I am not sure what's in the water of these little towns on the Olympic Peninsula near Seattle but genius sure gets cultivated. The small town of Aberdeen on the south end of the peninsula was where Kurt Cobain was born and raised. His band Nirvana turned the music industry upside down. Raymond Carver's life in Port Angeles , on the north end of the peninsula, provided the fodder for his short stories which revolutionized the genre. Granted the lives of both these men were packed with pain and suffering but one cannot discount the landscape as an influence.Bill Booth...
Deep Fried Books
John LaFalce and Drew Matott are two artists who set out to create something as a "commentary on America’s obsession with an unhealthy lifestyle, unstable foreign policy and blatant disregard for intellectualism."What they came up with was to produce "an edition of altered books that were battered and deep fried."Back in May as part of Chicago's Columbia College's Manifest Urban Arts Festival LaFalce and Matott cooked up 100 books, vacuum-sealed them, signed them and sent them into the world.Here is a visual tour:BasteFrySealand take homeI wonder if these would be eligible for the various Edible Book festivals? Maybe a special...
The Growing Bestiary of Briony Morrow-Cribbs
The "Cabinets of Curiosity" of the 16th and 17th century is the jumping off point for Morrow-Cribbs. These rooms of mythical constructs blur the boundary of fact and fiction, where the real and the imagined share the stage.Morrow-Cribs says she "uses the mediums of print and the book arts (and occasionally ceramics) to create a graphic connection between the recognizable 'real' world and my invisible, 'fantasy' world.Her latest project is providing 11 aquatint prints to accompany the first book publication of Brigit Pegeen Kelly's prose poem Iskandariya. The book is designed and published by Rollin Milroy at Heavenly Monkey.Milroy says...
"We, Too, are Book Artists" An Exhibition of African American Book Art
Hats off to The Minnesota Center for Book Arts for putting this one together. It is being curated by Amos Paul Kennedy Jr. and is being hailed as the first ever exhibit focusing solely on the work of African American book artists.The show contains the work of over 20 black book artists from across the nation.As one would hope, the show conveys a "strong social justice theme."MCBA Director Jeff Rathermel says of the shows participants:They're putting forth strong messages, either from a social perspective or a personal perspective..But there's a sincerity in the work that shines through. And if you,...
The Next Great Library
This is what the new National Library of the Czech Republic in Prague is going to look like when it is completed in 2011.The design is by Future Systems of London."Its unique form and curvature is a reference to baroque buildings in Prague"The "building is placed on a white unpolished marble platform, with mirror finished stainless steel wings lifted up the perimeter edges to reflect the building from different angles.It is a green building with:-carefully controlled natural lighting sufficient for reading during 70% of the library's open hours;-natural cooling and warming of incoming air through a thermal labyrinth constructed in...