book arts

Minnesota: Land of 10,000 lakes and 1 floating library

There are lakes everywhere in Minnesota and now one of them has a floating library. Thanks to Sarah Peters the contraption above is open for business on Cedar Lake in Minneapolis. Designed by Molly Reichert the 8 foot structure will hold upwards of 80 books for water travelers to peruse and check out. Canoes, kayaks, paddle boards, skiffs, rowboats, or even inner tubes are invited to paddle up to the Library and browse the shelves from inside their watercraft. The library has both circulating and reference collections of artists’ books contributed by artists nationwide. A staff of friendly floating librarians facilitate the check out process...

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Book Arts of Latin America at the University of North Carolina

For this installment of In the Stacks we visit the Wilson Library at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill for a sampling of Latin American book arts. All the works below appeared in their 2008 exhibition Hecho A Mano: Book Arts of Latin America. The exhibit featured work from Argentina, Cuba and Mexico. Enjoy!    Loma del ángel by Reinaldo Arenas. Published by Brandsen y Zolezzi Editores, 2007 Barquitos del San Juan: La revista de los niños. Published by Ediciones Vigía, Matanzas, Cuba nd Hechizo para matar al hombre infiel ; Hechizo de amor ; Sortilegio para vivir...

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Mother book: The book that keeps growing and growing

Bell-Net Obstetrics wanted to come up with something special to give to expectant mothers. They hired the Japanese advertising agency Dentsu who then went to work and created "the world's first book that grows with mothers." The awarding-winning 3-D book features  40 pages, one for each week pregnancy. It provides sharp visuals of the both the process for the baby and the mother while also providing space for the mother to juornal about her experience. Each week the page on the right hand side grows while the left hand page deepens creating a perfect marriage! [youtube]http://youtu.be/sQwN_-JNr38[/youtube]

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Book Design and the Native American Experience

  Indian Horrors by Henry Davenport Northrop. Unsigned cover design. Imperial, 1891 The latest work from the scholarly side of the venerable Richard Minsky is Trade Bindings with Native American Themes 1875-1933.  Minsky gathers together 120 books designed by many of the leading illustrators and book designers of the day. From kids books to captivity narratives to fiction and "fiction purporting to be truth, including a white missionary writing under a pseudonym as an Indian Chief, and a multiracial black man, son of a school janitor, writing as a pureblood Blackfoot Chief." Yosemite Legends by Bertha Smith. Cover by Florence Lundborg. Paul Elder, 1904 American Indian Dance Steps by Bessie...

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