I'm back from my week at Arrowmont and Carol Barton's workshop, and it was a great learning experience. Carol is an excellent teacher: as good a teacher as she is an artist, a rare combination. She was generous with information beyond what the class covered, provided good templates and handouts, and was quick to offer individual counsel. She treated us to several slide shows on the main structures we made during the week: accordion, carousel and tunnel books. Since Carol lives in a suburb of Washington, D.C., she has access to wonderful resources at the Library of Congress and other similar institutions, so her slide presentations included some fascinating information (and images) documenting the history of "movable books."
I'll share some pix from the class soon. In the meantime, here are some of the images Carol shared with us -- all of which are available in the Gallery section of at her web site, Popular Kinetics. The first (above) is Carol's tunnel book Everyday Road Signs, 1998, an edition of 50.
Alphabet I, accordion pop-up bookScott McCarney
Our Japan, Garden View, carousel book by Edward Holmgren
One of my favorites, How Can I Live in Iowa?, carousel book by Emily Martin
5 comments:
Welcome back, BG! I missed your voice on the internet. Can't wait to see your class pix.
Thanks, RL. I'll be catching up with my favorite blogs, including yours, over the course of the next few days. And Friday I'm off to a bookmaking class with Dan Essig. When it rains, it pours. Not that that's a bad thing, mind you.
Hey Book Girl. I first learned of the book arts at last year's NY Art Book Fair (www.nyartbookfair.com). Printed Matter (www.printedmatter.org) taught me much about the variety of book arts. Check out their site.
MadSilence http://madsilence.wordpress.com/
Sounds like a fabulous workshop Clara. I would have been all over the history of books with movable parts! I've seen some Rennissance era scientific texts (well, i've seen slides, not the actual texts) with movable navigational tools and dials and such included as teaching aids - so fascinating - it started so long ago - and now we call it book art!
MadSilence, thanks for the lead. It's never easy to explain "book arts" or "artists' books," but I continue to be fascinated by what's out there.
Rhonda, you would have loved Carol Barton's slide shows. She told us that the first "movable books" were scientific and medical in nature, and she had some great examples she'd photographed from public and private collections. One (amusing) early example was from an early anatomy text. This particular page, detailing female anatomy, had a flap that lifted to reveal the "innards" of a woman's chest and stomach. Unfortunately, due to the limited knowledge of the time, the cavity was mostly empty.
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