The University of Central Florida in Orlando has a lot of
students…around 60,000 enrolled students. (They are #2
or 3 but then whose counting?) I don’t know if Florida can accommodate all of its qualified applicants,
but UCF is clearly hosting a diverse population of students and the campus offers a vast
array of opportunities for enrichment.
We visited the
campus to see the show of our work in the library.
We had a chance to meet about 1/1000th, or a tenth of one percent of the UCF student body when we gave a talk to a diverse group of students from the art
department, showing our books and sharing our thoughts about the history and
future of the artists’ book. I think we might have met the most creative percentage!
Giving tours of the wagon we had a very interesting
conversation with Ryan Price, one of the graduating students from the
printmaking department. I had admired his work in the graduates’ year-end show
in the gallery, mostly large painted drawings, but there was one artists’ book.
It was made by taking paintings made on both sides of an 18 by 24 inch sheet of
art paper, folding them in half, and sewing the folios together to make up the
text block. The inner fold showed the whole painting, but the next page spread was
composed of two half-paintings.
What Ryan liked most about making his book was fitting the unmatched half pages together and then reworking them so they became a
new art work. He liked how changing the sequence could change the story, and how the fragments of paintings took on whole new and different meanings when paired differently.
Ryans talk
I feel assured that future of the artists’ book is secure,
with students like Ryan Price embracing the medium.
In nearby Rollins College, Rachel Simmons teaches a book
arts class. During our visit we learned that between 1926-1951 Rollins even had a "Professor of Books!" It was Ke Francis a recently retired Professor of Books that got us to Orlando and UCF. The pictures that follow were taken at UCF:
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