Advanced Bookbinding: Artists’ Books (March)

This class is designed for people with beginning to intermediate bookbinding experience to delve into more advanced techniques and integrate content into their books, and to investigate “Artists’ Books” as an art form.

Projects and exercises will explore:

Approaches to marrying technique, material, and content.

Material exploration to expand artistic expression.

Various hand skills needed to strengthen book arts practices.

Looking to Johanna Drucker’s The Century of Artists’ Books, the class will reference historic and contemporary examples of work to investigate how our own creative practices can respond to books as containers for our artistic expression.

The class will begin with a focus on traditional codex forms such as decorative variations on stab bindings, complex sewing and folded structures including Secret Belgian and Blizzard bindings. The second half will integrate more sculptural forms, altered books, as well as several transfer techniques for adding content.

Bonus: Students will have the option to attend an additional session at the about” Joan Flash Artists Book Collection at SAIC!