While Artists' Books have been around since the Middle Ages, the explosion of artistic expression that makes overt use of a book's physical form really took off in the 20th century.
By 1970, the Artist's Book was regarded as a distinct genre, and 10 years later, the field had grown to such an extent that the Library of Congress recognized the term in its cataloging efforts.
Now, after decades of innovative ways in which artists worldwide have adopted this form of expression, CSUEB students still surprise and impress with their own, local efforts.
We urge you to stop by the library in the coming weeks to view many of these hand-built and freshly imagined books first-hand. You may even want to enroll in next year's ART1121 class to try your own hand at creating an Artist's Book!
The annual showing of student-created Artists' Books from Michael Henninger's Introduction to Bookmaking class is always a fun event to produce:
Artists' Books utilize the actual form of the book itself to a work of art. Thus, they function on two levels: that of a book, as well as an artistic expression. These books can be created in virtually any size or shape desired by the artist/bookmaker.
Traditionally, Dr. Henninger presents us with dozens of unique, quirky, and sometimes beautiful creations from his students - all we have to do is to lay them out, photograph them, and then edit the images into an exhibit poster; the final step is lay them out artistically in display cases and create the foam-mounted caption cards.
While we are not able to reproduce all the materials from this exhibit, we hope you'll get a sense of what this fabulous art form is all about from the examples included here!
- DA
