Art: A City Made from Lead Type

Posted by trav in Book Art, Book Column, Type      No comments

Jul
16

The folks over at Type Token featured the work of Hong Seon Jang the other day. The artist has a show in Denver right now where patrons can check out his cityscapes composed of lead type. This is truly amazing and a great way to show off type pieces. Most of the typography-related art that I run across consists of the printed letterforms, but this takes the mechanical type and pushes into the architectural realm.

Book Art and Recycling Books

Posted by trav in Birmingham, Book Art, Events, library      No comments

Jul
12

All Summer long the Birmingham Library system has been hosting events that teach you how to make things out of old books. I haven’t been able to make any of the evening courses yet, but they sound kind of fun and there are a few more left.

Friday, July 20th 10:00a-12:00p at the Powderly Branch – learn about “Stamps and Stiches” and use different printing techniques and sewing to create truly unique altered book pieces.

Monday, July 23rd 6:30p-8:30p at the Avondale Branch – learn “Collage and Image Transfers” to add images and depth to your altered book art project.

If you’ve missed all of the other sessions (as I have) look towards the bottom of the library’s blog post where they list a handful of books that they have on the shelves to help you get inspired and started with your own book art project.

Amazing Book Art

Posted by trav in Book Art, Book Column      No comments

Feb
22

These are AMAZING. No words are needed to describe them. Just click through and look at all of the photos. Book-artist Brian Dettmer uses surgical grade tools to slice and dice these pages into deep layered works of sculptured paper and art. He lives over in Atlanta. Here is a quick interview with Dettmer.

A Tower of Lincoln Books

Posted by trav in Book Art, Book Column      No comments

Feb
10

Abraham Lincoln did a lot of good for this country and he’s done a lot of good for the book industry. Currently, there is a monumental tower at Ford’s Theater made up of 15,000 books, each a unique title about Abraham Lincoln, driving this point home.

His story is one that is always coming out under a new title every year. It’s amazing how many books are still being written on Lincoln. I wonder what’s left to be said?

I’ve only read two books out of this massive 34 foot tower (which combined are only 8.34 inches thick, so that leaves about 33 feet to go). It may be a cool art piece, but I just see a massive TBR pile. I wonder if Abraham Lincoln Vampire Slayer is included? Because if it is, then I have read three. They need to publish a list of the books.

Books Arts Documentary

Posted by trav in Book Art, Book Column, Book Design      No comments

Jan
11

PBS has a great new documentary-short series out with the latest installments focusing on a handful of book artists. This video is under six minutes long. The film starts with a paper engineer who has helped make some of the world’s best pop-up books as well as a paper sculptor (timecode 2:08) who cuts books and images into “book tunnels”. They also talk to an artist (timecode 3:37) that tears, glues, weaves and re-molds books into new collages and forms, in an effort to make her artistic point. It’s all very fascinating. PBS posted the documentary to YouTube and I have embedded it here:

Printing at 2011 Bluff Park Art Show

Posted by trav in Birmingham, Book Art, Events, letterpress      No comments

Oct
5

The weather was GORGEOUS here in Birmingham this past weekend. I’m not sure there was a better way to spend it than cruising the stalls at this year’s Bluff Park Art Show. They had some new folks there, so that was neat, but I really enjoyed the handful of print-artists that were there.

Katherine Linn was there and had some great prints. Many are local landmarks with a subset sporting vibrant colors.

Justin Banger was also there. This was my first time seeing Justin’s prints. They were very well-done and the subject matter will keep you staring for quite a while. Lots to think about, besides technique.

Debra Riffe was also there this weekend. She had a new print of Amos Kennedy, that was fantastic! When I asked about it she said it will never be for sale. The Amos Kennedy Print is pulled from a small 50 print run she did as a birthday gift for Kennedy. She says she got to keep one and Kennedy got the rest. I would have loved to have this one to hang by my Kennedy posters. Oh well.

I also found out, at the show, that Georgia-based artist Sarah Rishel is retiring. She’s been churning out intaglio prints for 30+ years and says she’s ready to explore something else. Tip: I’ve emailed her to see if I can get the etching that a print I bought was pulled from. I hear she is in the habit of selling plates. So if you’re lucky enough to have one of hers on your wall, it may be worth seeing if you can buy the etching. How neat would that be to display them side-by-side?

There were a couple of other paper-artists and printers that I didn’t get to visit. I hope they all come back next year.

History of Science Fiction Map

Posted by trav in Book Art, On the Web      No comments

Apr
12

Ok. This is cool. Absolutely cool. Artist Ward Shelley has sketched out a mind map to the history and evolution of the science fiction genre. It’s amazing. Click through to the big image and check out the areas around cyberpunk (upper right-ish) and the “Star Wars effect” (follow the arrow from Star Wars). He used spatial relations too. So the closer a name or title is to a sub-genre the more “canon” it/they will be. Pretty cool way to pick up new titles and authors to track down.

Someone should do this for all of the genres. A biblio-mystery mind map would be cool. I’ll buy the colored pencils! Who’s with me?

Great Book Art video

Posted by trav in Book Art, On the Web      No comments

Nov
30

This is one of the few “book videos” I really enjoy. I still haven’t found video promos or book trailers to be that appealing. But this one produced by the New Zealand Book Council is phenomenal! It is a book video worth watching, all the way to the last page, where the letters walk off of the page. Fantastic!

The video is taken from Maurice Gee’s Going West.