Margaret Couch Cogswell makes these “crowns” to tell stories. See more here
Setting up a book exhibit
Last week I helped Barb Macks set up the group book show she organized for the Santa Fe Book Arts Group at the AMS Community Art Gallery in Rowe NM. The gallery has only shown paintings and prints up until now, so there weren’t any pedestals or vitrines, but Barb came up with several interesting and inexpensive ways to outfit the gallery space.
One wall had a step out at the ceiling. She went to the local Joanns to get the cast off cardboard inserts in their fabric bolts, covered them in white paper, then used rope to suspend them from the ceiling. The inserts are light weight and it’s easy to put the holes in the ends to insert the rope—no special equipment required. We leveled the shelves and then used putty and double-stick foam tape to anchor the shelves to the wall so that they would stay put.
For the handmade paper by Suzanne Villmain, she pounded nails flush into the wall then attached the paper to them using magnets.
One long wall had a step out at the bottom. Barb collected old handback books from the free bins outside several book stores here in town. She covered more fabric bolt inserts with butcher paper to use as shelves. In the supplies from previous exhibits, she found a stash of black plastic open-ended boxes. These she stacked, weighting them with the hardbacks, and put a shelf on top. Here’s one as we set it up and then with the books displayed.
Glass Book
My book One More Blanket is in a group show this month at the AMS Community Art Gallery in Rowe NM. This is one of the other books in the show, “Altered Book #24” by SC Thayer. She’s glued little green glass pieces over all the words. The cover is covered in the same manner. Below is a close-up and then a larger picture.
Sacred Poems
April is poetry month and I’ve been looking at artist’s books with a poetry theme. Carole Kunstadt has a series called “Sacred Poems” where she says
The primary element used in this series is paper: the pages are taken from a Parish Psalmody dated 1844 and 1849. These pages of psalms are manipulated and recombined, resulting in a presentation that evokes an ecumenical offering – poems of praise and gratitude. The disintegrating pages suggest the temporal quality of our lives and the vulnerability of memory and history. In working with this aged text, embracing its inherent qualities while transforming the book’s pages, the paper itself gains significance through the process and merges with a new intent.
Here are a few of her books, and you can see them all here.
Suzanne’s Type Specimen Book
My friend Suzanne lent me the type specimen book she made when she got her Vandercook. Like most of her books, it’s large—when closed, it’s 7″x15″. I’m planning on borrowing one of her sans serif fonts for a book I’m planning to print this summer.
New Rollers!
I forgot to post this picture of the new rollers for my letterpress. I got these in January and took the picture before I even took the wrapper off, I was so excited. I don’t keep the rollers on my press, but take them off and hang them on this nifty rack my husband made me.
