Binding model of 16th-c Venetian manuscript
by Melissa Moreton
Upcoming Events:
December 11: UICB Open House
Spring 2010: The papermakers of Combat Paper, calligrapher and library historian David Levy, and worktshops by visiting artists
UICB Open House
North Hall Studios
Friday, December 11,
3:30-6:30pm
Exhibits from UICB studio classes in calligraphy, papermaking, bookbinding, boxmaking, pop-up book structures, letterpress printing, and digital printing will be on display.
Calligraphy and bookbinding demonstrations will be ongoing throughout the afternoon.
Jim Sherraden
"Hatch Show Print: 130 Years of Letterpress"
Thursday, November 12, 8pm
W151 Pappajohn, Tippie Auditorium
Co-sponsored by Communication Studies and the School of Art and Art History.
Jim Sherraden is Manager, Chief Designer and Archivist at Hatch Show Print, one of America's oldest surviving show poster and design shops. Since 1984 he has overseen its transition from a cultural survivor to a widely recognized graphic design icon and destination for letterpress enthusiasts. He is the co-writer of Hatch Show Print, The History of A Great American Poster Shop, published by Chronicle Books, now in its fifth edition. He is also the creator of one of a kind pieces of art called monoprints, based on the shops archive, which are collected by individuals and institutions worldwide. He is a frequent speaker and conducts letterpress workshops from coast to coast.
Hatch Show Print is a one-of-a-kind, extraordinary letterpress poster and design shop located in Nashville, Tennessee. Founded in 1879, Hatch is still printing and designing over 600 jobs a year, using the original wood type found on countless posters advertising carnivals, circuses, and vaudeville and minstrel shows. The shop is historically best known for it's country music posters, and, since 1992, has operated as a non-profit division of the Country Music Hall of Fame(R) and Museum. Jim's presentation begins with the very first poster printed at Hatch before speeding through over one hundred years of hand-set graphic design. Not resting on its heritage, Hatch operates under the mantra of "preservation through production", and has probably done posters for many of your favorite contemporary entertainers. Recent Hatch Show Print customers include B.B. King, Neil Young, Coldplay, The Dead, and Alan Jackson. Design customers include The New York Times, Wired Magazine, Golf Digest, Anthropologie, Nike, Taylor Guitars and the neighbor's Bar Mitzvah. An exhibition of Hatch Show Print posters is currently enjoying its first year on the road with the Smithsonian Institution Travelling Exhibition Service (SITES) and will tour nationwide until 2012.
We Bring the Blocks & You Bring the Talent Letterpress Printing
Two one-day workshops:
Friday November 13
Saturday November 14
Time: 10:00 am – 5:00 pm; location: Room 27, North Hall Registration Fee: $80 (UI students), $95 (non-students)
In this one-day workshop, students will have the opportunity to handprint their own artwork from Hatch Show Print woodblocks. Jim is shipping “100 pounds of potato chips out of his Frito-Lay factory, and you will get to print under Jim’s supervision, instruction and wildly popular dry sense of humor.” Says Jim: “the value of the workshop is to play, to wash off the excellence one is encumbered with from doing digital design.”
Under Jim’s direction, no one will be allowed to think about what they are going to print for more than a few minutes. Blocks will be hand-inked and painted, then printed on the UICB’s 3 Vandercook SP-20 proof presses. No perfect registration or agonizing about color.
Paper and ink will be provided. Jim requests that each participant bring a t-shirt or two to print on as well.
Peter Stallybrass to visit as UICB’s Ida Cordelia Beam Distinguished Professor
“Why We Need to Know How to Write”
Thursday, Oct. 29, 7:30p, Shambaugh Auditorium
“The Blank History of the Blank Book”
Friday, Oct. 30, 4:00p, 304 EPB
Peter Stallybrass, Annenberg Professor in the Humanities and Professor of English and of Comparative Literature and Literary Theory at the University of Pennsylvania, is a renowned scholar of early modern culture, with a particularly alert eye to the history of printing, reading, knowledge, and cultural transformation. He directs the History of Material Texts seminar at Penn, a weekly gathering of book historians and visiting speakers that sets the terms for study in the field. As comfortable with Shakespeare as with Ben Franklin, his capacious intellect has overturned conventional thinking about literature and history. As reflected in his Ida Beam talks, his current interest is the material history of writing and the remarkable ways in which the printing revolution incited new uses of manuscript.
Ted Striphas to discuss the politics of the Kindle in UICB co-sponsored event
Ted Striphas, Indiana University
Thursday, October 22, 4-5:15pm. Adler E105
Since its release in November 2007, the Amazon Kindle has emerged as a—and perhaps the—leading portable electronic reading device. Widely touted for its unique screen, capacious storage, and wireless content delivery, Kindle has prompted both enthusiasts and critics to wonder if it will eventually “outbook the book” (to quote Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos). This presentation will not settle the matter, nor will it attempt to. Instead, it will focus on Kindle’s two-way communications capabilities on the one hand, and on Amazon’s recent foray into data services on the other. Striphas’s argument is that however convenient a means Kindle may be for acquiring e-books and other types of digital content, the device nevertheless disposes reading to serve a host of inconvenient—indeed, illiberal—ends. Consequently, it underscores the growing importance of a new and fundamental right to counterbalance the illiberal tendencies that it embodies—what Richard Stallman and others have called a “right to read,” which would complement the existing right of free expression.
Brought to campus by the Communication Studies department, Ted Striphas is Assistant Professor and Director of Film & Media Studies in the Department of Communication & Culture, Indiana University. His book, The Late Age of Print: Everyday Book Culture from Consumerism to Control, was published in 2009 by Columbia University Press. He is the coeditor of the book Communication as…: Perspectives on Theory and of a special issue on intellectual property published by the journal Cultural Studies. His website is www.thelateageofprint.org.
2009 Mitchell Lecture in the Art of the Book with Susan Share
“Basically Books: The Art Work of Susan Joy Share”
Friday, October 9, 5:00 pm, 101 BCSB
Share will present slides and video of her magical handmade boxes and books whose colorful contents include expanding structures, animated objects, and percussive sounds. She will also demonstrate some of her performance objects and show recent ceramic tile work created for public art commissions.
Artist, performer and bookbinder Susan Joy Share combines a multitude of media derived from traditional bookbinding, sewing, painting, collage and sculpture. She has received artist fellowships from the Rasmuson Foundation in AK and was the 2007 Sally Bishop Fellow at the Center for Book Arts in NYC. Share had a solo exhibit at Anchorage Museum in 2006 and has shown throughout the US and in Ireland, England and Hungary. She worked in book conservation at the The Brooklyn Museum of Art, and has taught at Penland School of Crafts, NC, Center for Book Arts, NYC; Anderson Ranch Arts Center, CO; and Haystack Mountain School of Crafts, ME. Share worked as an artist in New York City for 20 years and moved to Anchorage, Alaska in 1997.
Wearable Books and Movement: A workshop with Susan Share
Wearable Books and Movement: A workshop with Susan Share
Saturday & Sunday, October 10, 11
10:00 am – 5:00 pm
Kolarik Book Studio, 16 North Hall
We will view the book as an extension of the body, and the body as inspiration for our visual work. Using bookbinding techniques (gluing, sewing, folding, cutting, hinging), invented techniques, and common and unusual materials, we will create wearable books, expanding structures, and environments. In addition, we will explore movement improvisation, body language, and the possibilities of performance to animate our work.
A supplies list and further information will be provided upon registration. In case of cancellation, fees are non-refundable unless we are able to fill your spot.
Printing on the Platen Press
with John Horn, Shooting Star Press
September 26 & 27, 2009, 10 am – 5 pm
Students will select a project suitable for printing on a platen press such as business cards, notecards or pads, envelopes, bookmarks, et cetera. All projects will be handset in metal type and printed in one color on paper of the student’s choosing. Basic typesetting, preparation and press operation will be covered and students will have the opportunity to print on two C&P floor model platen presses as well as Pilot and Kelsey table tops. Typesetting experience is helpful but not required.
John Horn began his printing career in high school at the age of 14 and now, 48 years later, he still has a passion for his craft. He has had vast and varied experience in many different printing plants and shops. In the mid-1980s he had the good fortune to retire and he began to collect presses and type and devote much of his time to studying printing history and technique. His collection currently includes well over one hundred letterpresses, hundreds of fonts of handset type, line-casting machines and matrices. John teaches at Penland School of Crafts and at his own shop, Shooting Star Press. He is married to Robyn Horn, a sculptor.
“Prestige and the Case for Contemporary American Realism”
by Gordon Hutner
Thursday, September 17,
3:45pm, Gerber Lounge, EPB
Hutner is professor of English at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and founding editor of the journal American Literary History. He is author or editor of five books, on Hawthorne, American cultural criticism, Jewish American writing, and immigration, among other topics.
This talk is co-sponsored with the UI English Department.
Proceed and Be Bold!: a documentary film on Amos Kennedy
Friday, August 28th
2:30 pm
The Englert Theatre, 221 E Washington St, Iowa City
Proceed and Be Bold! is a documentary film that follows the life and work of internationally recognized letterpress printer Amos Paul Kennedy Jr., and his socially and politically charged works of art. The film probes Kennedy, his friends, family, and colleagues in an attempt to unravel the artist’s meaning. The result is a discussion on the monetary and intrinsic values of art, the goals of an artist, the workings of race and culture, and what “the American Dream” really means.
This film is an official selection of the Landlocked Film Festival. For more information on the festival click here.
Watch the Proceed and Be Bold! trailer here.
UICB faculty and students will be at the Iowa City Book Festival Saturday, July 18th. UICB will be offering demonstrations, hands-on book activities and exhibiting their work. The festival will also feature a mix of local and regional booksellers with new and used books for sale, a music stage, children's activities, food vendors, readings and panel discussions. For more information on the festival visit their website here.
“Nature, Materials and Process in the Japanese Craft of Hand-Papermaking”
Slide Lecture with Paul Denhoed
The myriad handmade papers of Japan are possible as a result of the craftsperson's careful handling of natural resources. At each step of the lengthy process, decisions are made which ultimately affect the quality and temperament of the finished paper. Paul Denhoed has been documenting hand papermaking in Japan for the last seven years. In this illustrated talk, he will share a glimpse of daily life in papermaking studios and describe the materials, processes, and tools that are employed to create the wide variety of Japanese handmade papers.
Paul Denhoed has lived in Japan since 2001 researching Japanese hand papermaking, and studying with Richard Flavin, Shinichirou Abe, and Hiroaki Imai. Since April of 2008, he has been working full-time at Oguni Washi Papermaking Studio in Niigata, Japan. In June 2008, he and his wife accompanied three papermakers from Japan to Toronto for the World Washi Summit, where he also lectured. He earned his MFA in Design from the University of Iowa, and a Graduate Certificate from the University of Iowa Center for the Book.
"Wood: From the Living Tree to the Bed of the Press" Slide Lecture with Gaylord Shanilec
Friday, May 22, 3:30 PM
Main Library, Rm 2032 (2nd foor classroom)
Gaylord Schanilec, proprietor of Midnight Paper Sales, wood engraver and fine printer, has been printing books, primarily from wood blocks and metal type for 30 years. His work is represented in most major collections of contemporary book art in both the US and UK.
The lecture will survey his work back to the beginning, with emphasis on Sylvae and discussion of The River, his newest adventure. Schanilec will also have books and working materials on hand to look at and discuss.
Exhibits from UICB studio classes in calligraphy, papermaking, bookbinding, boxmaking, pop-up book structures, letterpress printing, and digital printing will be on display.
Calligraphy and bookbinding demonstrations will be ongoing throughout the afternoon.
May 8th, 6-9pm
Arts Iowa City Gallery
Lower Level
103 E College St., Iowa City
Come celebrate with us as nine Center for the Book students show off their final projects. UICB students Amelia Bernhardt, Laura Capp, Amber Jansen, Juli McLoone, Melissa Moreton, Elizabeth Munger, Kimberly Nelson, Kathleen Tandy and Jessica White will exhibit their final projects in a group show titled The Printed, The Bound, The Finale.
This collection of projects includes handprinted artists books, calligraphic broadsides, a historical binding model, handmade paper, an academic analysis, and other fine printed materials.
Make an online gift to The University of Iowa Center for the Book