Multimedia artist and Berkeley City College instructor Jan Dove shares a glimpse into the marvelous world of Book Arts and Artist Books. The audience will enjoy a hands-on interaction with her works; lyrical, whimsical and deeply connected to the ethos of the earth; plangent and passionate about the role of art in contemporary society, the artist comments: “I like to test the boundaries of the book form…to experiment with a variety of surfaces, and to play with transparency and translucency. The content of my books is about the things I am thinking about: usually the planet that I love (such as it is) and the people who inhabit that environment, such as they are. http://www.jandove.com/pages/openroad.html
The McCune Collection of Rare Books in Vallejo and puppet artist Michael Nelson are currently undertaking a collaboration to create a work of miniature theatre based on the classic writings of Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales using the Kelmscott Chaucer,and especially the woodcuts of Edward Burne-Jones, as design inspiration. Join us for a delightful Aprille afternoon, “…when folks longen to goon on Pilgrimages”, as the Nelsons present a special preview of A Paper Pilgrimage from Page to Stage: the Toy Theatre Canterbury Tales production. For more information please visit: Kelmscott Chaucer Toy Theatre Project
Imagine a sunny autumn street in San Francisco filled with hundreds of book arts fans breathlessly watching while a seven-ton, 1924 Buffalo Springfield steamroller (painted like a calliope in blue-green and gold) fires up, toots a decorative cloud of steam and coal smoke, rolls, and appears to crush a sixteen-square-foot sandwich of ink, linoleum, and Rives BFK right into the asphalt. Then, imagine the crowd’s oohs and ahhs as, to its astonishment and admiration, a pristine, large-scale 4x4 foot print – such as Patricia Curtan’s still life of her 120-year-old Chandler & Price platen press (shown below).or one of the 10 prints made by Rik Olson recounting the fantastical adventures of his grandfather’s steamroller – is pulled out of the sandwich (shown below with printers and steamroller). This spectacle is repeated 50 times that day, and over the last 10 years, 99 prints have been made. On May 18, Kathleen Burch, co-founder of the San Francisco Center for the Book, will tell all: Come hear tales of derring-do, of inky & clean hands, and see for yourself the magic that is printmaking on the street! The next Roadworks will take place on Sunday, September 28, 2014, at SFCB, 375 Rhode Island St., San Francisco. For more information, see sfcb.org the SFCB’s Facebook page about the event at https://www.facebook.com/events/210253402469234/ or click http://www.demotix.com/news/2831947/10th-annual-roadworks-steamroller-printing-festival#media-2831903 to to see more photos.