Friday, September 24, Opening Reception, 6 – 9 PM
Saturday, September 25, 12 – 5 PM
Selected Works on Exhibit through December 10th, 2010

Friday September 24
6-9 pm BookOpolis exhibit opens to the public. We have received 100+ artist books to be on display from across the US as well as Italy, Canada, and Great Britain, international entries this year. All entries will be on display for the BookOpolis weekend only. From these entries, Alice Sebrell, director of Black Mountain College Museum and Art Center will make a selection of approximately 40 artists’ books to be exhibited through December 10, 2010. One lucky winner of the annual raffle of this year’s Small Book Exchange, “Memory Palaces,” will be announced.

Saturday September 25
Noon – 5 PM. BookOpolis Weekend continues with demos and hands-on activities introducing letterpresss, papermking, binding and printmaking, for all ages. A special Children’s Hour at noon. Children accompanied by a parent or other adult are invited to come at noon to learn about artists’ books and how to handle them, Laurie Corral,Director, will focus on 4 – 5 books from the exhibit. Children will participate in discussion and learn how to handle artist books.

Visitors of all ages are invited to visit the exhibit, see papermaking demonstrations, make and take a simply bound book with a letterpress cover and bring a t-shirt to print. In the spirit of Drive-By Press, who visited earlier this year, we’ll be inking blocks and printing them on t-shirts using the etching press. The theme of the blocks is Memory Palaces, taken from the exhibition poster. You can bring your own T-shirt or buy one at BookWorks, T-shirts for sale are $10.

A selection of prints and books from the exhibit will remain on display in our gallery until December 10, 2010.

BookOpolis 2010 Posters, screenprinted by Philip Bell, have been distributed and hung in some of our favorite places around Asheville. Posters are available for sale at the event.

Jessica Peterson is a book artist, papermaker and letterpress printer who lives in the back of a letterpress printshop in Gordo, Alabama. Jessica believes that craft-based bookmaking is a powerful and political act. She utilizes letterpress printing and hand papermaking to create artists’ books about neglected and underprivledged American narratives. Her books are collected by academic and private libraries across the country. She has been an adjunct faculty member at Purchase College, The University of Bridgeport and The University of Alabama, and has lead workshops and lectured at Printmaking Council of New Jersey, The Art Institute of Chicago and The Center for Book Arts in New York. She is currently teaching graphic design at Mississippi University for Women. She graduated with an MFA in Book Arts from the University of Alabama in 2009. For more information, visit her website at www.paper-souvenir.com

Click to see a list of workshops Jessica is teaching.

Bridget Elmer is an artist, bookmaker and letterpress printer working in Asheville, NC, where she is rebuilding her platen press, tuning up her 1966 flatbed truck, and retrofitting open source philosophy to book technologies. Bridget studied bookbinding, letterpress printing, printmaking and the history of the book at the Cooper Union, Center for Book Arts, Penland School of Crafts, Asheville BookWorks and the California Rare Book School. She received her MFA in the Book Arts from the University of Alabama in 2010, and she will graduate with her second Masters in Library and Information Studies in 2011. Bridget recently served as the Resident Artist at the Small Craft Advisory Press at Florida State University, where she completed her creative thesis project and taught undergraduate courses in Book Structures. She also served as Visiting Art Professor at The Press at Colorado College in the summer of 2010, where she taught a course on Book Arts & Letterpress. In addition to her on-going work as the proprietor of Flatbed Splendor, Bridget is the co-founder of Impractical Labor in Service of the Speculative Arts (ILSSA), an organization for those who make experimental or conceptual work with obsolete technology.
www.flatbedsplendor.com
www.impractical-labor.org

Click to see a list of workshops Bridget is teaching.

Innovative Printmaking on Handmade Paper: September 13 through October 18, 2010
Pulp Painting: Beyond the Squeeze Bottle: October 16-17, 2010, 9:00–5:00 p.m.

Innovative Printmaking on Handmade Paper, the sixth portfolio in a series, will be on display at Asheville BookWorks the week of September 13th through the week of October 18^th. The traveling exhibition includes 20 prints juried by the national non-profit organization Hand Papermaking, Inc. The collection incorporates a wide variety of printmaking techniques— traditional, contemporary, and experimental—while emphasizing the equal importance of printed image and paper.

Whether done by individual artists or as collaborations between papermakers and printmakers, these innovative prints reflect a successful marriage of print and paper. The handmade paper is not simply a substrate; it is inherent in the artwork. The printmaking techniques represented include etching, woodblock, chine collé, linocut, digital inkjet, silkscreen, monotype, lithography, pochoir, aquatint, and letterpress. The papermaking techniques include watermarking, pulp painting, double couching, and overbeating; with fibers such as cotton, linen, abaca, hemp, kozo, flax, and sea grass.

Brooklyn artist Shannon Brock will conducting a paper pulp painting class October 16-17, 2010, 9:00–5:00 p.m. at Asheville BookWorks. The two-day workshop, Pulp Painting: Beyond the Squeeze Bottle, will explore image making in hand papermaking.  Using multiple moulds and vats of pigmented pulp, along with contact paper, dental syringes, paintbrushes and squeeze bottles, participants will develop images by layering and overlapping thin veils of pulp.  Basic paper sheet formation and pigmenting will be reviewed.