paper airplane in progress

This is the project I worked on throughout this semester. The title is Paper Airplanes. It is printed offset at the Borowsky Center in the University of the Arts.
There was an opportunity to donate this book to the collection at the arts library at Oberlin College, and the collection is exhibited together at the Free Library of Philadelphia now. The show is called Show and Bestow, things are organized by Alice Austin at the Library Company of Philadelphia. The collection is for her friend, who found out that her life will be cut short by cancer(from her description on this collection). At the reception this past Monday, we could handle some books that are in the display cases, and they are really an impressive collection of artists books.
My Paper Airplane could be a part of the collection, and it was pretty nice and I felt greatful... the fact I handed it to Alice right after the deadline because I just finished binding them and she just happened to be at the school....

I am in process of binding the 130 copies of this book together. The book comes with 6 post cards in the paper wrapper and I am selling it for $15... if anyone is interested, please contact me....

I am also printing the posters for upcoming book party in December! Before that, I am also participating Book Paper Scissors at the Free Library of Philadelphia, which is kind of art/craft/book fair. I will get a table with friends and sell some small good things :)

DC trip and National Gallery Library

on friday, we went to the field trip to washington dc. it was my first time visiting the place. although i was very excited, in the morning i felt a bit unfocused because of the lots of work i left behind in my studio.
we went to visit the rare collection room in the library at the national gallery, where the librarian had pulled the selection of books for us to see, and touch. last year, we went to the rare collection room in morgan library in nyc.
in short, it was an amazing selection. he showed us fist the book of hours, printed on vellum, bound in the beautiful red tinted leather. there is a book illustrated by leonardo da vinci, studies on the proportion of human body, archticture, etc. there is one done by albrecht durer: his famous signature is printed big on the title page. there are many other that were all fabulous. lots of great engravings and large scale etching plates of night scenes. there were books with beautiful chromo lithographs of all different kinds of brushes. i wish that i can describe better on everything one by one.
there were some contemporary artists books. the insect alphabet by anna hepler was one of them and it was such a sweet tiny book, incased in the clear plastic cube with a magnified glass. each insect's name is starting with each letter of alpharbet, and the image of insect is done with tiny etching.

afterwards we went to have lunch, and went around some museums around the mall. it was nice getting away from the studio, inspired by the different things.

Nag Hammadi Codices Workshop with Julia Miller

We have the workshop week every year in our program here at UArts. This year the workshop was taught by Julia Miller, a book conservator and a book artist, and Pati Scobey, a printmaker and a book artist. We got to chose which workshop to take for these two days, and I chose the book binding workshop with Julia.
She showed us many of her models of the historical Nag Hammadi codices, which she has been studying for years. In this workshop, we followed the structure of the Codex VI - that's how they distinguish each of this particular historical books.
We learned the different ways of decorating the leather, simple, but so intriguing - she showed us how to do the blind tooling and use the paste wax. She went through each parts of the book with details and historical references, and they were so fascinating. After a while, even though this was my first time working with the leather, I felt pretty comfortable handling this material and want to try more. It was a perfect way to dive into the world of leather.

Reception

The reception of our exhibition, Pages of Pandemonium, on last Friday went well.
Great people, great food, great art. Thank you for those who came, and thank you for all the support we got.

Pages of Pandemonium

Our Works in Progress Exhibition, Pages of Pandemonium, is now up! It looks good in the NEW gallery space. (another exciting part!) Please also go to the school website, (www.uarts.edu) and the image of the postcard is up at the front page! that leads to our exhibition blog!

I am very excited for everything is now together.

I have two books and cite specific installation with handmade paper in the show. More pictures to come later.


(the vinyl is the one that Steph did :))

SWEETNESS!

My friend Steph from SF generously accepted to cut the vinyl signage for our work-in-progress exhibition which is coming up this weekend. I just received the package last night and opened it this morning. I was ready to tackle peeling off the vinyl, then I was surprised to see the vinyl ready to go on the wall. She did the beautiful job, not only cutting it, but peeling excess off for us!!
And she included the black feather, black ribbon hair pin and a bag of cocoa with small marshmallows.

I cannot find the word for this. I am happy happy happy!
Thank you Steph!!

back to philly

I stopped by at Terminal T in Atlanta International Airport. My gate was at B Terminal but I really wanted to see this exhibition called Paper Runway, so I took the detour.

I left the meeting on Saturday evening to catch the flight back to Philadelphia. My WIP (work-in-progress) show is installing in a week, so needed to get back to studio as soon as possible.

Still felt my heart beating fast from the excitement in the meeting of FDH, it was nice seeing the show at the airport, ending my trip of papermaking festivities at Atlanta.

Everything was so inspiring at the meeting. The talk given by Erica Spitzer Rasmussen was about the history of paper garments in different culture, and it was very organized with lots of research. I felt grateful for being able to attend the talk and got lots of inspirations. Some of her work, the paper dresses/garments, were in this show at the airport.

Now I am back in the studio, going to pick up the paper for my book that I put in the drying box before leaving to the meeting. I feel my heart beating fast again, from the nervousness and excitement for the show coming up so soon.