Abstract: 9[TM] BIENNIAL PYRAMID ATLANTIC BOOK ARTS FAIR AND CONFERENCE SILVER SPRING, MARYLAND NOVEMBER 16-18, 2006 If Afterimage were a journal of media arts from centuries past, there would be much to report on from the component of Pyramid Atlantic's Book Arts Fair and Conference, a two-day event held biennially in Silver Spring, Maryland. The majority of titles displayed and sold by small, private artists' presses were made using letterpress (nineteenth-century technology), whereas the latest modes of print media, namely print-on-demand, and digital technologies--not to mention computer-made imagery and photography--were the obvious production minority. To put it flatly, most proprietors in attendance had traditional, formalist leanings. The negotiation of appearance and content, on the other hand, was at the core of the conference component. Each of the conference's three breakout sessions dealt implicitly with mediation. The coupling of the fair's formalism and challenging conference talks resulted in an atmosphere of reticence as those involved with book arts continue to question and confront the expectant development of important criticism for the field. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Clifton Meador, artist and coordinator of the MFA in Interdisciplinary Book and Paper Arts Program at Columbia College Chicago, presented his paper, Disciplining a Craft, in which he mediated between techniques taught in the craft culture of workshops and the latent expressiveness expected from academic studio art courses. Meador argued that by moving book arts into the academy, concerns have been reallocated, giving precedence to concept over craft. He substantiated his claim through an analysis of course descriptions at many nonprofit book arts centers as compared to those of studio art programs. Book arts classes situated in studio art departments are expected to operate by ideas, as the academy does. Therefore, techniques are presented in a way that historicizes and contextualizes craft at the service of creating aesthetic, meaningful communication. Pattie Belle Hastings, an artist, founder of Ice House Press (publisher of multi-media CDs and books), and faculty at Quinnipiac University in Hamden, Connecticut, communicated through a myriad of mediating strategies including performance, live projected reading, and the display of creative evidence. Her presentation was a performance based on her project Cyborg Mommy, and her book and interactive DVD, The Scarlet Genotype (2004). She showed slide illustrations from her current research area--parenting her child--and discussed the in-depth analysis of her metaphoric subject. …
Publication Year: 2007
Publication Date: 2007-01-01
Language: en
Type: article
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