been drawn to book work that uses nontraditional materials to tell a story, and particularly when I'm invited into the work to do my own explorations. The centerpiece of this exhibit is the cabinet/collaboration Hand-to-Hand.
54 artists were invited to take a drawer and create a visual narrative on the them of "hands." Each drawer is labeled with the title and you can gently open it yourself to reveal what is inside. If a drawer has a metal hand on the outside, you can actually manipulate the contents yourself.

Nora McGillvray's drawer with the text, "A book should be a ball of light in one's hand." A drawer with Kathleen Richert's On the One Hand (closed)

and open....the plexiglass hands slide to create different visual pages.

Alice Austin's Red, Yellow and Blue is a wall installation made up of 49 prints of the same book.

There are 14 works throughout the center. It was only when I got home that I realized that I had missed two that are in the lower level press area and one that was in the paper studio. The exhibition runs through the end of April, which gives me time to go hunt the missed works out as well as to explore more of the drawers in Hand-to-Hand.

JFK

My literacy class was talking about presidents on coins yesterday. (I had to laugh to myself when they thought Clinton was on a coin. No matter which Clinton they were referring to, it's unlikely that that will ever happen.) When they got to the 50-cent piece, we started talking about John F Kennedy. Without giving away my age, let's just say I'm old enough to remember his assassination and funeral. However, the class teacher was telling our group that her mother remembers when he was shot and how horrible that was. I think my mouth must have gaped for a moment as I realized how old I really am. I spend so much time with people of all ages that I forget we have different memories.
And speaking of literacy, have you ever tried to teach anyone to tell time using a clock face? Try explaining why 15 minutes after the hour has the long hand pointing to a 3.

Frozen in New York

I love this.