2019-2020 Event Calendar
Kate Cheney Chappell ’83 Center for Book Arts
Click Here for the Calendar of this Month's Events
Fall Semester 2019
Summer Book Arts Exhibition: September 4 - October 15, 2019, Glickman Family Library, 6th floor near Special Collections.
Summer Book Arts Workshop, ART 342/EPC 582, culminates in an exhibition of student books created for the Summer Book Arts Exhibition.
Image Above: Student Book created for 2018 Summer Book Arts Workshop
Lecture and Summer Book Arts Exhibition Reception: Monday, September 9th, 4:00 p.m.
Two summer faculty, Martha Kearsley and Lisa Pixley, will each talk about their work and their new studio in Portland, PrintCraft.
The lecture will be held at 4:00 p.m. in the University Events Room, 7th floor, Glickman Family Library, 314 Forest Avenue, Portland Campus.
Following the lecture, there will be a reception for the Summer Book Arts Exhibition from 5:00 - 6:00 p.m. on the 6th floor Glickman Family Library, near Special Collections. Refreshments will be served.
Free and open to the public.
Image Below: Storefront of PrintCraft with Lisa Pixley (left) and Martha Keasley (right)
Workshop: Saturday October 5, 2019 from 10AM to 4PM
Out of the Blue: Exploring Cyanotype
with Jesseca Ferguson
$135, Click Here to Register Online or call (207) 780-5900
Luther-Bonney Hall 424, Portland Campus
Jesseca Ferguson (www.museumofmemory.com) works at the intersection of 19th century handmade photographic processes, collage, and artist's books. After many years working with pinhole cameras, she is now exploring cameraless photography, using found imagery printed in cyanotype on unusual papers, often incorporated into artist's books. Her work has been collected by over twenty museums and libraries in the United States and Europe. Her images, artist's books, and collaged photo-objects have been published in numerous books, catalogues, and articles on the subject of handmade photography here in the US and abroad. She teaches at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts University (SMFA@Tufts) in Boston, MA
Image Above: Cyanotype Book Page, Jesseca Ferguson, 2018
Lecture: Wednesday October 23, 2019 at 7:00 PM
Richard Reitz Smith and Karin Spitfire
Two Maine Artists will each talk about their work
Glickman Family Library, University Events Room, 7th floor
Free and Open to the Public
Growing up in Pennsylvania in a small village nestled in a valley of the Appalachian foothills, Richard Reitz Smith was surrounded by the seasonal effects of nature. The hills simultaneously protected from the outside world, yet kept him from it. The sky was that connection a source of wonderment; a constant connection to the world beyond the crest of the hills, but ever-changing. Studying nature, Smith found truths of a transcendental vein that he has applied to life and work.
Since moving to Maine in 2002, the Penobscot Bay area has been a more accessible source of inspiration. Motifs of the sea, the sky and the rocky landscape now echo in his work as well as those remembered ones from his childhood.
Richard Reitz Smith is the chair of the book arts program and studio manager at Maine Media Workshops + College. He has taught fine art and graphic design courses and workshops at various institutions throughout the US.
He worked in New York City for 10 years, before moving to Maine, where he regularly frequented the Center for Book Arts taking many printing, book binding and box making classes.
Image Below: Fern, Fish, Rock, Leaf by Richard Reitz Smith
Karin Spitfire is an artist, who chooses the right medium to match her need for expression. Starting out as a dancer and performance artist- "Incest: It's all Relative", "Corpus Callosum", "Wild Card Anatomy", and "Sports and Art".
Now, her main forms are poetry- Standing with Trees, Wild Caught and artist’s books- Becoming Visible, Habeas Corpus, A totally Firmaments Day, and Press On. Poetry raises the voice of the unnamed and artist’s books that lend themselves to the use of movement, words and all manner of image making including painting, printmaking, and letterpress printing to convey content.
Spitfire was the Poet Laureate of Belfast, 2007 & 2008, has a B.A and M.A. in women’s studies and was a founding member of a collective that started the fourth battered women’s shelter in the country 1979.
Image Above: Press On by Karin Spitfire
Lecture: Tuesday November 5, 2019 at 7:00 PM
Touching, Seeing, Knowing: Movable Books in Nineteenth-Century America
Presented by Juliet Sperling
Glickman Family Library, University Events Room, 7th floor
Free and Open to the Public
Juliet Sperling researches and writes about American art and visual culture from the 18th to the 20th century, with particular emphasis on the history of moving images. She received her Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania in 2018, and is a Faculty Fellow in American Art at Colby College. Her current book project explores how engineered paper— books and prints with kinetic features including layered anatomical illustrations, mechanical political ephemera, and hidden-paneled religious books —revolutionized American encounters with a swiftly changing media landscape. Her research has been supported by institutions including the Luce/ACLS Foundation, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the McNeil Center for Early American Studies.
Photo Above of Juliet Sperling
Spring Semester 2020
Exhibition: January 29 - April 30, 2020
Wonderfully Pertinent Rustlings: Artist’s Books by Judy LaBrasca
Curated by Judith Sobol
Glickman Family Library, UNUM Great Reading Room, 7th floor
Free and Open to the Public
Judy LaBrasca has been making her brand of artist’s books for many years. Having worked in series since studying photography with Dave Heath in art school, she finds the book form the perfect vehicle, as turning the pages of a book allows for surprises as well as for continuity. In addition to Artist’s Books her work includes drawing, collage and photographs.
She grew up outside of Philadelphia with a sister and three brothers. Her parents were both artists. She is the mother of Anna Kellar and the wife of Jeff Kellar. Her studio is in her home in Falmouth, Maine.
She teaches drawing at Maine College of Art and various other schools including the USM Summer Book Arts Program.
Image Below: Why not Green and Book 20, both from the series Found Words, Judy LaBrasca
Judith Sobol is the Curator of Collections and Exhibitions at the Iris & B. Gerald Cantor Foundation, where she has worked since 2001. She concentrates on organizing touring exhibitions of the sculpture of Auguste Rodin.
An art historian with degrees from UCLA and The George Washington University, Judith has worked at the Smithsonian Institution’s American Art Museum, Georgetown University, The Minneapolis Institute of Arts, and the Baltimore Museum of Art.
Her first museum directorship was from 1981 to 1991 at the Joan Whitney Payson Gallery of Art (currently the UNE Art Gallery) in Portland, Maine. She subsequently directed the Grand Rapids Art Museum in Michigan and the Newport Art Museum in Rhode Island. She returned to Portland in 2017.
She has produced public television programs on the arts and has curated scores of exhibitions of work by contemporary artists and has authored articles for exhibition catalogues and other publications.
Photo Above: Headshot Judy Sobol
Exhibition Reception and Lecture, Conversation with the Artist: Judy LaBrasca with curator Judith Sobol, Thursday, March 26, CANCELED due to COVID-19 Precaution.
Exhibition at Portland Public Library, Boundless Possibilities 2: USM Book Arts: April 3-25, CANCELED due to COVID-19 Precaution.
This exhibit planned to show an array of artists’ books from current students in Rebecca Goodale’s spring 2020 class, Art 399 The Printed Book, along with an eclectic display of topics and book formats from artists in the Critique Group at the USM KCC’83CBA.
Book Arts Bazaar: Sunday, April 5th, 2020 is Unfortunanately Canceled due to COVID-19 Precautions. We hope to see everyone next year at the Bazaar!
A festival with BookArtists, papermakers, bookbinders, printmakers, educators, writers, and all things related to the book. Free and Open to the Public
The Following spring events are Canceled due to COVID-19 precautions.
Lecture: Friday, April 17, 2020 at 4:00 PM
We are Tiger Dragon People: the Pop-up Books of Colette Fu
Presented by Collette Fu
Workshop: Saturday, April 18, 2020, 10:00 AM to 4:00 PM
(Introduction to) Pop-up Book Structures
(These Two Events May be Rescheduled Next Year - Stay Tuned!)
Image Above: Kai Fuan from We are Tiger Dragon People series,Collette Fu
Colette Fu received her MFA in Fine Art Photography from the Rochester Institute of Technology in 2003, and soon after began devising complex compositions that incorporate photography and pop-up paper engineering. She has designed for award winning stop motion animation commercials and free-lanced for clients including Greenpeace, Vogue, Canon, Moët Hennessy • Louis Vuitton and the Delaware Disaster Research Center. Her pop-up books are included in the National Museum of Women in the Arts, Library of Congress, Metropolitan Museum of Art and many private and rare archive collections. In 2017, Fu created the world’s largest pop-up book measuring 21x14 feet at the Philadelphia Photo Arts Center where visitors were invited to enter the book. Fu's numerous awards include the 2018 Meggendorfer Prize for best paper engineered artist book, a 2008 Fulbright Research Fellowship to China, and grants from the Independence Foundation, Leeway Foundation, En Foco, Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, Puffin Foundation and Society for Photographic Education. Fu has attended over 20 funded artist residencies, most recently the Macdowell Colony and Yaddo. Her solo show "Wanderer/Wonderer: the Pop-ups of Colette Fu" was presented at the National Museum of Women in the Arts in 2016/17.
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Pope-Cheney Art Studio Wishcamper Center
Located on the 1st Floor of the Wishcamper Center
34 Bedford St., USM Portland Campus
Hours: 8 a.m.-10 p.m., Monday-Thursday, and 8 a.m.-6 p.m., Friday.
Book Arts Exhibition Schedule
Kate Cheney Chappell ’83 Center for Book Arts
Pope-Cheney Art Studio Exhibitions
Wishcamper Center
September-November 2019
Art 399 Harvesting Images: Student Books made in Italy
Image Above: Mackenzie O’Brien’s work table in Tuscany
December 2019-February 2020
Art 241 The Visual Book: Student Exhibition
Image Above: Artist's Book by Elizabeth Bull
March-May 2020
KCC’83 CBA Crit Group
Photo: KCC’83 CBA Crit group collaborative book
June-August 2020
Art 399 The Printed Book: Student Exhibition
For more information, please contact:
Rebecca Goodale, Program Coordinator
(207) 228-8014 or goodale@maine.edu
usm.maine.edu/bookarts
find us on facebook @KCCBookArts
Above: Bodley's Librarian at Oxford University, Richard Ovenden with Reecca Goodale & Kate Cheney Chappell, April 5th, 2016 KCC'83 Lecture