SESSION ONE

Case binding has been used since the 1820s to simplify the process of constructing hard bound books while still producing a well made and attractive binding. In this class, students will learn variations of the case binding process, including endsheet construction, several sewing methods, spine shaping, and the effect of spine linings on the openability of books. Also considered will be the materials used for covering and how to choose appropriate adhesives. Through demonstrations and hands-on work on three different styles of case binding, students will see and have the opportunity to work with how these variables can be combined to make functional and beautiful books.

Christopher McAfee received a BFA in printmaking in 1993 from Brigham Young University where he began learning to bind books. He went on in 1995 to receive an MFA in bookbinding from the University of Alabama where he began learning book conservation. He has since worked for both the BYU Harold B. Lee Library and the LDS Church History Library conserving and preserving books, documents, photographs, and other artifacts. In his free time, he is a book artist (when he’s not playing one of his 14 ukuleles).

Let’s explore Kozo, the fiber used for many gorgeous Asian papers. Alabama Kozo and Thai Kozo will be explored, from preparing dried bark to finished paper. Let’s make sheets of similar thickness and see what can be done with them (linocuts, for instance, or small book structures). What are the characteristics of papers made when combining kozo with abaca, or cotton, or flax? Does flax fiber need to be cooked, or can it be made directly from the dried fiber? This will be about experimenting with basic papermaking fibers, and evaluating the results. This workshop is intended for beginners as well as individuals with some papermaking experience.

Steve Miller founded Red Ozier Press in Madison, WI, in 1976 — a fine press devoted to publishing handmade limited edition books of contemporary poetics and art. In 1979 the press moved to New York City, and he and Ken Botnick became press partners. In 1988 Miller moved to The University of Alabama to teach letterpress printing and hand papermaking, where he is Professor and Coordinator of the MFA in the Book Arts Program. His Red Hydra Press work includes ongoing collaborative book projects with Cuban print- and papermakers. The Book Arts Program received the 2011 Institutional Award from the American Printing History Association. Miller received the 2012 Distinguished Career Award from the College Book Art Association.

 This class will start with a conversation on some particularities of relief printmaking and observation of examples from the instructor’s collection. The group will then proceed to exercises on small plates of shina plywood that reflect on the nature of the light opened up by gouges (and sandpaper, steel brush, Dremel, Automach, etc…). Light-hearted approaches to relief such as carving in paraffin wax and basic collagraph techniques will follow. Prints will be produced with a spoon and a press. Composing the printing matrix will be an occasion to experience a variety of carving tools in order to express the feel of the piece with an awareness of possibilities, and the ability to decide what is appropriate to it.
After this practice and experimentation, each participant will be ready and inspired to work on a considered idea they bring to the workshop with them–using conversation with the piece itself, one’s peers, the questions and feedback from the teacher/trickster, and finally, the overall energy of the experience of using these tools to craft a satisfying piece.
The workshop is open to advanced and beginning students alike. There are only two crucial requirements: each participant needs to bring an image, composition, illumination, obsession on which several hours of work and thought have been spent–and have the commitment to challenge that idea with low-tech methods that gravitate around the routines of relief printmaking and monotype.

 Claudio Orso is a printmaker and ceramic sculptor from Turin, Italy, who has been living in Ohio for the last twelve years. He has exhibited across the US and in Europe, and was awarded an Individual Artist Fellowship Grant from the Ohio Arts Council in 2004, after which he completed his Master of Fine Arts at Bowling Green State University. Zygote Press has been his artistic home in Ohio, and he has worked there as contract printer and assistant with local and foreign visiting artists. He has a strong commitment to art practice as a service for the community and has initiated several community art projects including ArtZreach for teens at the Lorain County Juvenile Detention Home. In 2010 he was hired by Oberlin College as coordinator for the Apollo Outreach Initiative, a project of media literacy and practice involving college students in mentoring public school pupils.

This intensive workshop will explore creating books as a means of expression, communication, and for the exploration of ideas. Participants will investigate conceptual binding by forming connections between images, texts, and materials. Using the digital page layout software InDesign, each person will create a thoughtful first draft of a book they have creatively authored.

Over the course of the four days, participants will explore the book form through creative exercises, studying examples of artists’ books, photobooks, writing, music, and cinema structures, and thoroughly investigating a codex book’s discrete parts: the page, the opening, turnings, and development.

Each participant will need to bring to the workshop as many as 100 images and texts—these can be photographs, drawings, prints, words, sentences, poems, stories, essays, fonts, papers, scraps, objects—each scanned to digital files (scanning instructions will be provided with the supply lists).

Workshop participants will bring the digital images on a portable drive. No prior knowledge of InDesign is required to take this workshop. If participants have a laptop with Adobe’s Creative Suite, they may bring their own workstation–otherwise there will be a few shared digital stations for everyone to use.

Tate Shaw is an artist and writer living in Rochester, NY. His books are in international artists’ book collections including the Tate Modern, London, The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and Yale Special Collections, amongst others. Shaw is the Director of Visual Studies Workshop (VSW), an artist space supporting photography, books, and time-based media, and he is an Assistant Professor in English at the College at Brockport, SUNY where he directs the Master of Fine Arts in Visual Studies program at VSW.

 Students will learn how to construct professional enclosures for artist books using materials and techniques creatively. We will discuss ways that the boxes can reference the nature of the item or items inside while maintaining a cohesive design. We will explore a range of materials, both traditional and uncommon, as they can be applied to enclosures and books. Through the creation of a variety of plaquettes, we will also explore decorative techniques such as raised and recessed surfaces, stenciling, and wrapping curved board edges. The project made in class will house the practice plaquettes, contain a secret compartment held closed with magnets, and have a divided tray within the secret compartment with inset options, giving students more practice with unusual interiors. This workshop will be perfect for book artists and anyone interested in box making.

 Mary Uthuppuru is a full time book binder and artist who creates artist books, bindings, boxes, and prints inspired by science, literature and travel. After receiving a BA in Art History and a Masters in Library Science with a specialization in rare books she closely studied the history of the book accompanied by training in workshops across the country. Mary worked as a Conservation Technician at the Lilly Library and gained an in-depth study of book structures and their repair under the direction of the head of Conservation, Jim Canary. As of 2010, she began her career as a full time book artist and bookbinder under the name Spring Leaf Press at her home studio in Bloomington, Indiana. Mary has exhibited internationally and is collected nationally.

SESSION TWO

Paper, often viewed as the substrate for other media such as paint, ink, or graphite, can be manipulated to behave like and to even imitate those materials. Using only paper pulp, we will explore image making by working with layers and with long and short fibered pulps to form their imagery. Beating times will vary from 1 hour to 8 hours. We will explore the possibilities of translucency and using both sides of the sheet. Techniques covered in the class will include pulp preparation, pigmenting, use of additives, brushwork, layering of thin veils, drawing with the water pick, stenciling with Yupo and shaped deckles. I will cover use of the Hollander beater, as it is an essential tool in my techniques. We will discuss ways of working sculpturally, registration and editioning. This is a great class for the beginner as well as the experienced papermaker.

Shannon “Papierschnitt” Brock is the  Art Director of Carriage House Paper, founder of Gaptoothed Studio in Brooklyn, NY and skater for Gotham Girls Roller Derby; BFA, Kansas City Art institute; papermaker and artist. Shannon formed her first sheet of paper in 1990 at the know-it-all age of 17 and has never stopped. She has spent the past 24 years developing her techniques and finding new ways to manipulate plant fibers. She has taught papermaking throughout the US. Her pulp paintings and sculptural work are exhibited nationally and internationally. 

 This hands-on workshop works with printing color reduction woodcut images that become the pages of a hand bound book. Quantities of pages will be generated using the woodblocks for an edition or with a monotype approach that steer the book structure and presentation. Low tech methods for text printing will be introduced, and can include rubber stamping, carving in reverse onto wood, pasting type down onto a collagraph plate, using old wood type and a portable proof press. All will be brought together for a bound or accordion folded book. Oil-base and water-base inks will be used. Concepts for invention, multi-level sensory experience and good fun will be directed in a collaborative atmosphere. The book as an edition and as a unique object will both be explored, while image making and found sources will be translated into efficient – and meaningful – sequences.

Karen Kunc is a Cather Professor of Art at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Awards include Fulbright Scholar Awards to Finland and Bangladesh, two NEA/MAAA awards, the 2007 SGCI Printmaker Emeritus Award. Her works have been shown in exhibitions nationally and internationally and are in numerous collections: MOMA; Library of Congress; Milwaukee Art Museum; Haas Arts Library Yale University; Jyväskylä Art Museum, Finland. She has taught workshops around the world, in Egypt, Italy, Finland, Poland, Japan, France, Mexico, Iceland; and she has lectured as a visiting artist to over 200 institutions. In 2014 she opened Constellation Studios, in Lincoln, Nebraska, as a creative work-site for print, paper, and book, inviting artists for residencies, workshops, collaborations, exhibitions.

We’ll be taking a concentrated tour through the making of useful books to bring out into the field, or have in your pocket for a quick scribble or diagram. Two forms, based on historic examples, will be explored. In both cases, we’ll have the opportunity to work with leatherwith a focus on edge paring and operating the Schar-Fix.

First up, a quarter (or half, if you prefer) tight-back leather binding based on the field notebooks of early 19th century explorers of these United States. This will include a genius pencil-locking mechanism and we’ll explore other dandy ways to include specimens, notes and ephemera.

We’ll also make ourselves a very pleasing limp-leather binding for the purposes of sketching in real-time. Here we’ll focus more on the quickness of making the form, the book’s ability to open in a relaxed fashion, and we’ll turn to examples from early 20th Century artists for inspiration.

Throughout the workshop, issues of a book’s utility, ease, and accessibility will be discussed and acted on. And no doubt there’ll be at least one trip into a near-by field to see if they work. (There is an additional $25 materials fee for this course).

Martha Kearsley lives in Portland, Maine, where she is the owner and operator of Strong Arm Bindery. There, she tends to the repair of antiquarian books, makes boxes and runs a small letterpress concern, specializing in small-batch stationery supplies. She is on faculty at North Bennet Street School, where she teaches the conservation and repair aspects of the curriculum for the full-time Bookbinding Program. Currently, she’s employed as a contract conservator at Harvard University’s Weissman Preservation Center. She rides the bus to Boston with frequency and enthusiasm.

This workshop introduces book artists to a fascinating structure that binds multiple accordion folds together into an elaborate honeycomb format. A truly flexible binding with limitless variations, it allows for experimentation with dimension, perspective, and visual effect. The multi-accordion can accommodate folds of different heights, lengths, and shapes, simple pop-up features, and cut-out windows. The structure can be left long and linear, or bound together on one side into a circular fan. It can be viewed multiple ways and directions; a structure that begs for interactivity with the reader.

Participants will begin the workshop by learning the sewing and folding techniques and building models that explore these concepts. Several variations will be covered for students to experiment with, including incorporating pop-ups and cut-outs. Participants will spend the remainder of the workshop designing and building their own unique book structure that builds upon these principles. The options are endless – create a panoramic landscape, a complex peepshow book, a narrative labyrinth, a non-linear text, or simply a formal study of structure and movement.

Kevin Steele is a graphic designer and book artist. He received his MFA from Indiana University, where he is a Visiting Assistant Professor at the Henry Radford Hope School of Fine Arts. Kevin’s professional practice consists primarily of promotional, identity, and publication design. His personal work focuses on movable books and paper engineering. Kevin is interested in how structure, movement, and interaction can enhance visual communication. His work has been exhibited, published, and collected internationally. He is a member of AIGA and The Movable Book Society.

 The simplified binding was developed by Sun Evrard as an alternative to traditional French fine bindings that, while beautiful, do not typically open well. The meticulously designed simplified structure is flexible, opens well and is best suited for fairly slim books. An elegant binding, it offers a variety of possibilities for decoration and the opportunity to easily combine materials. Though the outer appearance is generally clean and unfussy, there are many steps that go into making it appear so simple.

After making a model of the structure as originally conceived with a leather spine and decorative paper over beveled boards, we will explore cover alternatives including wood, metal, cloth and more. We’ll learn to appreciate the subtle refinements and attention to precise detail inherent in the simplified binding while also taking advantage of the potential to approach the cover with ingenuity and non-conventional materials. Participants will make two binding models and leave the workshop with the technical foundation and structural principles for continued investigation. This workshop will be of interest to those who are drawn to traditional, hard-working structures that also offer the option of using unexpected materials that are seamlessly and thoughtfully incorporated.

 Eileen Wallace is a Lecturer in printmaking and book arts at the University of Georgia in Athens, GA. She has taught workshops at PBI, Penland School of Crafts in Penland, NC and most recently at Haystack Mountain School of Crafts in Deer Isle, ME. Eileen is a Co-director Emeritus of PBI and attended her first PBI in 1992 while pursuing an MFA in Book Arts at the University of Alabama. After receiving her degree, she was the Studio Coordinator for the Books, Paper & Letterpress studios at Penland School of Crafts and was also an Artist-in-Residence at Penland. Eileen is the editor of Masters: Book Arts, published by Lark Books in 2011. She also holds an MLS from the University of Alabama.