Liminal Spaces: Book Arts and Photography
I've just gotten home from a Book Arts Guild event. (How very official and disconcerting, especially since I'm not actually a member of said Guild. I need to print out a copy of their form and send them a check.) It was a talk by a guy who's currently a librarian at Pratt, and who's also a book artist with a fair amount of background in conservation. We looked at pictures of a whole bunch of his work, and got to check out one of the books in persona rather enormous piece made with photographs all held together with clear packing tape. Highly unconventional, and with an interesting heavy drapey effect.
The guy has a list of impressive credentials approximately a mile long, and all this incredible work which has been displayed in all sorts of international museums and collections, but fortunately I didn't find out much of that until afterward, because I would have been completely unable to speak, and would have merely cowered sheepishly in a corner. But the reason I knew about this talk at all is that this guy is old friends with one of my teachers. So she and I had dinner with him and his girlfriend, and I was therefore introduced to him as simply a human being, perfectly charming and indeed slightly nervous about having to give a talk. That was nice. His girlfriend was also a lovely person, and equally intimidating (if not more so) as she has just graduated from law school and passed the bar. Yikes.
But, oh, it was wonderful to look at things made by people I don't go to school with, and to be reminded of the much larger world outside. There's so much there out there, and I know so little of it. And there are people who are interesting, and odd, and who do things and you can ask them questions and they will ask you questions and it's all very social and cool. The trick is for me to just not know anything much about their history beforehand, so as not to set off the inferiority complex. Then I do just fine.
The guy has a list of impressive credentials approximately a mile long, and all this incredible work which has been displayed in all sorts of international museums and collections, but fortunately I didn't find out much of that until afterward, because I would have been completely unable to speak, and would have merely cowered sheepishly in a corner. But the reason I knew about this talk at all is that this guy is old friends with one of my teachers. So she and I had dinner with him and his girlfriend, and I was therefore introduced to him as simply a human being, perfectly charming and indeed slightly nervous about having to give a talk. That was nice. His girlfriend was also a lovely person, and equally intimidating (if not more so) as she has just graduated from law school and passed the bar. Yikes.
But, oh, it was wonderful to look at things made by people I don't go to school with, and to be reminded of the much larger world outside. There's so much there out there, and I know so little of it. And there are people who are interesting, and odd, and who do things and you can ask them questions and they will ask you questions and it's all very social and cool. The trick is for me to just not know anything much about their history beforehand, so as not to set off the inferiority complex. Then I do just fine.