When A Book Becomes An Artist Book

A short recap from a recent lecture at NBLA by Brooke Holve:  

When a book becomes an artist book, a transformation occurs in the process of making from its conventional form to another — a process than can be mysterious. What is the convention? The book?

Artists have challenged common assumptions about the nature of the book and its conventional form through the making of artist books. Some approaches to making artist books are:

Please join us for more upcoming NBLA events at the print shop in Sebastopol...

Opening Reception: NBLA at Kitty Hawk Gallery

kitty hawk gallery presents: The North Bay Letterpress Arts Art Show

A group show of 11 printing artists associated with North Bay Letterpress Arts at kitty hawk gallery in Sebastopol.

Comprised mostly of prints in frames, this show is a fine way to see the breadth of work being done on old letterpresses in the revived medium of hand-set metal & wooden type. Striking graphic pieces, poem broadsides, handmade books, posters, wordplay & alphabetic dreams…

The Opening Reception June 10th will feature an improvisational game of bandied words. Everyone gets apprized!

The show runs from June 4th to July 26th,

with an opening reception Friday June 10th, from 5:00-8:00.

kitty hawk gallery is at 125 N. Main Street, the old downtown of Sebastopol.

Upcoming Event: NBLA at Kitty Hawk Gallery

This summer there will be a show of letterpress art at the kitty hawk gallery of Sebastopol. Eleven artists who use the local printshop managed by the NBLA will have their wide-ranging work on display. Included are book art pieces; linocuts; collages; poetry books; posters… & some innovative printing not easily described.

The show runs from June 4th to July 26th,

with an opening reception Friday June 10th, from 5:00-8:00.

kitty hawk gallery is at 125 N. Main Street, the old downtown of Sebastopol.

Baroque Printing

                 The Iota Printshop is hosting a concert Friday March 18th by the chamber music group 'Alphabet Baroque Club'…which may not seem like a letterpress-related event. And it isn't. But there's a history here, and not just the one that goes back centuries.  It's that the violinist Maria Caswell is an old friend of my family's. And that for fifty years I've had a fascination with the early baroque composers.  Then there's the history of this ensemble: when they began practicing together they decided to work their way through the early Baroque composers from A to Z. When they had performances, they stayed with the idea and called themselves the ABC (Alphabet Baroque Club). They use original instruments of the era to retain the sonorities of the time.

When they had a venue cancel for March  18th, I had this feeling: our printshop is teeming with ABCs… our presses are over a hundred years old and one of them is in the lineage of the Fifteenth century printers…we adhere to the old one-letter-at-a-time method invented by Gutenberg…our printing is like chamber work, usually passed amongst less than a hundred people, rather than published in the thousands … & it felt to me like: this is Resonant! This has to happen, not just because I know Maria or I have this old interest in early Baroque.

These instruments, these tonalities…they will vibrate amongst our old presses and wooden alphabets…and echo our own fascination with an older practice of art that was intimate & beautiful.

Michael Myers Exhibit

Join North Bay Letterpress Arts this coming weekend, November 14-15 from noon-5pm for a rare showing of the work of the brilliant 1970s artist/illustrator Michael Myers.

The event will take place at Iota Press, 925d Gravenstein Hwy. South, Sebastopol, CA, and will feature over 40 prints recently made from Myers' original linoleum blocks, which will also be part of the exhibit. The carving has to be seen to appreciate its extreme virtuosity.

Myers worked with Holbrook Teter and others in a radical printing group called Zephyrus Image, which started in San Francisco in the early 1970s, moved to the hills north of Healdsburg, and ended when Myers was tragically killed in an accident in 1982. Most of his work was created in combination with letterpress printing of poems, posters, & politically sharp ephemera.