Broadside

Broadside, a photo by Center for Book Arts on Flickr.

Kimberly McClure's broadside for Paolo Javier, hot off the press and waiting to be trimmed. Come to tomorrow night's reading at the Center at 6:30 and you can take one home with you! Javier will be reading with Corina Copp, hosted by Anselm Berrigan. Tomorrow night, October 26th, 6:30pm.

Blackletter Variations

Join us in November for master calligrapher Karen Gorst's new class in Black Letter Variations. Black Letter and its variations, shunned in post WWII era as the black sheep of typography, are now the height of fashion, appearing on popular clothing and advertising.

Used in manuscripts and documents throughout Western Europe for centuries, this script form developed many different forms in different countries, and especially became associated with Germanic countries. Black letter script forms were adapted over the years to metal printing type, and eventually to digital fonts. These days, black letter is enjoying a moment in the sun. If you're looking for exciting samples of black letter in use, take a look at Fraktur Mon Amour, designer Judith Schalansky's love letter to black letter typography. 
 
For the calligraphy student, black letter, known for its straight, rhythmic small letters and contrasting flamboyant capitals, is the perfect first lettering style to learn. The disciplined letter bodies are adorned by free-flowing flourishes and provide a platform for both beginning and advanced students to explore the swash and rhythmic dance of the broad edged pen. Those who have studied broad edged pen calligraphy before can focus on letter variations or chose to learn one of ten different calligraphy styles.

Karen Gorst is a calligrapher, manuscript illuminator and book artist who has been practicing her craft for more than 20 years. A co-founder of the Gabriel Guild, she is a visiting instructor and lecturer at many institutions, including the Pierpont Morgan Library, the Penland School of Crafts, the Craft Students League, the Cloisters and Wellesley College.

Register now and secure your slot in our five week exploration of all things black letter! Time is running out; complete registration details are here. Class starts promptly on November 8th and runs for five Tuesday evenings at 6:30pm.

A visit to Dobbin Mill

On Saturday, October 15, on the Greenpoint/Williamsburg boarder, members at the Friend level and above of the Center visited the studios and home of Robbin Ami Silverberg and Andras Böröcz.   Guests toured Dobbin Mill where Robbin makes her own handmade paper. The tour also included a visit to her garden where plants are grown to be converted into raw material for papermaking.  The group also toured Andras's and Robbin's studios, where both shared and explained several new works.  Guests enjoyed a lovely reception in their home that was graciously sponsored by Osteria Il Paiolo, a local favorite restaurant, at 106 North 6^th Street.

This event is one in series of private events for members at the Friend ($100) level and above. The next tour will be in January at the private Library of David S. Rose. If you would like to upgrade your membership and become a Friend so you may enjoy these free activities, please contact the Center at (212) 481-0295

Collective Bookmaking at the Reanimation Library

Coming up next month: A unique opportunity to use the resources of the Reanimation Library to produce a collective artist book. Please join us for this exciting bookmaking experiment!

On November 5-6, The Center will hold a two-day workshop in Collective Bookmaking with the Reanimation Library. Participants will spend Saturday at the Library in Brooklyn with Founder Andrew Beccone, where they will devise the physical and conceptual structure of a book by gathering images and text from the library's collection. This found material will constitute the primary source of the book's content. On Sunday, the class will meet here at the Center where they will assemble the book with the assistance of CBA staff. Each participant will receive a copy of the finished book.

Emily Martin: Theme and Variation

We're super excited for the talk we're hosting this Friday night, October 14, at 6:30pm with Emily Martin, book artist, printmaker and educator. Her Featured Artist Project Theme and Variation is up in the foyer gallery right now.  The selected works represent some of her work in print, as well as some sculptural books. Images and ideas repeat across many of the pieces, whether in print or in book format. She says about these works:

Sometimes I start with an idea for a book
sometimes the prints come first. And often
while pursuing the first idea I see another
approach to the same idea. I am intrigued by the
possibilities of these related but independent
pieces. Differences in formats focus the viewer’s
attention in different ways.

Emily Martin lives in Iowa City, Iowa, USA where she has her studio and also teaches at the University of Iowa Center for the Book.

2011 Poetry Chapbook Reading

Thank you to everyone who made last week's Poetry Chapbook Reading possible. It was a truly enjoyable event, and the books this year were particularly stunning. Thanks to all the poets, artists, organizers and volunteers who helped make it happen: Series curator Sharon Dolin, 2011 Judge Kimiko Hahn, winner Nehassaiu deGannes, Honorable Mentions Sue Burton and Mark McKain; and the artist who produced our glorious publications: Ed Rayher from Swamp Press; Ana Cordeiro and Brigid Ewald; Kyle Holland and Phoebe Bachman.
There’s a set of photos from the event on our flickr site here:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/centerforbookarts/sets/72157627739163461/with/6231274207/

Photos by our new volunteer Lena Adasheva, who also videotaped the reading, which we will hopefully be posting on our website soon as well.

The Night Hunter-this Friday

We’re really looking forward to the next Book Arts Lounge coming up on Friday October 7. Poet Nancy Campbell will visit us, to help guide us through her collaboration with Roni Gross and Peter Schell, The Night Hunter, a beautiful limited edition artist book.

Roni Gross has this to tell me about her process in working on this project: “The structure of this poem is called a pantoum. It calls for the lines of text to repeat in a particular order in the stanzas and so I decided to assign a color to each line. The reader is cued in to the repetition of the language as each board is turned over and the colored lines are revealed. I intended the drawn lines to abstractly allude to a landscape. Both the form of the poem and the structure of the book (a palm leaf) originated in Southeast Asia. In developing this work we wanted the reader to have a experience with the book which would give sensory information about the life of the hunter in a barren landscape.”

The collaborators will talk about their project, which began in response to Campbell’s residency in the most northerly museum in the world, on a remote island off the west coast of Greenland in the winter of 2010. Campbell wrote a series of poems about the environment, of which one, The Night Hunter, received a Norman MacCaig Centenary award.