Book Studio

Drawing by ANU student Georgina Edwards

Nicci Haynes is being her usual busy self, this year teaching the experimental drawing complementary unit here at the art school. She’s started a blog about drawing… check it out.

Woops, we fell off the internet again. Sorry about that. Sometimes there’s just so much happening that it’s hard to stop and write the blogpost.

One of the resident alumni this year is Nicci Haynes. Nicci graduated from Printmedia & Drawing here at the ANU School of Art midway through last year.

She is spending time in the Book Studio, experimenting with her printmaking and learning how to use letterpress. Today she’s playing with the smaller of our two presses, the Korrex cylinder proofing press. She’s using paper masks to print type onto some of her old intaglio prints.

Here’s a (bit fuzzy) sample:

I won’t make any promises about keeping an eye on Nicci’s work as it progresses, but I’ll do my best

The Book Studio is hitching up its sleeves to participate in the ANU School of Art’s Open Day.

After a whole term of student letterpress printing (yes, it will be blogged about, when the TO can remember to bring the photos in from home), there is a lot of work to show off, and, along with the rest of the Printmedia & Drawing Workshop, there will be things to do and buy. Here’s our concept:

People will get the chance to set their own names, select from a variety of heinous crimes, and watch it be printed off by our small but keen posse of volunteer student printers. Then they can take their print home, damply smelling of printer’s ink.

Other keen PM&D students will be running the sausage (and lentil burger) stall, selling printed t-shirts and prints, and making badges. All monies raised offset the graduation costs for our finishing students. There will also be demonstrations throughout the day of a variety of printing techniques, and PM&D students are also performing throughout the day.

Other workshops have organised activities as well, so it is a day of endlessly entertaining things to do and see.

Open Day is Saturday 25 August, from 9 to 4. If you’re local, or interested in going to our art school to study, we hope to see you at the ANU School of Art, Childers Street, Australian National University.

PS Check out this wonderful letterpress link!

This term the Book Studio has been busier than ever. The Book Complementary class has been playing with letterpress, and there have been two days a week when the 2nd year Printmedia students have also been learning abut letterpress. With over 20 students a week setting type, we have been using every piece of letterpress equipment we can find, and only just managing to accommodate them all.

Youtube has proved an invaluable resource to show students how other people approach letterpress in this modern world. Here are two videos worth watching:

Bernie Slater, last year’s Graduate Resident in the Book Studio, and Julian Laffan, who will be the Book Studio Grad Resident next semester, have work in the latest exhibition at the ANU School of Art Gallery, Thresholds of Tolerance. They are part of a collective called Culture Kitchen, incorporating Australian, East Timorese and Indonesian artists, raising awareness of human rights issues in the Australasian region. The series of images, printed onto large (and portable!) white sheets using various techniques such as woodblock, screenprinting and stencil spraying, are titled We Refuse to be Victims.

They have just been profiled on triplej, and you may catch them talking on the radio over the next few days. If you are in Canberra it is worth a trip to the gallery to see the real thing and to see the video footage the Australian team shot whilst travelling through the region. The exhibition is on until 5 June 2007.

More pages for the Book Studio’s contribution to Bookmagazinebook’s miseducation volume:

A page by Labratt. It’s hard to reproduce; there are layers of print incorporating metallic paper.

A page by Kristin, an exchange design student from Canada.

Margaret, a 3rd year printmaking student, made a book within a book:

Stay tuned for more pages, coming soon…

And to see other Bookmagazinebook contributions, there’s now a flickr group to explore (and join, if you’re playing too).

On the night of the 28th of February the art school was hit by a freak supercell thunderstorm. Four feet of hail clogged the school’s downpipes and consequently torrential rain had nowhere to go but through the inside of the two-storey school. Three weeks later we are still mopping up, and the damage will take months to repair.

The Book Studio was flooded, but damage was confined to a few works on paper and some of the MDF furniture. Both presses seem ok, although we do have to watch for future rust, and miraculously, all the computers and our brand-new inkjet printer escaped harm.

This view is after the pool of water was sucked out; there are typecases drying out and damaged works being investigated. The top of the metal letterpress cabinet (centre-ish) is totally orange with rust.

We are hosting a workshop for the ANG print symposium (details to follow), and hopefully all will be back to relative normality by that time.

Students in the Book Design complimentary unit have taken on the Book Magazine Book challenge of playing with a page of a travelling book and then passing it on. Over the next few weeks we’ll blog the progress of Miseducation as it passes through the class, and when we’re finished we’ll pass it on to someone else for another stage of its journey.

The book started here, and now today’s contribution is by Brad Santos, a 3rd-year Printmedia student:

It’s a combination of drawing, layers of collage and papercuts.

If you want to get involved with the Book Magazine Book project (you don’t need to be an artist), read the guidelines and email johnbonbailey at hotmail dot com.