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

For your one-stop shop of traditional bookbinding and book repair instructions, go to the Indiana University Libraries website, Repair and Enclosure Treatments Manual. It has a wide variety of techniques, clearly illustrated and explained.

Being an academic sort of blog, the Book Studio blog has had a haitus between the end of the 2006 academic year and now… but the new year starts on February 19, and good things will flow from that point.

In the meantime, if you would like to see a small informal artist’s book that reflects the streets of Brisbane sticker culture, go to this post by Byrd, a Canberra graffiti artist who has documented 12 months up north in his own special way. He’ll be back by May, and Canberra will start to look colourful again…

By the way… this blog has been inundated with spam, and in an attempt to avoid it, comments have been turned off. If you would like to say something in relation to the site, please use the blog email address and contact the studio directly. All feedback is very welcome.

For anyone interested in artist’s books, whether making them or administering them, I highly recommend The Bonefolder, an e-journal for the bookbinder and publisher, published by Peter Verheyen and a wonderful team of editors and reviewers. There’s always a great mix of practical instructions, reviews and debate about how books should be classified and viewed. To this date there are four issues; vol 1.2 has a practical overview of the tunnel-book structure and vol 2.1 does the same with flag books, both of which are interesting ways to play with single-page prints in a book form.
Note to ANU School of Art Students: the journal is readily accessible online, but if you want copies of any of the articles, the Book Studio keeps a hard copy printout of the journal in the BS office.