We're really excited this week to present a talk with four of our five artists-in-residence from 2009; Terry Boddie, Gautam Kansara, Shani Peters and James Walsh will each present recent work related to their residencies here at the Center. Please join us on Wednesday, May 19th at 6:30pm for this stimulating discussion.
Each year the Center invited five contemporary artists with no background in book arts to explore bookmaking using the resources and facilities at the Center. Artists are provided with a stipend, materials budget, workshops on bookmaking and unlimited access to the studios for a year.
Residents this year worked on a wide range of projects: from sculptural experiments in the book form, to codex editions, books embedded with mp3-players, posters, prints and books with video. Our residency program is designed to promote experimentation in book arts, and to make links between the traditional techniques that we teach and the contemporary role and practices of the artist.
In this way, we all end up learning more about the ways books relate to other kinds of artistic productions. I like to think of the Center as a social hub for the various groups of people interested in making, looking at and talking about books and print culture, and inviting a new group of artists to come in and add their contribution to the mix of perspectives is one of the things that keeps the community alive in the studios.
I hope you can join us on Wednesday; if not, you can check out the exhibition that's currently up in our studio galleries of the work of all of our 2009 residents, which will be on view through June 26th.
