in the Printmedia & Drawing Workshop, ANU School of Art, Canberra
Just discovered… this one is excellent for explaining the basics of typesetting, although it only shows a platen press, which the Book Studio doesn’t have. It also features a brief cameo by Ker-bloom! the all-letterpress zine.
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:
The Book Studio is pleased to announce the completion of the edition of visiting artist GW Bot’s artist book, Black Swan.
Black Swan features a Russian poem about Australia, written in 1912 by Konstantin Dmitrievich Bal’mont (1867-1942). The Russian text was translated into English by Sasha Grishin, and both versions were set in Times on a Mac computer, cast in photopolymer plate and printed using a letterpress process by Caren Florance.
With linocut illustrations cut and printed by Bot herself, there were 19 books produced, although it is not known at present how many will be in the final edition.
The paper used is a Magnani partially formed from wool fibres. The binding, by Caren Florance, is a traditional sewn hard case binding using Tapa cloth laminated onto black Chelsea bookcloth (there is a detail of the cover at the foreground of the image below).
The British Library and the National Library of Australia have both bought copies, and there is an article featuring Black Swan in the Winter 2007 edition (vol 42, no. 4, p. 18) of Imprint, the Quarterly Journal of the Print Council of Australia. The copy of Black Swan in this article is a hand-written version, sent to be part of Noreen Grahame’s group exhibition Lessons in History Vol. 1 (24/3/07–28/4/07, in Brisbane). The printed copy of the book was meant to be finished in time for the exhibition, but due to various setbacks, it could not be competed at that point.
For further details on the book, please contact the Book Studio. Any purchasing enquiries will be directed by the Studio to the artist.
Book Studio got a bit busy there for a while, but stay tuned for STUFF soon… in the meantime, do yourself a favour: go over to Youtube and feast your eyes on this fabulous video featuring the magic of pop-up books!
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.
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 an overview of some pretty amazing bookbinding work, check out this post at Bibliodyssey.
The Book Complimentary class have been playing with pop-up books over this last semester; here are some paper links for future reference. If you know of others, please share them with us!
Ron McBurnie, Townsville printmaker and book artist, has an exhibition opening soon at the Impressions on Paper Gallery in Braddon. Ron is a regular Printmedia visiting artist. The exhibition, called Chasing Palmer: etchings influenced by Samual Palmer, runs from 28 Sept to 22 Oct 2006, with the opening at 5.30 on Friday 29 September.
If you’re interested in more of Ron’s work, he has a website and an infrequent but interesting blog.
