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.

Well, this year in the Book Studio, we have a resident ANU Creative Fellow: Michael Callaghan of Redback Graphix.

We also expect to host artists Laura Stekovic and Antonia Aitkin, and poet Angela Gardner.

On top of that, the Book Design Complementary Unit students might get on here and have a play if I can inspire them enough.

I won’t make promises, though, but keep checking back, just in case

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!

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

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).

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.

Erik Krebs-Schade and Tiffany Cole of the Painting Workshop proudly holding a copy of the zine cover, fresh off the press and still wet. Erik set most of the type.

A view of the type form, clamped up (flipped in Photoshop to allow normal reading, as it usually reads back-to-front and upside-down). We printed 2-up onto A3 paper to fold down to A5 size.

The covers, drying en masse in the racks.

The zine artists were: Tim Price, Erik Krebs-Schade, Tiffany Cole, Kalina Pilat, and Della Jackson. The project was co-ordinated by Raquel Ormella of the Painting Workshop with printing help from Caren Florance of the Book Studio.

The zine was produced in an edition of about 270, and was launched at the Zine Fair of the 2006 This Is Not Art festival in Newcastle.

The Book Studio, upstairs in the Printmedia & Drawing Workshop, will be open and operational, and there will numerous activities throughout the Workshop itself, including demonstrations of various print techniques, a print sale, t-shirt sale, plate-drawing stall and a sausage sizzle.

The Book Studio has been printing cloth serviettes to add to the sausage sizzle, cut from white cotton drill and printed with letterpress ink (which, from long experience, does not wash out!). Here are a few samples:

We’ve also printed a few items of clothing, just for fun.

Open Day is a fantastic way to see the School of Art in operation. There are activities happening in all workshops: Printmedia, Photomedia, Painting, Ceramics, Glass, Textiles, Furniture, Gold & Silversmithing, and Sculpture. There is also the judging of the annual Student Drawing Prize in the Gallery, as well as many opportunities to buy or win artworks.

If you’re in the Canberra region, this is a great way to spend your Saturday, no matter the weather.