All posts by amt
Bookish: An Exhibition of Contemporary Handmade Books
Bookish: Contemporary Handmade Books
Curated by the Illustration Department, Parsons the New School for Design
Adam & Sophie Gimbel Design Library
The New School Libraries
2 West 13th Street 2nd Fl.
New York NY 10011
In these digital days, there remains nothing quite like a handmade
book. Silkscreened covers, staples, construction paper, thread, markers,
and, of course, drawings all add up to a singular object. The handmade
books on display here are steeped in drawing and narrative. The last 10
years have seen a burst in handmade books that evolve out of communities
of illustrators, cartoonists and fine artists. Perhaps seeking a more
personal and intimate way of displaying their work, these creators have
produced a large body of work across addressing multiple visual and
literary themes. They all share a commitment to image-based drawing and
crafting books that don’t just contain art: they are art.
The present exhibition is organized by community. Providence, Rhode
Island has been the home to a variety of zine and poster making activity
for the past decade. Led by artists including Brian Chippendale, Mat
Brinkman, Paper Rad, and Brian Ralph, Providence art tends to emphasize
psychedelic and adventure-based narratives. To the north, the Canadian
cities of Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver have long housed a productive
group of artists who mail their work to one another. Julie Doucet, Marc
Bell, Mark Connery, Peter Thompson and many others specialize in
wordplay, single image narratives, and finely wrought doodles. And in
Marseille, France, Le Dernier Cri, a book arts publishing house, has
been unleashing extreme, often grotesque imagery in silkscreen form for
over a decade by artists such as Blexbolex, Caroline Sury, and Moulinex.
The influence of these three centers of handmade books can be felt
around the globe. The final section of this exhibition presents a
sampling of this influence on a group of disparate and diverse works.
Handmade books satisfy artists and viewers alike with an immediacy like nothing else.
Don’t miss this special exhibition curated by the Illustration Department!
Upcoming Designism Event at Art Directors Club
Designism 2.0::An Event in 3 Parts
SEE::TALK::ACT
Thursday, December 13, 2007
4:45-9:30 PM @ADC Gallery
Immerse yourself in design activism during a half-day event at the ADC with presentations from Milton Glaser, Steven Heller, Elizabeth Resnick, Tony Hendra, and more.
SCHEDULE:
4:45-6 PM Designism 2.0::SEE
Speakers include:
Kay Sloan, President, Massachusetts College of Art + Design
Elizabeth Resnick, Co–Curator of Selections from The Graphic Imperative and Associate Professor, Communication Design for the Massachusetts College of Art + Design
Ji Lee, droga5, The Bubble Project
6-6:30 PM Break
6:30-7:50 PM Designism 2.0::TALK
Masters of Designism and Panel Discussion
Tony Hendra, Manifesto
Steven Heller (Moderator)
Milton Glaser
Janet Kestin, Ogilvy & Mather
Ellen Sitkin, ideo, Project M
Andrew Sloat, Designer
Michael Wolff, Journalist
Idealist.org Presentation
Ami Dar is the founder and executive director of Action Without Borders, the organization that runs Idealist.org.
8 PM: Designism 2.0::ACT
Cocktail reception – how to put intention into action with Idealist.org and others.
TICKETS:
ADC Members: $24.50, Non-members: $35.00, Students & Non Profit Organization Members: $20.00
Space is limited and reserved on a first-come, first-served basis.
Please RSVP by calling 212-643-1440 x10.
See the ADC calendar of events here.
Maira Kalman exhibition @ Julie Saul Gallery
Maira Kalman
The Principles of Uncertainty
October 11 – November 24, 2007
The Julie Saul Gallery is currently showing their third solo exhibition with acclaimed artist/ author/ illustrator Maira Kalman. Kalman produced an online-visual journal for The New York Times “Times Select” feature for one year from June 2006 to May 2007 entitled Principles of Uncertainty. Kalman’s exhibition will consist of more than one hundred of the original gouache paintings made for the project, as well as a photograph and print edition.
The exhibition coincides with an eponymous book just published by Penguin Press which brings together the whole year of online columns in printed form, as well as some added elements. The book will be displayed on a shelf as a running narrative throughout the entire gallery, while the paintings will be hung according to different themes.
Kalman’s journal combines paintings and text and touches on many personal and worldly subjects, from family history to world politics. Portrait subjects include Nabokov as a child, Freud, Edith Sitwell as well as friends and family. Most of her paintings are based on photographs made during her travels or wanderings in New York. She has recorded interiors such as Louise Bourgeois’s salon, Helen Levitt’s bathroom and the recreation of Proust’s study as well as hotel rooms, boxes, foods and other assorted objects.
Kalman has been the illustrator and often author of over a dozen books- most recently she illustrated “The Elements of Style” which is now out in paperback. Others include “What Peter Ate”, “Fireboat: The Heroic Adventures of the John J. Harvey”, and “Max in Love”. She has collaborated with Mark Morris for set designs, designed bags, fabrics and assorted objects. She is the co-author of the famous New Yorker “Newyorkistan” cover.
Julie Saul Gallery
535 West 22 Street
6th Floor
New York, NY 10011
Phone: 212 627-2410
mail@saulgallery.com
(all images by Maira Kalman)
Illustration in the Age of Anxiety Symposium
Illustration in the Age of Anxiety
Saturday, November 10th
The New School
55 West 13 Street
3-7 p.m
Free and open to the public
Parsons The New School for Design Illustration Department presents a new mini-symposium focused on how the current cultural climate is affecting the field of illustration.
Illustration in the Age of Anxiety looks at how illustration handles times of unease and anxiety in our culture, from the atomic anxiety of the 1950s to today’s wars and upheaval. “Illustration in the Age of Anxiety” will feature three conversations lead by prominent and accomplished writers illustrators.
“Shaky Line, Shaky Times: Ed Koren and Ed Sorel in Conversation with Dan Nadel” will feature master satirical illustrators Ed Koren and Ed Sorel who will discuss their famously anxious drawing styles and nearly half century’ worth of drawings for hundreds of books and publications.
“Ben Katchor: Reading in Public” will feature MacArthur-award winning graphic novelist Ben Katchor, who joins Parsons as a full time faculty member this fall, as he discusses the difficulties of reading in an uncertain time.
Pop-gothic artist Tara McPherson and illustrator-tattoo artist Ruth Marten will talk to Guarnaccia about drawing on the dark side of life in the final session of the symposium, “A Light in the Dark: Ruth Marten and Tara McPherson in conversation with Steven Guarnaccia.”
Nora Krug, another new fulltime faculty member in the illustration department, will deliver the introductory remarks and introduce the panels.
The event will be held in the Theresa Lang Community and Student Center at The New School, 55 West 13th Street, 2nd floor, from 3-7 pm and is free and open to the public. For more information, visit www.parsons.newschool.edu/events or 212-229-8919.
(Poster illustrated by Nora Krug.)
The Illustration Department welcomes William Joyce!
William Joyce, the legendary children’s book author & illustrator, creator of the animated film “Robots” and the artist behind the films “Meet the Robinsons” and the upcoming “The Leaf Men” will be giving a special talk and presentation on:
Thursday, November 8th
1-2 p.m.
Room 805, 2. W. 13th Street
All are welcome for this exciting event! Please RSVP to illustration@newschool.edu.
Tour the New School’s Art Collection!
ART ON CAMPUS: WALKING TOUR
Join the New School Art Curators Silvia Rocciolo and Eric Stark for an enlightening walking tour of the paintings, photographs and sculptures on display throughout our university. Visit and learn about our famous Orozco room, with murals painted by Mexican muralist José Clemente Orozco in 1931, and many other important contemporary artists (like Kara Walker and Sol Lewitt) that are part of The New School art collection.
Wednesday, November 14th
From 2:00 to 3:00pm
Email IEW@newschool.edu to register and for meeting place
(image above of Kara Walker’s installation “Event Horizon” at 55 W. 13th Street)
Leo and Diane Dillon visit the Illustration Department!
Leo and Diane Dillon
Monday, November 5th, 2007
Room 510
66 W. 12th Street
1 p.m.
The prolific husband and wife team of Leo and Diane Dillon first met as students at Parsons School of Design. The only illustrators to have won American’s highest award for children’s book illustration, the Caldecott Medal, two years in a row, Leo is also the first African-American artist to win the award. They won in 1976 for Why Mosquitos Buzz in People’s Ears and in 1977 for Ashanti to Zulu.
Respected for their versatility, distinctive style, integrity and the thorough research they bring to each project, the Dillons have won the Hamilton King award, The Boston Globe/Horn Book Award, the Coretta Scott King award, the Society of Illustrator’s Gold Medal, the New York Times Best Illustrated award and the Hugo award for science fiction illustration, among others.
Recently, they have been writing as well , adding titles such as Mother Goose Numbers on the Loose, Jazz on a Saturday Night and Rap a Tap Tap to their constantly growing list of over 45 children’s books.
All are welcome to attend this exciting event!
Georges Seurat: The Drawings @ MoMA
Georges Seurat: The Drawings
October 28, 2007–January 7, 2008
Museum of Modern Art
Once described as “the most beautiful painter’s drawings in existence,” Georges Seurat’s mysterious and luminous works on paper played a crucial role in his short, vibrant career. This comprehensive exhibition—the first in almost twenty-five years to focus exclusively on Seurat’s drawings—will present over 135 works, primarily the artist’s incomparable conté drawings along with a small selection of oil sketches and paintings. Surveying the artist’s entire oeuvre, from his academic training through the emergence and elaboration of his unique methods to the studies made for his monumental canvases (such as the renowned A Sunday on La Grande Jatte), the exhibition will also present important new research on his artistic strategies and materials.
In bridging description and evocation, Seurat masses tones to abstract figures, weaves skeins of conté crayon to test the limits of decipherable space, and engages with the Parisian metropolis, illuminating urban types, revealing the ever-expanding industrial suburbs, and offering a tour through the world of nineteenth-century popular entertainment. Most of all, his dramatization of the relationship between light and shadow resulted in a distinct body of work. Though Seurat is perhaps best known as the inventor of pointillism, this exhibition will demonstrate his tremendous achievement as a draftsman and the significance of his working methods and themes for the art of the twentieth century.
Visit the online exhibition here.
See a list of all related events here.
Read/see an interesting essay on Slate here.
The Museum of Modern Art
(212) 708-9400
11 West 53 Street,
between Fifth and Sixth avenues
New York, NY 10019-5497
Remember that New School students can get
into MoMA for free with their student IDs!
LitGraphic: The World of the Graphic Novel
LitGraphic: The World of the Graphic Novel
on view at the Norman Rockwell Museum
November 10, 2007 through May 26, 2008
A burgeoning art form with roots planted firmly in history, graphic novels, or long-form comic books, have inspired the interest of the literary establishment and a growing number of readers. For today’s aficionados, graphic novels, with their antiheroes and visual appeal, are positioned to usurp the role that the novel once played. Focused on subjects as diverse as the nature of relationships, the perils of war, and the meaning of life, graphic novels now comprise the fastest-growing sections of many bookstores‹an accessible, vernacular art form with mass appeal.
This comprehensive exhibition explores the history and diverse artistry of the graphic novel, featuring personal commentary and artworks by celebrated historic and contemporary practitioners. Original book pages and studies, sketchbooks, and video interviews provide insights into an evolving and exciting art form. Artworks by Jessica Abel, Sue Coe, R. Crumb, Howard Cruse, Steve Ditko, Will Eisner, Brian Fies, Gerhard, Milt Gross, Marc Hempel, Niko Henrichon, Mark Kalesniko, Peter Kuper, Harvey Kurtzman, Matt Madden, Frans Masereel, Frank Miller, Terry Moore, Dave Sim, Art Spiegelman, Lynd Ward, Lauren Weinstein, Mark Wheatley, Barron Storey and others will be on view.
The exhibition is taking place at:
The Norman Rockwell Museum
9 Glendale Road, Route 183, Stockbridge, MA 01262
Admission is $7.00 for college students with valid school I.D.
For more information and a gallery of images from the show, go here.
(Above illustration by Peter Kuper)