SFCB Blog
Roadworks And Book Arts Through The Eyes of British Columbia’s Director of Libraries and Literacy
We were delighted to have Jacqueline VanDyk visit the San Francisco Center for the Book a few weeks ago. She is the Director of the Libraries and Literacy Branch in the government of British Columbia. Today we were delighted to read her blog post about the visit and share it with you here. To read the original post, and other posts, go to: http://jacquelinevandyk.ca/roadworks-and-book-arts/
Roadworks and Book Arts
Picture a steamroller used by artists in making prints. Make that a three-ton construction steamroller and an unlikely letterpress bed: a city street!
photo credit: unknown: laughingsquid.com
Picture a team of artists and printers making large-scale prints from three-foot-squarehand-carved linoleum blocks. Add in festival crowds, local colour, food, crafts and book arts workshops, as well as book art enthusiasts, and you’ll have a sense of the Roadworks Steamroller Printing Festival held in San Francisco every September.
The RoadWorks Festival is organized by the San Francisco Center for the Book (SFCB). Founded in 1996, SFCB fosters the joys of books and bookbinding, the history, artistry, and continuing presence of books in our culture and the enduring importance of books as a medium of self-expression. SFCB is a full-service book arts centre, providing expertise, equipment and workshops to learn how to print and bind books.
When I visited SFCB a few months ago, not only was I dazzled by the concept and physical space, I was thrilled to discover they also have gallery space for book exhibitions.
“Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here” was a thought-provoking exhibition of 55 artists’ books, created in response to the March 5, 2007 bombing of Baghdad’s “Street of Booksellers”. It was powerful, poignant and haunting.
An exhibition from 2012 featured works of art created using books as the artist’s medium. “Exploding the Codex” featured the works of over 40 book artists from the collection of Mary Austin. The show explored the theater of the book and storytelling through structure: going beyond the traditional book format, these art pieces unveiled new ways of presenting and telling stories. Theatrical, whimsical and clever.
Mary Austin, a collector of creatively recycled books, is the founder of SFCB, and her enthusiasm for the book arts is contagious. During my visit, she gave generously of her time to tell me more about the workshops and activities that take place at the SFCB. Mary and her husband Brewster Kahle run the Kahle/Austin Foundation, a non-profit which, among other activities, supports the SFCB. Their foundation also funds the Internet Archive.
Did you catch that? Brewster Kahle, visionary librarian and Internet pioneer, celebrates ancient book arts. It’s that combination of passions for the old and the new that strikes me as fascinating. Seeing the continuum of knowledge and valuing all of the parts. It’s a large-scale view of the role of one librarian.
“Knowledge lives in lots of different forms over time”, Kahle has said. “First it was in people’s memories, then it was in manuscripts, then printed books, then microfilm, CD-ROMS, now on the digital internet. Each one of these generations is very important.”
“Libraries exist to preserve society’s cultural artifacts and to provide access to them. Without cultural artifacts, civilization has no memory and no mechanism to learn from its successes and failures.” Brewster believes that if libraries are to continue to foster education and scholarship in this era of digital technology, it’s essential for them to extend those functions into the digital world.
So, Brewster Kahle — inventor, philanthropist, digital librarian, and founder of the Internet Archive — has been working to provide universal access to all knowledge for more than twenty-five years. The Internet Archive is a truly huge digital library, having grown to include texts, audio, moving images, software and archived web pages in its collections. As well, it provides specialized services for adaptive reading and information access for the blind and other persons with disabilities. And it’s all free to the public.
Roadworks — with a steamroller used to make prints — is a vital part of the story.
An inspiring vision and an admirable mission tie together these multiple threads: a celebration and sharing of the book arts, a commitment to preserving books in physical and digital format, and a dedication to providing universal access to all knowledge in all forms.
Dominic Riley: Visiting Instructor Wins UK Top Award of £10,000 at Sir Paul Getty Bodleian Bookbinding Prize 2013 Ceremony.
British designer, and SFCB visiting instructor, Dominic Riley has won the top award of £10,000 ($15,670.89) at the second Sir Paul Getty Bodleian Bookbinding Prize 2013 ceremony.
The BBC filed the following report. To view the original go to http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-22841501
The binding that won the top award.
Given the theme of William Shakespeare, Riley produced a binding made of brown and black goatskin which depicts the story of Pyramus and Thisbe.
His work has been donated to the Bodleian Library, University of Oxford.
Eduardo Gimenez took second place for This Solid Globe and will be exhibited with other winners until 10 August. Second placed Gimenez was inspired by the Globe.
The prize was set up in 2009 to recognise craftsmanship and creativity in the contemporary art of bookbinding. This year is the second time it has been held.
SFCB Visiting Instructor Dominic Riley
Competition entrants represented 31 countries. A special student prize was awarded to Yuri Nomura from Japan for a binding in green and black goatskin with lacquered areas shaped in Shakespeare’s initials W and S. Yuri Nomura was inspired by traditional Japanese binding.
There were 25 entries shortlisted as distinguished winners who received a silver Shakespeare nib, engraved with their name.
Stephen Conway, President of Designer Bookbinders, said: “The eclectic diversity of styles and influences demonstrated by the competition entries moves bookbinding in new and exciting directions.”
After the exhibition in Oxford, the competition display will travel to another ten venues around the world including Estonia, Spain and Japan.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-22841501
About Dominic Riley
Dominic Riley is an internationally renowned book restorer, fine binder, teacher and film maker. He undertakes work for institutions, book dealers and collectors, and his work is in many important collections worldwide. Now celebrating twenty-five years as a bookbinder, he learnt his craft at the London College of Printing and has worked at binderies in London, New York and San Francisco. He co-founded the bookbinding program at SFCB in 1996, an returns each year to teach. He has won many prizes for his Design Bindings, including both first prizes and the Mansfield Silver Medal in the DB competition in 2007. He travels widely across the UK and USA teaching bookbinding master classes and lecturing. He is Vice-Chairman of the Society of Bookbinders and was elected Fellow of Designer Bookbinders in 2008. He has written and presented two full-length films, one about the life and work of well-loved teacher Maureen Duke, and the other a celebration of England’s best known bookbinder, Bernard Middleton. He has his bindery in the Lake District in England, with fellow bookbinder Michael Burke.
• Studied with Paul Delrue, 1985-7, and London College of Printing, 1988-90.
• 1990-2001 lived in California. Past President of the Hand Bookbinders of California. With John DeMerritt had TV show, The Book Boys.
• Self employed since 1994. Joined by Michael Burke 1996. Taught at University of California and across USA for the Guild of Bookworkers. Co-founded binding programme at the San Francisco Center for the Book, 1996. Returns each summer to teach and lecture.
• Moved to the Lake District in 2001. Teaches at Brewery Arts Centre in Kendal, at Burton Manor, and at home.
• Ten prizes in DB Bookbinding Competition 2001-7, including both first prizes and the Mansfield Silver Medal in 2007.
• Licentiate of DB in 2003, Fellow in 2008.
• Vice Chairman of Society of Bookbinders, co-founder of SoB Seminar and DB/SoB workshop series.
• Demonstrated at SoB conferences in 2002, 2004, 2005, 2006 and 2008. Gives workshops across the UK for SoB.
• Presenter of Seventy Years in Bookbinding: a Portrait of Bernard Middleton, (2008).
• Has published articles Gold Leaf (Hand Bookbinders of California); Ampersand (Pacific Center for the Book Arts); Biblio magazine; Illustrator magazine; Bookbinder (SoB) and The New Bookbinder (DB).
• Accredited lecturer with the National Association of Decorative and Fine Arts Societies (NADFAS).
• Bindings in collections in the USA and UK, including the British Library and the Rylands Library in Manchester.
• “I enjoy all aspects of bookbinding, from restoration to teaching and Design Binding. Restoration is hugely challenging, and is surgical in its approach. Teaching is about giving back, but it also keeps the craft alive. If you have a passion, you must pass it on. Design Binding is the way we get to be artists, but is also the most mentally taxing. I have created forty or so Design Bindings since 2001, and now make about eight a year.“
Call To Artists: Submit Book Works Which Speak To The Mysterious, The Alchemical, The Arcane
For all book artists, letterpress printers, bookbinders, and other practitioners of the original “Black Art”… Consider entering a piece in this upcoming show at the San Francisco Center for the Book! International submissions welcomed.
The show runs from Friday, September 13, 2013, to October 31 (naturally).
The deadline for submission is June 30, 2013
Send in or create a piece exploring the esoteric and investigate superstition through the inky arts of the book.
Superstition: An 2013 Exhibition at the San Francisco Center for the Book
Artists are encouraged to submit book works which speak to the mysterious, the alchemical, the arcane — both written and unwritten ways in which superstitions affect our lives. Books, posters, the art of the mysterious in whatever form — all are invited to participate.
Check out the call at the link below and submit your work online! Feel free to forward this link to friends and/or fellow artists/printers who might wish to contribute to this show of the shadowy underworld of superstitions.
http://sfcb.org/call-entry
grendl löfkvist | curator
Learn Screenprinting with Marsha Shaw | Weeklong Screenprinting Intensive
The San Francisco Center for the Book is holding a five-day workshop that offers an introduction to the stencil method of screen printing!
Learn the mark-making possibilities of screen printing with this weeklong workshop.
Workshop participants will learn various image-making methods using paper stencils, monotype techniques, fluid techniques, screen filler, and direct-emulsion photographic stencils. The class will also work with color in multiple editions and become familiar with the mark-making possibilities of screen printing while expressing and expanding their personal styles.
SFCB Screenprinting workshops take place at Mission Graifca
About the Instructor | Marsha Shaw
A southern California native, Marsha Shaw received a B.A. and M.A. in Painting from California State University Northridge. After moving to San Francisco, Shaw pursued an MFA in Printmaking from California College of the Arts in San Francisco. Her work has been shown across the country and her teaching career is expansive. Shaw specializes in screenprinting, bookmaking and wallpaper design.
Shaw’s work focuses on childhood memories, gender construction and concepts inherent within the experiences of women. Derived from domestic experience, her work includes wallpaper patterns, insects, human anatomy, text from children’s books, and stitching. Shaw is interested in alternative printing techniques in particular the use of recycled materials. She uses old vinyl albums as a matrix for some of her work bringing to the surface concepts surrounding the “circle.” The process of printmaking allows Shaw to understand relationships that she feels that she cannot grasp in any other way.
San Francisco Center for the Book Weeklong Screenprinting Intensive.
To learn more about this workshop or to register, go to http://sfcb.org/civicrm/event/info?reset=1&id=1032
Macy Chadwick | Three Techniques in Three Days at the San Francisco Center for the Book
Three Techniques in Three Days
Instructor: Macy Chadwick
Create a luscious, layered image with a combination of pressure printing, relief printing, and printing with polymer plates.
Saturday – Monday/ June 1, 2, 3
10:00am – 5:00pm
Macy Chadwick | Time Signifigance
This dynamic class combines three different image-generation techniques on the letterpress. First, students will create an atmospheric image with textural background printing (or pressure printing). Next, students will add shapes with relief printing or wood type. Finally, students will complete the last layer by printing with photopolymer plates made from line drawings. On the last day of Three Techniques in Three Days, the class will create a bound image sampler of students’ work.
Basic understanding of Vandercook cylinder presses required. Bring =textured papers, fabric, tape, string, scissors, X-ACTO® knife, and pencil. Register for this class at http://sfcb.org/civicrm/event/info?reset=1&id=1031
Macy Chadwick will be teaching Three Techniques in Three Days at the San Francisco Center for the Book.
About the instructor:
Originally from the east coast, Macy Chadwick received an MFA in Book Arts and Printmaking from The University of the Arts in Philadelphia. She currently creates books and prints under the imprint In Cahoots Press in Oakland, California and teaches classes throughout the Bay Area. Her work is in a vast amount of prominent collections in the U.S. and abroad.
Chadwick’s work addresses themes of memory, personal communication and visual language systems. Some of Chadwick’s prints include visual encoding into knotted string representing actual thoughts and phrases revealing a tangible language, but one that cannot be read in a conventional manner. She is interested in the connection between people: interactions both verbal and non-verbal, shared experiences, and the urge to communicate clearly
Macy Chadwick | Book artist and instructor.
Forty Hours With Donald Glaister at SF Center for the Book
A guest post by SFCB Instructor, donor and Board Member – Mary Laird.
Five Days with Don Glaister at SFCB 2013
For me, it was a dream come true – any kind of a class with Don Glaister (Master Bookbinder),here in San Francisco, at the Center for the Book, where I have the privilege to teach letterpress printing.
Donald Glaister teaching weeklong workshop at the San Francisco Center for the Book
I could barely believe my good fortune! Seven of us~ Ellen Bauch, Jennifer Chapman, Leanne Bakkemo, Georgette Freeman, Coleen Curry, Daniel Tucker and me – together for 40 hours, confecting a leather drop spine (and bass wood at that) box making class in the newly purchased SFCB building at 375 Rhode Island Street in San Francisco.
Donald Glaister at the San Francisco Center for the Book
The eight leathers I hauled in were a curious range of sheep that we speculated someone may have spray painted – definitely not dyed. Uh oh. I had a lot to learn. Fortunately at least one of them was goat, and looked half way decent. Unfortunately it was not the color I had chosen for my box, nor to go with the ultra suede I had purchased to lay down in the trays. No matter. Don was gentle but firm, this was the skin I would spend my time skiving. Yes, it was too thick. I had received instructions from Deb, but need to learn to read the micrometer with more accuracy.
San Francisco Center for the Book in association with the American Academy of Bookbinding and the Hand Bookbinders of California Workshop
And I had not used my Sharfix in five years. A recipe for patience. I don’t confess these things easily, but more in the interest to laud Don’s patience, skill, humor and interest in everyone in the class. And to thank the rest of the class for my steep learning curve. Georgette Freeman brought her roll of PMA, positionable mounting adhesive from 3 M to use with the ultra suede. Coleen Curry was thrilled because this meant new freedom from PVA .
Students learning to make a leather drop spine box at the San Francisco Center for the Book
What was shared for learning possibilities?
How to see
How to hold the leather
How to be gentle with the leather
How to slowly move the leather through the Sharfix
How the evenness of light coming through the Sharfix informs you about the exact position of the blade
How to sharpen the paring knife.
What blades to buy
The possibility of Work Sharp automatic tool sharpening magic machine
How to use the rasp
How to make microwave paste
How to make invisible leather corners with the sheerest of parings pasted over the corner
How to make a bass wood half rounded spine
How to make a box to fit whatever you want to put into it.
The importance of keeping your tools sharp. And being careful with them for their and your good fortunes.
Tools! People brought amazing tools: Stik-it sandpaper blocks, plier -handled tweezers, specially shaped bones, hollow aluminum 3 inch long whatsits from Home depot to put in trays for pressing them in the nipping press.
Lest I forget, Don did a slide presentation on his unique book dedicated to his brother in law, about Voyageur, journeying through space and non space, in the most amazing display of line and color and emotion. Truly it brought one to tears just listening to him.
I hated to see the week end.
Xoxoox mary risala laird mary 2013
Post script. I finished the project two weeks later, at home. I am quite sure Don would have had some refining comments to make my journey to the finish line easier, but his guidance in absentia did the trick. I highly recommend you all take this and any class he has to offer, and that SFCB gets him back here in the spring of 2014 for at least two weeks of class!
The Sketchbook Project Summer Tour
The San Francisco Center for the Book is pleased to host the 2013 Sketchbook Project 2013 Road Trip featuring thousands of handmade artists’ books.
Join SF Center for the Book in welcoming The Sketchbook Project to San Francisco this July.
The Sketchbook Project is a global, crowd-sourced art project and traveling exhibition. Since 2006, the Sketchbook Project has encouraged participants from all walks of life to fill the pages of a blank sketchbook. The results are cataloged in the Brooklyn Art Library and shared with the public in venues around the world. The collection currently includes more than 26,000 sketchbooks representing nearly 8,000 cities worldwide.
- Sketchbooks will go on an adventure of a lifetime in our custom built Mobile Library
This summer, Steven Peterman, co-founder of the Sketchbook Project, and Sara Peterman, director of the Brooklyn Art Library, are hitting the road to share the stories behind the Sketchbook Project with communities across North America. The husband- and-wife duo will set out for adventure in the Mobile Library — their custom-built bookmobile — along with a selection of 4,500 sketchbooks from the permanent collection. Covering more than 10,000 miles and 32 cities in just four months, the Summer Tour is a unique opportunity to experience the Sketchbook Project firsthand and swap stories with the project’s organizers.
Over 75,000 people have taken part in The Sketchbook Project in some capacity. Join a community of artists who believe that art comes from anyone, anywhere, regardless of education, background and skill. Got something to say? Say it with The Sketchbook Project.
The Summer Tour includes stops in every corner of the country, from Portland, ME to Los Angeles. This year marks the Sketchbook Project’s first visit to many wonderful venues, including the San Francisco Center for the Book, the Hunter Museum in Chattanooga, the Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design, and the Dahl Art Center in Rapid City, SD.
The Sketchbook Project’s participants span from all corners of the earth. Creative people from 135 different countries have taken part in the project.
As part of the adventure, Steven and Sara are documenting the entire Summer Tour for an upcoming book. “We’re excited to collect stories from the people and places we encounter throughout the summer,” says Steven. “It’s an opportunity for us to share a pretty crazy experience — traveling across the country with thousands of sketchbooks and meeting thousands of people along the way.” The book will bring together stories from Steven and Sara’s escapades on the road with a behind-the-scenes look at the process of bringing a community art project to life.
The goal is to continue inspiring people from diverse backgrounds to make art. “Given all the ways that technology has integrated with our lives, it feels meaningful to meet new people over physical books,” says Steven. “This project is about people leaving their mark in the world.”
The Legacy of Florence Walter: Celebrating a Century at the Book Club of California
The Legacy of Florence Walter:
Celebrating a Century at the BCC
April 29-September 2, 2013
Free and open to the public during Book Club hours
Monday 10-7; Tuesday-Friday, 10-5
The Legacy of Florence Walter features forty-five fine design bindings that Walter’s family has treasured for many decades. Her working sketches, photographs, keepsakes, and other printed ephemera supplement the portrait of Florence Walter as a matriarch and hand bookbinder.
At the opening, Professor Henry Snyder, OBE, introduced the exhibition and the grandchildren who have made it possible; they offered reminiscences of Florence and the family.
Professor Henry Snyder presenting at the opening reception of the Florence Walter exhibit.
Born in 1884, Florence Walter began binding in 1934, and soon became one of the most prominent French-style binders in America. Especially choice is her unique binding of James Joyce’s Ulysses, illustrated by Henri Matisse and published by the Limited Editions Club in 1935. Another wonderful volume is her dramatic binding of Henry Miller’s Into the Night Life (1947), personally inscribed by the author to her.
Upon her death in 1972, Walter’s family donated the contents of her studio—including some 500 finishing tools and a book pressas well as 300 books on binding & paper—to Mills College. Her work was shown at Mills in 1973 and at the Legion of Honor in 1976. The family retained her many bindings, which are now on exhibit (through August) at the Book of California for the first time in nearly forty years.
The Legacy of Florence Walter features forty-five fine design bindings that Walter’s family has treasured for many decades.
Florence, née Schwartz, married into the Walter family in 1907. Her husband, John Walter (1879–1930), was prominent in downtown retail and was an important figure in the San Francisco Art Association and the California School of the Arts, now the San Francisco Art Institute. His brother, Edgar (1878–1938), was a sculptor whose work can be seen on the proscenium arch of the San Francisco Opera. In the wake of the Panama-Pacific Exposition of 1915, he designed a bronze plaque for the life members of The Book Club of California; the originals of these can be seen at the entrance to the Club.
Florence herself was an important bibliophile, a great patron of the Grabhorn Press; she joined the Club in 1913 and was both the first woman on its Board and its first woman president (1952–1955). In 1951, she commissioned Wurster-Bernardi to build a house at 2745 Larkin, on the north crest of Russian Hill overlooking Ghirardelli Square and Alcatraz. Her bindery was a notable and wonderful feature of this home.
—Kathleen Burch & John McBride, Exhibition Curators
Kathleen Burch at the Book Club of California
John McBride at the Book Club of California
The exhibition at the Book Club of California is possible thanks to the splendid gift of fourteen of Walter’s bindings, donated by three of her grandchildren: Paul A. Bissinger, Jr., Peggy Pressman, and Tom Bissinger (the children of Marjorie and Paul A. Bissinger, Sr.). Paul Bissinger’s gift also includes additional printed ephemera celebrating the life of Florence Walter; her sketches of some of her bindings; and books and single sheet material printed by the senior Bissingers.
As far as we are aware this is the largest collection the work of Florence Walter in an institution, and we are proud that her grandchildren chose our library for its preservation, so that the public may enjoy it for generations to come.
Book Club of California programs for the opening of the Florence Walter exhibit.
The exhibition also includes examples of Walter’s work from other sources, as well as bindings by her teacher, another celebrated San Francisco bookbinder, Belle McMurtrie Young (wife of the second president of the Book Club of California, William R. Young).
This post is from the Book Club of California website. See the original post at http://www.bccbooks.org/programs/exhibitions/
Superstition 13 Invites Artists to Investigate Superstition and the Esoteric.
CALL FOR ENTRIES:
Exhibition Title: Superstition 13
Exhibition Dates: September 13th (Friday) – October 31, 2013
Deadline for applications: 11:59pm June 30, 2013
Please read these instructions carefully. If you still have questions, submit via email info @ sfcb.org . Please, no calls.
Superstition 13 invites artists to investigate superstition and the esoteric. It is a juried exhibition of the original black art – the inky arts of the book.
The exhibition will explore the ways in which superstitions affect our lives. The exhibition opens on Friday, September 13, 2013, and the fun will continue through the closing party on Hallowe’en — Thursday, October 31, 2013 — where we invite everyone to come as their favorite superstition or maledictum. In between, we’ll offer workshop classes on captivating themes such as the “Exquisite Corpse”, and host a spell-binding night of “Struck-by-Lightning” talks and fortune card readings.
The exhibition will also take a look at the historical with an educational view of some gorgeous quasi-artists’ books of historical esoterica and a discussion of their Jungian influences. And finally, the heart and soul of the art will be captured within a four-color exhibition catalog.
Entry information:
Eligibility
Open to all artists in the United States, 18 years of age or older. Entries must be original work completed by the artist submitting. Submitted images of artwork must accurately represent the work that will appear in the show. We reserve the right to deny artwork that differs from the images submitted.
Media/Size
Open to all interpretations of the book and paper arts. Please include specific dimensions with your entry. SFCB reserves the right not to accept exceptionally large, heavy, cumbersome, or potentially hazardous. Work must be framed, when applicable, and ready to hang (wire, d-rings, or cleat). Acrylic glazing only; NO GLASS. All art must be labeled with artist’s name, title, medium and year. Special installation instructions must be approved by SFCB; please include any special installation instructions with submission of entry form.
Entry Fee
A non-refundable fee of $35* is required for application and entry of up to 3 pieces. Only online entries will be considered. Submissions are not considered complete until payment is made.
*Special rate for CBAA Students members: CBAA Student Members are eligible to pay a nonrefundable $20 application fee for up to 3 entries. Only online submissions will be considered. Submissions are not considered complete until payment is made.
Deadline for Entry: June 30
Jury Period: July 1-12th Artist Notification: July 15th; Artists will be notified by email.
Shipping and Delivery All accepted entries must ship to be received by SFCB between August 15, 2013 and August 31, 2013. Shipped work should arrive in a reusable container with return postage or prepaid shipping documents and correct return labeling. Please label all packing materials with your name. Be sure to indicate insurance value for shipping both ways. Hand-delivered artwork may be dropped off August 15, 2013 through August 31, 2013 between 10:00 am and 5:00 pm only.
Following the close of the exhibition, artwork may be picked up between November 4, 2013 and November 8, 2013, between 10:00 am and 5:00 pm. Please arrange for a representative to pick up your work if you are unable. Artwork remaining at SFCB beyond the specified pick-up dates will be subject to a $10 per day storage fee. Shipped artwork will be packaged and shipped by November 15, 2013. Return of work without return postage or prepaid shipping documents will be delayed. SFCB reserves the right to discard any artwork remaining on hand after December 15, 2013.
Sales Artists are encouraged to sell their work. Artists receive 60% of the sale price for work that is sold. In the past, public interest in available work has been high and SFCB believes such artist-collector dialogue is a vibrant part of exhibitions. All work must have a declared value for insurance purposes, even if it is not for sale.
Liability Artwork accepted for the exhibition will be insured by SFCB from the time it is received and inspected by SFCB staff until artwork is returned to the artist or artist’s agent or delivered to a postal carrier. Delivery and pickup are the responsibility of the artist. During the exhibition, artwork will be insured against all physical loss or damage from any external cause. Insurance is limited to the wholesale value at the time of loss. If damage occurs and the piece can be repaired, liability will be limited to the cost of such repair.
Agreement
Submission of work constitutes an agreement to the conditions set forth in this call for entries and acceptance that the decisions of the jurors are final. SFCB may photograph and reproduce accepted work for promotional purposes. Artists may not withdraw accepted entries before the close of the exhibition. SFCB is not responsible for refunding entry fees or allowing artists to change submission information for artworks that do not meet above rules.
Important Dates:
Call for Entries January 31
Deadline for Entries June 30
Jury Period July 1- July 12
Notification July 15
Artwork Delivery August 15- August 31
Artwork Pick up November 4 – November 8
Artwork Shipped November 15
“A thriving part of the Potrero Hill community for over a decade”
Look what we spotted on the Creativebug blog today.
http://www.cbugstudio.com/blog/
San Francisco Center for the Book is just a stones throw away from Creativebug HQ and has been a thriving part of the Potrero Hill community for over a decade. This month, SFCB celebrates its re-opening in a new and larger space just around the corner. Featuring a huge letterpress studio, expanded gallery, book binding studios and library, SFCB is bigger and better than ever. We took a little tour of the new space and put together a sneak peak video just to whet your appetite. Join SFCB in its grand re-opening party Friday, April 26th from 6-9pm where you can try your hand at letterpress, bind a small notebook, make an Artist Trading Card, or just mingle with like-minded book lovers. See you there!
From the Creativebug blog post about SFCB.
Thanks to our friends at Creativebug for their friendship and support
Creative Bug Helps Promote Our Open House
Today, we received this lovely email and video from Jeanne Lewis at Creativebug!
“We love being being around the corner from you and continue to support what you are doing in whatever way we can. In that vein, we cut this short video for you guys in honor of your new location. I hope you can use it on your site and social media networks to promote the open house”
San Francisco Center for the Book Open House
Jeanne Lewis is the Founder and CEO of Creativebug, the go-to source for online art and craft instruction. Creativebug.com has gathered some of the most inspiring designers and crafters to bring video workshops right to your screen. Whether you’re an accomplished artist or just getting acquainted with a glue gun, our workshops provide project ideas, expert guidance and a healthy dose of creative inspiration.
For information on the Open House and to RSVP, click here.
Brewster Kahle: I am so proud of my wife Mary Austin
Spotted on Brewster Kahle’s blog today.
http://brewster.kahle.org/2013/04/10/mary-austin-gets-honored-at-the-ny-center-for-the-book-arts/
I am so proud of my wife Mary, who got a top honor from the NY Center for the Book Arts for her helping the field of Book Arts by starting the San Francisco Center for the Book.
Presented by book artist and board member, Robbin Ami Silverberg, at their annual fun blow-out.
Mary Austin and Robbin Ami Silverberg in front of a selection from Mary’s collection
Mary Austin getting award at the NY Center for the Book Arts
Join us for our open house and celebration!
On Friday, April 26th, from 6:00 to 9:00pm, we’re celebrating our new home at 375 Rhode Island Street. Come and join us for demos and hands-on activities with many of our fantastic instructors! This is a free event, so be sure to stop by with your friends to kick off your weekend with some fun and creativity. More information can be found below, and be sure to RSVP here or share this event on Facebook!
Spring Open House at the San Francisco Center for the Book
Letterpress Printing with Leigh McLellan
Available: 6:00 – 8:30pm
Learn how our Vandercook cylinder presses work and then print your very own keepsake to take home with you!
Scratch Film Printing with James Tucker
Available: 6:00 – 9:00pm
Scratch your own designs into special film, and then work with James to turn your scratchings into printing plates and art on one of our printing presses!
Platen Press Printing Demo with Meredith Hudson
Available: 7:00 – 9:00pm
Not sure exactly what a platen press is or what it does? Then be sure to visit this demo with Meredith to see our amazing platen presses (like the one on the left) in action!
Maze Bookmaking with Nina Zeininger-Byrne
Available: 6:00 – 9:00pm
Learn about this unique three-dimensional book structure and practice making one yourself!
Advanced Binding Demo with Juliayn Coleman
Available: 6:00 – 7:30pm
Watch an expert bookbinder in action as she demonstrates advanced bookmaking techniques.
Small and Scrappy Demo with Judy Serebrin
Time: 6:30 – 7:00pm
Learn how tiny little books like the ones on the right can be made with just a few scraps of paper.
Artist Trading Cards with Courtney Cerruti
Available: 6:00 – 9:00pm
In this hands-on activity, Courtney will show you how to stamp, staple, collage, stitch and draw on baseball-sized cards that can be traded with artists worldwide.
Collage, History and Technique with Taun Relihan
Available: 8:00 – 9:00pm
Because collage and other art techniques of collecting and assembling evoke the working of the mysterious in the process of creativity, viewers, as well as artists themselves, are often profoundly moved by the beauty and meaning found in collage. In this short session, learn about the history of this technique and explore one of Taun’s works-in-progress.
Hand Lettering Names with Billy Hutchinson
Available: 6:30 – 8:30pm
Hand lettering is one of SFCB’s most popular classes, and this is the perfect chance to see our talented instructor in action and walk away with a little keepsake!
Stochastic Printing: Letterpress Outside the Form
San Francisco Center for the Book and Johanna Drucker invite you to register for a unique creative workshop experience. Johanna Drucker, in conjunction with the Druckworks Exhibit at the San Francisco Center for the Book, is holding a workshop entitled Stochastic Printing: Letterpress Outside the Form
Johanna Drucker Stochastic Printing
About the Workshop
The defining feature of letterpress is quadrature, squareness, and the perfection of the impression depends on being able to lock type up with pressure on a perfectly set form. This workshop addresses ways to print outside those formal limitations, freeing letters from their usual linear arrangement. Overprinting creates the illusion of movement and dynamic action. Together these two approaches result in unpredictable outcomes on the sheet.
Come with lines of poetry, overheard conversation, observation — any language that bears on the contemporary life of language and poetry. We will set type, set up forms on the presses, print, overprint, and create dynamic broadsides.
Bring paper for letterpress printing — no decorative fibers, no heavy threads, nothing that can break type, please. For overprinting sheets, shorter sheets provide more flexibility, as do narrower ones, so think in terms of approximately 11 x 14″. Variation in size and shape will produce interesting results.
Click here to register for the workshop.
Click here to for information about Druckworks: Forty Years of Books and Projects
Ten Years of Organization and Printing: Pictorial Websters
The San Francisco Center for the Book is a big fan of the Pictorial Websters, so of course we were smitten with this mini-documentary on Vimeo Pictorial Webster’s: Inspiration to Completion
From the discovery of the 1898 International Dictionary to Linotyping the entries to printing the last print on the Vandercook to cutting the fingertabs of the deluxe edition, this video gives a quick overview of the process of creating the Pictorial Webster’s fine press edition.
Pictorial Webster’s: Inspiration to Completion from John Carrera on Vimeo.
San Francisco Center for the Book Sponsoring and Attending CiviCon 2013 in Berkeley, CA
CiviCon is the annual, international meeting of CiviCRM users, implementers and developers. CiviCon is the place to share knowledge, experience and to discuss the future of the CiviCRM project. This is the first year attendees will have 2-days to deepen their understanding of the powerful platform and their connections with the CiviCRM community.
SFCB Staff will be attending sessions at CiviCon 2013
SFCB will present at CiviCon 2013
SF Center for the Book is a Bronze Sponsor of CiviCon 201ns
What is CiviCRM?
CiviCRM is a web-based, open source, Constituent Relationship Management (CRM) software geared toward meeting the needs of non-profit and other civic-sector organizations.
As a non profit committed to the public good itself, CiviCRM understands that forging and growing strong relationships with constituents is about more than collecting and tracking constituent data – it is about sustaining relationships with supporters over time.
To this end, CiviCRM has created a robust web-based, open source, highly customizable, CRM to meet organizations’ highest expectations right out-of-the box. Unlike proprietary software, each new release of this open source software reflects the very real needs of its users as enhancements are continually given back to the community.
Provided a robust feature set, organizations realize their mission via CiviCRM through contact management, fundraising, event management, member management, mass e-mail marketing, peer-to-peer campaigns, case management, and much more.
CiviCRM is localized in over 20 languages including: Chinese (Taiwan, China), Dutch, English (Australia, Canada, U.S., UK), French (France, Canada), German, Italian, Japanese, Russian, and Swedish.
Why Use CiviCRM?
If you are looking for a web-based, constituent-relationship management solution that meets your needs right out-of-the box, the answer is yes!
CiviCRM’s robust feature set includes:
- Contact management
- Contributions
- Communications
- Peer-To-Peer Fundraisers
- Advocacy Campaigns
- Events
- Members
- Reports
- Case Management
The Eve of the Anniversary of the Car-Bombing of Al-Mutanabbi Street
On the eve of the sixth anniversary of the car-bombing of al-Mutanabbi Street in Baghdad, Iraq – the centuries old home of poets, writer, booksellers and cultural intellectuals – we were moved to read this blog post by al-Mutanabbi Street printer and book artist Annette Disslin (Germany). Annette has posted a beautiful blog entry marking the opening of the al-Mutanabbi Street exhibit at the John Rylands Library (Manchester, UK) today.
We are pleased to share Annette’s post with you here. To read the original post, go to http://www.disslin-an.net/
Writers Anthology of the al-Mutanabi Street Starts Here project
John Rylands Library, University of Manchester (image credits: Katie Donlon)
Let’s imagine there was neither written nor printed word (as the printed is just a shortcut to the written). The only way to keep information, experiences or thoughts and ideas was to memorize them. And the only way to pass them over to others was to tell them, leaving them to memorize what they just have heard. Such was man’s situation before written signs like alphabets had been invented.
In a community like this the death of a knowing and experienced person is equivalent to a library burning down. All memories are lost: experiences, history, ideas, knowledge about wildlife, edible plants or treating illnesses, songs, myths, fairy tales – a whole cultural heritage and the basis of gaining further knowledge by building up upon what has been learned over generations will be gone.
Normally, we assume that with the invention of the written word all knowledge is conserved and kept for following generations.
It is not. The written and printed word has been hunted ever since it came into man’s hands.
Libraries get burned – like only days ago in Mali – or over and over again in the past.
Books get burned – like in the 1930ies during the Nazi reign in Germany, of which Markus Zusak told us so brilliantly in his “Book Thief” novel – or over and over again in the past.
A street of booksellers gets bombed – as happenend on March 5th in 2007 in the centre of Baghdad.
Baghdad’s al-Mutanabbi Street has been the intellectual heart, the centre of culture and thought and book trading for centuries. It got destroyed by a car bomb in 2007, it was rebuilt and bulldozered again.
When books get burned or bombed it is first of all for ideological reasons be they religious or political. With reading a book a person can gain knowledge totally by him- or herself. They do not need the help or assistance of anybody – they just need to be able to read and they need to have a book. And it is these two aspects weak and unconvincing rulers will fight first:
They will keep the young from going to school and learn to read, and they will keep those who already can read from reading by destroying their source of information or by changing the alphabets thus following generations will not be able to read the writings of the past.
By reading we learn about history, our own and that of others, about ideas and philosophies, about other places, other people, about war and peace, love and hate, about music and poetry, about literature and science, politics and religion – we learn that the world can be different from what we have so far known.
Any force that tries to keep people from learning and gaining knowledge is preventing them to be able to make up their minds by themselves. It is an act of manipulation.
One way to oppose against the burning of books is to make new books.
On 6th February 2013 the first complete exhibition of “An Inventory of Al-Mutanabbi Street” will open at John Rylands Library at the University of Manchester, UK. 260 book artists from all over the world have been making new books commemorating the car bombing of al-Mutanabbi street in 2007 – standing up against the deliberate destruction of books and the cultural heritage they preserve.
Imagine: al-Mutanabbi street starts here. In Timbuktu. In Baghdad. In a girls’ school that is about to be closed for ideological reasons. Everywhere on this planet where people are kept from learning and reading on account of their own free will.
An Inventory of al-Mutanabbi Street
February 6th to July 29th 2013
John Rylands Library, University of Manchester, UK
More information and further venues on:
An English/German webspace: www.al-mutanabbi-street.bleikloetzle.de
The project’s webspace: www.al-mutanabbistreetstartshere-boston.com
Druckworks: Forty Years of Books and Projects of Johanna Drucker
May 24 – August 24, 2013. The San Francisco Center for the Book presents “Druckworks,” a comprehensive survey of artworks by artist and scholar Johanna Drucker, featuring more than 60 books as well as graphic art and visual projects produced over the last 40 years. From deeply personal narratives, to humorous reflections and theoretically engaged poetics, Drucker’s works have helped shape the field of artists’ books, visual poetics, and digital aesthetics in dialogue with the arts and critical issues. The exhibit is accompanied by an artist lecture, as well as a catalogue of essays and commentary from more than 20 well-known critics.
Johanna Drucker printed her first letterpress book in 1972 and has been active as an writer, typographic poet, and scholar-critic ever since. While widely known for her contributions to contemporary art theory and history, she is also a prolific creative artist with more than four dozen artist’s books to her credit. Her writings have helped shape the field of artists’ books, visual poetics, and digital aesthetics in dialogue with the arts and critical issues. This comprehensive retrospective exhibits her books, graphic art, and visual projects. A catalogue accompanies the exhibit that includes commentary and essays by a wide range of well-known critics including Jerome McGann, Marjorie Perloff, Susan Bee, Emily McVarish, Brad Freeman, Kyle Schlesinger, Craig Dworkin, and others.
The exhibition will contain works in editioned and unique form. In the late 1970s, the imprint under which the editioned works were produced was Chased Press (combining the metal chase, the gendered environment, and the chaste pun); by the late 1970s, I switched to Druckwerk, though a number of these works bear only a copyright and my name as the imprimature.
Scholarly Books of Johanna Drucker
Books offered a private arena in which to express an ambitious and yet secret, intensely personal, investment of energy. My desire to make books combined a drive to write the world into being, to claim experience through its representation in language, with the desire to make closure and containment, to shut the word within the covers of a finished work held, saved, retained. Two themes run through the works: the first is the exploration of the conventions of narrative prose and the devices by which it orders, sequences, and manipulates events according to its own logic; the second is the use of experimental typography to expand the possibilities of prose beyond the linear format of traditional presentation.
Click here for information on the Druckworks Exhbit at the San Francisco Center for the Book.