Pyramid Atlantic Book Arts Fair

The End

2008-11-11T21:38:00.005-05:00

Thanks to all of you who sent in info for the blog - I hope you all had successful weekends!

I just wanted to share a few of my photos from the fair.....

Take Care,
Kris Merola

Chip Schilling | Indulgence Press

2008-11-04T20:01:00.002-05:00

Only 3 more days until the book fair!!!!!!

Time is running short and I am glued to the election results on tv so I thank Chip for his wonderful bio (see below) and I will see you all in a few days!

Wilber “Chip” Schilling owns and operates Indulgence Press, since 1992, a letterpress studio specializing in the design and production of limited edition books and prints. Chip earned a BA from Clark University and an MFA from the University of the Arts in Philadelphia. Working as both a fine artist and a commercial artist, he has exhibited and been collected nationally and internationally. Collections include: Minneapolis Institute of Art, The Walker Art Center, The Getty Center, New York Public Library, Library of Congress, The British Library and, the Whitney Museum of American Art Library. Chip has served as the president of the Ampersand Club (founded in 1930 to foster an appreciation of the historic and artistic importance of the printed book) and has been a member of the Artist Advisory Committee at the Minnesota Center for Book Arts and a faculty member of the College of Visual Arts. For more than a decade, he has taught workshops in letterpress printing, bookbinding and photography throughout the United States.

Leopard Studio Editions

2008-11-02T08:30:00.004-05:00

Leopard Studios is the Press of Sue Huggins Leopard who is a printmaker and book artist in Rochester, New York. Because Sue and I live in the same town I have had the pleasure of going to her amazing studio and seeing her work in progress. I am excited to find out that she is finally done with Past Surmise, a suite of etchings with poems by Emily Dickenson, I am more than excited to see the finished work. (Photo by James Via)

Green Chair Press

2008-10-29T22:50:00.006-04:00

I looked up Green Chair Press and smiled when I saw it was located in Burlingame, California. When my parents first moved to the San Francisco area visiting Burlingame was the highest priority on my to-do list. What you may not know is that Burlingame is home to an amazing PEZ museum and as a long time collector I was dying to see it. On the Green Chair Press blog I was surprised and delighted to see a broadside with an Obama PEZ design and mention of the PEZ Museum! Hooray for all of the beautiful letterpress work at Green Chair Press and of course for PEZ dispensers!

Mary Tasillo | Cake & Pie Press

2008-10-28T15:53:00.006-04:00

Once Whole, Now Homeless

Mary Tasillo is Cake & Pie Press…at least some of the time. Cake & Pie Press is currently a Philadelphia-based though slightly itinerant operation. Mary’s work is driven by a constant worry that the world is going to pieces. She participates in the book arts, paper arts, print culture, and interactivity as sites of democratic access and narrative possibility. She balances work in the limited edition artist’s book and gallery-based work with work in the democratic multiple, such as zines and free broadsides, to ensure the broadest possible work as she examines the beastly in the American political body and citizenry. (statement courtesy of the artist)

Check out Mary's blog here

Don't miss Mary's talk at the conference talk entitled, "Context is King," at 11am on Saturday, November 8th!

Amber Hares

2008-10-27T23:56:00.004-04:00

Right next to Masumi Shibata upstairs at the book fair will be the lovely and talented Amber Hares. Don't miss her table and be sure to buy a copy of I have a dollar before it is too late! Check out all of her work here.

Masumi Shibata

2008-10-20T23:48:00.005-04:00

Check out masumiEDUCATIONAL an amazing and talented artist from New Mexico new to the book fair.

Last Chance!

2008-09-26T13:04:00.004-04:00

Send in your democratic multiples!!! The deadline is fast approaching - -

guidelines and details click here and go to the bottom of the schedule and events page

entry form click here

Elysa Voshell

2008-09-16T21:34:00.000-04:00

Elysa holds an MA in Book Arts from Camberwell College of Arts, University of the Arts London, and a BA in English Literature and Creative Writing from the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. She has exhibited her work internationally at such venues as the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London, the Seoul International Artist’s Book Fair, and the Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art, Rotterdam, Netherlands. Voshell is the recipient of numerous awards and honors including a Special Opportunity Stipend from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, a Window of Opportunity Award from the Leeway Foundation, a Residency Fellowship from the Collins Foundation, and the Stein Family Scholarship for Advanced Studies in Book Arts from the Center for Book Arts, New York. The artist’s imprint, After Nostalgia Press, is based in Philadelphia.

You can see more of Elysa's work here and here

Image:
Elysa Voshell
From the series the nesting habits of extinct & vanishing birds
Letterpress, polyester-plate lithography, relief printing, and collage on altered
book pages
10 x 10 inches
2007; Series of 10 prints, each one-of-a-kind

kore loy wildrekinde/mcwhirter

2008-09-08T20:05:00.000-04:00

redhanded: a songe forre the loste is a series of thirteen line etchings and thirteen accompanying poems. The working title of the series has been: the underside of family values and other anaerobicke socialle systemmes. Like the wailing wall and war memorials, I have made these etchings and poems as a witness and place of mourning and remembrance for those, particularly the children and most specifically girls, who are broken and lost to the commonplace hidden and overt rituals of violence in which children live.

This series is meant as an enduring testimony to the vulnerability of children to violence training and the consequent loss of the abundant humanity to which each child is born. Many children become habituated to unremitting dread that affects how we come to perceive the world. I tried to draw what it feels like for a child trapped in ongoing unpredictable terror.

- - statement by the artist

Miriam Schaer

2008-08-28T21:43:00.001-04:00

Miriam Schaer is a multimedia book artist. She uses garments––girdles, bustiers, brassieres, gloves, aprons, children’s' clothes-as her means of containment. Inside these stiffened, shaped, embellished enclosures, she conceals books and other objects that document her explorations of feminine, social, and spiritual issues. Since 1993, she has exhibited steadily and extensively in solo and group exhibitions in the US and internationally, and her work has been mentioned in a long list of articles and reviews. She is a recipient of a NYFA Artists Fellowship and her work has been included in the Mary H. Dana Women Artists Series at Douglass Library, the oldest and longest-running exhibition series dedicated to showcasing women artists in the United States. Her work was included in the biennale, Imagining the Book 2007 at the Bibliotheca National in Alexandria, Egypt, and she participated in the 4th International Artist Book Fair in Seoul, South Korea.

-statement by the artist

Miriam Schaer lives in Brooklyn and more of her work can be seen here

About the images:

Top:
Body of Knowledge (male), 2002, 17 x 7 x 6.5, inset book 5 x 3.5 x .5, Plastic figure, dye, linen thread. Book created and figure lined with text from Atlas of Surgical Operations
(image shown here is a detail)

Bottom:
Hands of Josephus: Part 2, 2008
10.5 x 4 x 28, altered text from Josephus: History of the Jews, beads, wire hand forms

Karen Hanmer

2008-08-20T19:48:00.002-04:00

I am always delighted and amazed to see Karen's sculptural books. Each book is more wonderful than the next - you can see more of her work here.

I have never seen this work of Karen's so I thought I would share it with you.

Karen writes...
The History and Technology series links the creative process of the artist with that of the inventor, explorer or scientist through first person accounts and archival photographs and artifacts. As I researched and developed a series of artists’ books on the history of aviation, I felt a kinship with the Wright Brothers, them in their bicycle shop’s back room and me in my spare bedroom studio, carefully and methodically experimenting, and creating and refining prototypes.

Faster Higher Further First: a sampler of women aviators | 2005 | $250
Pigment inkjet prints, 8 x 2.5 x .5" closed

Removed from dust jacket and fully extended: 8 x 56 x 5", can also be displayed extended into a closed circular shape.

Edition of 50
An accordion format pop-up book with vintage photographs of 14 women aviators from the beginnings of powered flight until the present. Brief text lists the accomplishments of each woman. Subjects set records of altitude, speed, endurance or made other significant contributions to the field, not as women's firsts, but across gender lines.

David Esslemont | Solmentes Press

2008-08-14T09:22:00.004-04:00

“I am passionate about books – my aim is to make books that are not only a pleasure to read, but a delight to all the senses. In my painting I am continuing an exploration of scale: the relationship of detail to the macroscopic.”
- David Esslemont

The English Romantic poet, John Keats (1795–1821), wrote ‘To Autumn’ in September 1819. The first line, ‘Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,’ is now synonymous with autumn and one of the most quoted lines of verse in the English language.

To Autumn is an ‘artists book’– designed, illustrated, printed and hand bound entirely by Esslemont. Each line of the poem is illustrated with a full-page image that incorporates a lyrical composition of the words in free-flowing, pen-drawn lettering. The images are inspired by the vibrant fall colors of a maple tree in Minneapolis. And there’s more: when seen altogether, the images form a stunning montage nine feet high.

He created his most recent book, To Autumn, during the long winter months that followed his move from Minneapolis, Minnesota to a farm in northeast Iowa – it is the first book published with the Solmentes Press imprint since moving to Iowa.

David was born in Northumberland, England, and now lives and works in Iowa as an artist, designer, printer, bookbinder and publisher.

a page spread from To Autumn

Thank you to David for these thoughtful statements about his new book - I look forward to seeing it in person!

Sherwin Beach Press

2008-08-08T00:23:00.001-04:00

Established in 1984, Sherwin Beach Press is a small fine press specializing in nonfiction prose. Thus far we have completed seven books, The Essence of Beeing by Michael Lenehan; Within the Context of No Context by George Trow; $144 a Month by Steve Bogira; The Innocents Abroad by Mark Twain; Ballet for Opening Day by Nelson Algren; Poisonous Plants at Table, featuring "Prudence: The Cautionary Tale of a Picky Eater," by Audrey Niffenegger; and Saving His Life by Lee Sandlin.
-from the Sherwin Beach website

I got to see Poisonous Plants at Table at the Pyramid Fair in 2006 (where I believe it won one of the Best Book of the Fair awards) and it was exquisite. Here is a peek at there newest book, Saving His Life by Lee Sandlin, you can read more about it here.

Centre for Fine Print Research at the University of the West of England, Bristol, UK

2008-08-01T21:32:00.008-04:00

There is really no end to the list of projects Sarah Bodman and Tom Sowden undertake at the Centre for Fine Print Research, UWE Bristol. If you visited their table at the Pyramid Atlantic Book Fair in 2004 you know what I mean. They never cease to amaze me with the work they do and since they are so prolific and diverse I have decided to break their offerings up into bite-size nuggets. Enjoy the first course!

Two publications you absolutely must know about:

The Artist’s Book Yearbook 2008-2009

Writers’ contributions from the UK, Mexico, France and the USA, and artists’ pages by contributors from the UK, Canada, Germany, Mexico, Chile and the USA.

Essays by: Colin Sackett, Martha Hellion, Heather Hunter, Luci Gorell Barnes, John Bently, Richard Price, Stephen Bury, Gabriel Gbadamosi, David Ferry, Kristin Miller, Neil Cameron, Spy Emerson, Sally Alatalo, John McDowall, Meeloo Gfeller and Anna Hellsgård, Tanya Peixoto’s bookartbookshop bi-annual update, and a report on the First CODEX Foundation’s Symposium and Book Fair in Berkeley, USA.

Artists’ Pages by: Paul Laidler, Hilary Judd, Louise Best, Mike Nicholson, Tortie, Sumi Perera, Gray Fraser, Ivonne Murillo, Andrés Gatti, Earle D. Swope and Ahlrich van Ohlen.

Information and listings sections of: book artists, organisations, collections, book fairs, centres, bookshops, fairs, events, bookbinders, typeset and design services, print studios, courses and more…http://www.bookarts.uwe.ac.uk/abyb08.htm

The Blue Notebook journal for artists’ books
(pictured here is Vol 2 No 1.)

The Blue Notebook launched with Vol.1 No.1 in October 2006 as a peer reviewed journal, published twice a year.

The journal is published in two formats: an electronic colour version to be accessed at any time online, and a paper, black and white version.

(Print) ISSN 1751-1712 (Online) ISSN 1751-1720

Subscription covers both formats at £10 GBP per annum - UK and international.

Written contributions are peer-reviewed by a panel which includes: Tom Trusky, Susan Johanknecht, Maria Fusco, Buzz Spector, Ulrike Stoltz and Paulo Silveira. Artist's page contributions are at the invitation of the art editor, Tom Sowden.

http://www.bookarts.uwe.ac.uk/bnotebk.htm

Purgatory Pie Press

2008-07-25T19:36:00.002-04:00

Purgatory Pie Press is a sanctuary for artists, designers and typographers who are seduced by the kiss of type and the touch of metal. Founded by Dikko Faust and Esther K. Smith, the New York-based press has long been at the forefront of publishing artists books and ephemera. Both proprietors also travel the country teaching, lecturing and showing off their wares. This past fall Smith published How to Make Books, a disquisition and handbook on the D.I.Y. nitty-gritty of this art and craft.
- from an interview by Steven Heller

You can view work by Purgatory Pie Press here
You can read the entire interview by Steven Heller here

Below is an example of just one of the books Purgatory Pie Press will be bringing with them to Pyramid. Be sure to check out their website for other delights and if you have a few minutes watch Purgatory Pie Press: An Interview - it makes you feel like you have known Dikko and Esther your whole life (but that might be the fellow Midwesterner in me talking).

6x6x6
Richard Tipping, 1999
Edition 216, 6"x6"
Concrete Poetry
Handset wood and metal type printed on black museum board. Accordian book.

Coming up on Tuesday:

Centre for Fine Print Research

UWE, Bristol, School of Creative Arts

Here we go....

2008-07-24T21:28:00.000-04:00

Welcome to the Pyramid Atlantic Book Arts Fair and Conference exhibitors blog. For the next few months you will be able to learn more about, and see the work of, the exhibitors who will have tables at the fair in November. Please check back often for up to the minute information and don't forget there is still time to register as an exhibitor.

Tomorrow's post: Purgatory Pie Press

Coming Soon!

2008-07-21T23:02:00.000-04:00