Spring!

Here’s some exciting new things happening this year:

Exhibitions!

FIFTH INTERNATIONAL ARTISTS BOOK EXHIBITION 2013

King St. Stephen Museum in Székesfehérvár, Hungary

Opening Saturday, May 18th and running till October 27th.

(in case you’re in Hungary.)

There’s an online-only exhibition coming up in June with the Print Center in Philadelphia; I’ll post the link when it’s up.

Classes! I’ll be proselytizing the wonders of metal type in June and July at The Center for Book Arts:

Intro to Letterpress: Business Cards and Stationery

June 1 – 2 , Saturday and Sunday, 10am – 4pm

Intro to Letterpress: Postcards, Pamphlets & Leaflets

July 13 – 14 , Saturday and Sunday, 10am – 4pm

Residency!

I’m SO EXCITED for this: the LMCC Swing Space Residency at Governor’s Island. I’ll be working there starting in August, running through December, developing new information to be distributed in print for free.

Speaking of which, it’s still spring, which means!

New pamphlet is in the works. This is a hint as to what it’s all about.

Took the day off yesterday and did something pleasant.

The print show at MOMA is great and there’s a Dieter Roth show for the book fan in you as well.  The teenagers next to  me really liked the bunnies made out of bunny droppings.

But my favorite was the video installation of the elephant walking slowly in circles.  Very relaxing. (It’s on the internet too! You can watch it here, though smaller.)

Though I’m clearly more comfortable in print. Talking in public! In Williamsburg this weekend! With the amazing Angie Waller!

Sarah Nicholls will be discussing her book Phosphorescent Face Highlighter that incorporates found text from sources such as Adolf Loos, The Landmark Forum, Weight Watchers, Le Corbusier, Alcoholics Anonymous, Oil of Olay and Dale Carnegie, among others. The pages are composed of linoleum cut illustrations, hand drawn and hand-set type.

It is  a self-help tour de force.

Artist(s): Angie Waller, Sarah Nicholls

Date: December 9th 2012 @ 3pm

Location:

29 Wythe Avenue, Brooklyn, NY 11211 (entrance on 13th St.)

(View Google Map)

Cost: free

Come out this Sunday and I will help you to lose weight, realize your potential, quit drinking, heal your relationships, design new contexts and paradigms, hide those tiny lines and wrinkles, build the city of the future, move beyond the tired  aesthetics of the past, and much, much more.

http://prettyconceptual.com/event/sarah-nicholls-and-angie-waller/

Pretty Conceptual
curated by Angie Waller

November 30, 2012 – January 13, 2013
OPENING:  Friday, November 30  (7-11pm)
HOURS:  Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, noon to 6pm and by appointment
closed for holidays December 23 – 30

Present Company is pleased to announce Pretty Conceptual, the second iteration of our ongoing Present Projects series. Hosted in the back room of our gallery, these temporary invasions by guest colleagues serve to compliment our exhibition programming through experimental entrepreneurial endeavors. .

Pretty Conceptual is a concept store tailored to pretty conceptual lifestyles. It appeals to those who analyze the semiotics of greeting cards but never end up sending one; crave the latest gadgets but fetishize glitches and outmoded media; and enjoy products that poetically fail to live up to their grandiose promises.

Products span numerous lifestyle categories, including mind alteration, self-improvement, cutting-edge technology and fashion. You will find things that you didn’t know you needed. Prices will defy expectations.

Pretty Conceptual features products by  Angie Waller, Badlands Unlimited, Eric Doeringer, David Horvitz, Katarina Jerinic, Kristin Lucas, Sarah Nicholls, Yoshua Okón, Emily Spivack, Squareeater, Ryland Wharton, and Julia Weist.

PRETTY CONCEPTUAL EVENTS:

ARTIST TALKS: SAT DEC 1, DEC 8, DEC 16, JAN 5, JAN 12 3pm

SQUAREEATER RAVE and CLOSING PARTY: SAT JAN 12, 7-11pm

(see prettyconceptual.com for more details and announcements)

Don’t even start with that “Only boring people are bored” crap. I went from frantic overwork to enforced home confinement. The rush of relief from having some time off is starting to wear off. Damn slow moving weather event! Weather.com has this huge red notice on the front page of their website saying “DEVASTATION IMMINENT!”

And me stuck here for the indefinite future without pie-making ingredients.

In the meantime, enjoy these images of the results of our live-action bookbinding demos at the Designers & Books Fair this past weekend. Not bad, huh?

Phosphorescent Face Highlighter‘s going to be in an artist book show this fall, opening next Friday:

Feminism and the Artist’s Book
Related to Materializing “Six Years”: Lucy R. Lippard and the Emergence of Conceptual Art at The Brooklyn Museum

October 19 – December 30, 2012
Reception: Friday, October 19, 6 – 8pm

Working on lettering for the catalog for our summer members exhibition. Go see it!

I’ve been working on this event for the past two month, and it’s almost here. This Wednesday, April 4th at 6pm is the Center for Book Arts Annual Benefit and Auction. There will be lovely food, lovely music, lovely company and lovely cocktails, as well as a rousing live auction and an after-party from 9 to 11 (with discounted tickets if you’re on a budget and like to stay out late).

If you’re in NYC, buy a ticket here! Tickets start at $100 for the main event.

If you’re farther afield, bid on work in our silent auction! Amazing works by amazing artists can be yours at affordable prices. All money raised goes to support our studio programs, artist residencies, exhibitions and public talks, lectures, performances and readings. Come celebrate bookmaking and help fund the work that we do.

(And if you’re wondering what I’m going to be doing for the next week, I made a short video of the preparations for last year’s benefit, which you can watch here. )

Every Day Work chronicles one full year (January 1 – December 31, 2011) of Impractical Labor as practiced by a dedicated group of ILSSA members. On every day worked, members saved remnants of their process in a dated envelope. In early January 2012, members sent their envelopes and/or a representative tool to the Hammes Gallery at Saint Mary’s College. One envelope is posted on the gallery wall for each worked day. On the gallery floor, the saved remnants are grouped by month, with remnants from each day organized in rows. The exhibition is a visual chronology of every day worked by union members, wherever they may have been. Together with the tools, the show provides a glimpse into the nature of such work.

Upon the show’s closing, Saint Mary’s College students will be offered the remnants for their own creative reuse. In the next installment of this exhibition, members’ envelopes will be chronologically collated and bound into a collection of books. The collection will be displayed and then distributed to all participating members.

Of the many obsessive compulsive activities I engaged in in 2011, this was the compulsive-est. It was really satisfying to send off my shoes boxes of little envelopes after a year of saving my proofs, wood carving shards and linoleum scraps. Goodbye my dear little anxiety by-products! I received an email after Bridget and Emily were done installing thanking me and two others for being the most assiduous savers. Overachievers unite!

The exhibition is up until March 2. If you happen to be in Notre Dame, Indiana check it out. Thank you to Bridget Elmer and Emily Larned for organizing.

Up at the Grolier Club until February 4: Printing for Kingdom, Empire & Republic: Treasuries from the Archives of the Imprimerie Nationale.

There’s a great review in the NY Times of the show here.

Fine & Dirty: Contemporary Letterpress Art opens on January 18th at the Center for Book Arts here in NYC. That’s Wednesday!

Organized by Betty Bright and Jeff Rathermel, Minnesota Center for Book Arts

The practice of letterpress printing incorporates craft standards and the book’s haptic character, along with art world strategies, materials and content. With Fine & Dirty, the curators will assemble work that represents the best in letterpress books today, created by established and emerging artists. In so doing we hope to explore the forces that are reshaping the meanings of craft in letterpress printing in the twenty-first century, and that may shed light on the larger craft world’s relationship to art and to life. The exhibition will also investigate other influences on current letterpress work. These include DIY (Do It Yourself) and its playful organizational spin-off for letterpress, ILLSA (Impractical Labor in Service of the Speculative Arts); Asian influences such as wabi sabi; international influences such as, from the UK, Ken Campbell’s improvisatory approach and Ron King’s theatrical presentations, and, from Germany, a heightened focus on design and on a wide use of papers seen in work by Viktoria Schäpers and other Germans, and in work by Barbara Tetenbaum.

NEW YORK TYPES, running December 15, 2011 through January 6, 2012, is presented in collaboration with New York Writes Itself (NYWI), a new ongoing series of creative productions fueled by the people of New York, and Leo Burnett New York.  The foundation of NYWI is a website that acts as a running archive called ‘The Script’, where people can write down New York moments. Locals registered as “scribes” can submit short-form content like unique quotes, characters, and scenes they witness in New York.

For the NEW YORK TYPES exhibition, these snippets of real New Yorkers conversations, quotes and stories will be presented on the walls of the ADC Gallery by some of the city’s leading letterpress artists. Each artist or group — including Swayspace, Center for the Book Arts, The KDU, Peter Kruty Editions and Tarhorse Press — has picked a collection of NYWI ‘Script’ entries to interpret in his or her own letterpress style, bringing the real words to life letter by letter. The artwork is for sale in limited editions of 10, with a total of 500 pieces for sale.

NEW YORK TYPES opens with a party on Thursday, December 15, 6:30 pm-10:30 pm EST, at the ADC Gallery, 106 West 29th St., NYC. The exhibition is made possible through support by Leo Burnett NY, Dewars, Boxcar Press and French Paper.

The exhibition runs until January 5, 2012, free and open to the public.  Gallery hours Monday-Friday, 10:00 am-6:00 pm, closed December 23-30.

For more information, please visit http://www.newyorkwritesitself.com/2011/10/new-york-types/