Reception: Sunday, September 23, with Artists’ Talk, 4 – 6:30 pm
Chandler Gallery
Exhibit runs through 10 November 2012
In time for the turn of the seasons, Chandler Gallery is hosting an invitational artists book exhibition, Turning Leaves: New Directions in Book Arts. The participating artists think “outside the book” in new and innovative ways with their one-of-a-kind or limited edition books. On view are drawing, painting, objects, sculptural elements, printmaking, letterpress, photography, collage, calligraphy and hand lettering, typography, handcrafted paper, photocopy and other media. The two-dimensional, wall-relief, and three-dimensional books may be made entirely of images, may reveal themselves in prose, poetry or other uses of words, or may include images and words.
Artists represented in the exhibition include: Cameron Davis, Kathy Fiske, Kerry Furlani, Ania Gilmore, Rebecca Goodale, Maryanne Grebenstein, Deborah Howe, Katy Locke, Lorraine Reynolds, Susan Smereka, Nancy Stone, Stephanie Stigliano, Stephanie Wolff and Bob Walp. A collaborative book includes work by: Ann Forbush, Ania Gilmore, Anna Leliwa, Monica Mitchell, Jan Cadman Powell, Annie Silverman, Carolyn Swift, and Annie Zeybekoglu.
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| PodCast Gilmore / Zeybekoglu |
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| Secret Garden - Cameron Davis |
Kerry O. Furlani is known for her expressive slate carvings of incised and burgeoning forms. She gives life to her work using mallets and chisels, traditional methods introduced to her while training at the Frink School of Figurative Sculpture, in Stoke-on-Trent, England, in the late ’90s. Furlani engages directly with the stone, playing a visual game with stone fragments she finds in Vermont quarries, riverbeds, stone yards and backyards.
Personal experience provides the creative seed for Ania Gilmore, living in “Boston, via Poland”. “As an emigrant, I am infused with inspiration resident in my roots and history. I am interested in the continuous growing dialogue of identity and multiculturalism.”
Nancy Stone is a Williston book artist, painter, art teacher, co-founder/chairperson of the Book Arts Guild of Vermont and a member of the Bryan Memorial Gallery in Jeffersonville, Northern Vermont Artists Association, and a Signature member of the Vermont Watercolor Society. Many of her books are inspired by personal experience, varying from a week to several years between concept and completion. She searches for metaphors in elements of design, using line and color as tools to suggest passage.
History inspires Deborah Howe, Collections Conservator at the Dartmouth College Library and a long-standing member of the Guild of Book Workers. She finds pre-existing texts that hold her interest and allow for interpretation in design.
With design sensibilities rooted in late 19th and early 20th century Fine Press traditions, designer, printer, bookbinder and papermaker Bob Walp pushes through traditional boundaries while still aspiring to high standards of craft and the best principles of readability. Bob’s printing and papermaking equipment at Chester Creek Press is more than three-quarters of a century old, little changed in essence from the late fifteenth-century. Most of the illustrations in his books are printed from hand carved wooden blocks.
Maryanne Grebenstein is the lead designer of The Abbey Studio where she makes hand lettered, one-of-a-kind books. She conducts calligraphy and manuscript gilding classes and has authored books and magazine articles on the subjects of calligraphy and medieval and renaissance manuscript collections. As a young adult she was introduced to illuminated manuscripts, and felt an immediate connection to and reverence for their creators. She seeks to convey the historical importance and cultural significance of the evolution of the book in her work.
Lorraine Reynolds’ mixed media assemblages are a collection of “glimmering prizes.” Assembled in old boxes, frames and books, found objects find unity and a common voice in her hands. Lorraine’s gift is in sifting through disparate objects, finding the compatible bits and pieces of others’ lives, and weaving their faint and ancient energies together until they sing in one voice.
In 2002 Susan Smereka was awarded a grant from the Kittredge Foundation to work in printmaking at Two Rivers Printmaking Studio. At her second residency at the Helene Wurlitzer Foundation in 2008, she began doing bodies of work in journal/sketch books. Working in small, constrained spaces she developed a repetitive and meditative language gluing her hair strand by strand into small books, or cards that were bound into folios. Smereka sees the book being a wordless form of communication that is both informal and intimate.
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| "Looking Backwards," Handmade book by Stigliano |
The artists’ talk and opening reception on September 23 are free and open to the public.
Chandler Art Gallery
Randolph, VT
Contact: Emily Crosby, 802-431-0204,
outreach@chandler-arts.org
