Book Art Exhibit Starting 12/13/10

Starting December 13, 2010, a new exhibit of student Book Art will be launched at the library.  Works from students in Richard Minsky’s Experimental Book class will be on display on the First Floor of the Purchase Library (near the Periodicals and the Technical Services department).

Titled  “Hommage à Leslie Nielsen, une exposition des livres expérimentaux,” the exhibition was curated by the  Experimental Book class and contains book art created by the students throughout the Fall semester. The Opening Reception will be held Monday, December 13, 2010,  3:30 pm to 4:20pm.

The exhibit will be on display Dec. 13, 2010 through Feb. 14, 2011

About the exhibit

Professor Minsky explains that  “the exhibition was curated by the students, who served as a jury and critiqued each others’ work both through slides and the actual objects.  In preparation for this, they studied three approaches to critical thinking, which has parameters in book art that do not enter into other art disciplines, such as the haptic properties of the work.”

For their final project, the students printed an exhibition catalog, which you can view in PDF format:  Experimental Book Exhibition Catalog 2010 (Note: Please wait a moment for this file to load.)

You can also check out some selected images of the Book Art Exhibit on display on the Purchase Library Flickr account.

Why the library?

According to Professor Richard Minsky, “the Purchase College Library is a great venue not just because this is book art–it is a central facility that attracts all members of the community and has a history of presenting exhibitions.”

About the class

Students in the Experimental Book class (VDE4600) studied a variety of approaches to book content and form. The textbooks for the class were You Can Do a Graphic Novel by Barbara Slate and Structure of the Visual Book by Keith Smith.  The students took a field trip to Yale’s Haas Arts Library, where Jae Rossman, the Assistant Director for Special Collections, presented rare materials that the students could handle, from medieval illuminated manuscript pages and Kelmscott Press books to contemporary artists’ books from their collection.  During the semester, students worked on six projects, including: a typographic or calligraphic book, an altered book, a sculptural bookwork, a “theme” project on Sabotage, and a book made in three formats–as a physical book, a PDF, and a POD (Print-on-Demand).

"Down The Rabbit Hole" Exhibition at the Library

“Down the Rabbit Hole” is an exhibition of 50 sculptures and paintings by Robert Fuerer, a Purchase College graduate, on view through August 2010. The works are exhibited in the main art gallery (upstairs) and throughout the Library’s central spaces. Stop by and see it!

Read an article on the exhibit in Westchester.com, and view the artist’s web site: http://www.robertfuerer.com/