book·mark – a ribbon or other marker placed between the pages of a book to mark a place.
The Centre for Fine Press Research in the UK at University of the West of England is doing some great Book Art related stuff.
One of their projects, which began in 2004, is Bookmarks: Infiltrating the Library System, an annual celebration of the bookmark which has featured the work of almost 200 book artists since its beginnings with each producing an edition of 100 bookmarks for free distribution. Their goal is to encourage people to “appreciate artwork in the format of ‘bookmarks’ and to visit artist’s book venues and libraries.”
Selections from the first 5 years of Bookmarks are archived and a treat to view.
The most recent exhibition features 45 artists from around the world the and is touring through February 2008 with a couple of stops in the states.
Header image: Bookmark by Richard Denne. “I began with the formal a 2 x 3 grid structure of braille. I then reversed the positive and negative spaces so that the dots making up the letters became holes and the holes became dots. In turn these new dots were randomly outlined in one of the four processed colours.”
Side image: a bookmark by Emma Powell that tears into 4 separate bookmarks. “ All my bookmarks are bits of ‘rejectamenta’ – anything that has been discarded. In this instance they consist of a paperclip, a Chinese receipt from a friend’s trip, various barcodes, embroidery thread packaging, a section of French lined paper and a bit of dress-making ‘pattern’ paper.”