Date/Time
Date(s) - August 26, 2022 - December 18, 2022
10:00 am - 6:00 pm
Location
Gregory Allicar Museum of Art, University Center for the Arts
Off the Shelf
Contemporary Book Arts in Colorado
The Griffin Foundation Gallery, August 26 – December 18, 2022
Panel Discussion and Reception, September 7 at 5 p.m.
Off the Shelf: Contemporary Book Arts in Colorado exhibits artists that innovate and defy our conceptual framework of the book and its contents. The artist book, a medium spanning the public and private sphere of creators and viewers, reflects on issues intimate and grand. The diversity of works represented in this exhibition demonstrate the breadth and depth of the book as a potent artistic device.
Off the Shelf: Contemporary Book Arts in Colorado is curated by Anna Bernhard, Director of the Stanley G. Wold Resource Center and Johnny Plastini, Associate Professor of Printmaking. Together with their colleague, associate professor Roberto Muntoreanu, Johnny Plastini and Anna Bernhard direct CABIN, the Center for Artists’ Books and Inclusive Narratives (@csu_cabin), here at Colorado State University.
Many of the works featured in Off the Shelf are courtesy of the CSU Libraries Archives & Special Collections, partners with CABIN. Exhibition pieces are also drawn from GAMA’s permanent holdings and book arts collections around the state, with loans from the Fine Press and Artists’ Books collection at the University of Denver Special Collections; The Press at Colorado College; University of Colorado, boulder Rare and Distinctive Collections; and several artists themselves.
Featured Artists
Alicia BaileyGail WatsonHeather Doyle-MaierSammy Seung-Min LeeMary Ellen LongHelen HiebertLaura WaitJames Trissel
Lynn CorneliusAlicia McKim and Nancy EastmanMake, Shift, Press: Susan Guinn-Chipman, Danny Long, Gregory Robl, and Julia SekoBarbara TisseratAaron Cohick
Take a look inside some of the artists’ books in Off the Shelf: Contemporary Book Arts in Colorado
Our curators and staff follow recommended museum handling guidelines to ensure that objects are correctly preserved. For books and works on paper—which are sensitive to touch—we prefer to use clean hands without gloves to allow for optimal dexterity.
Click here to watch the videos in this series, with views of:
- Alicia Bailey’s Lipstips (2001) and Endangered Volume II (2019)
- Gail Watson’s The Language of Trees (2021)
- Alicia McKim & Nancy Eastman’s The West Being What It Is (2008)
- and Aaron Cohick’s Orpheus the Stutterer: A Poetics of Silence, with text by Alan Loney (2013)
Exhibition Curators
Anna Bernhard
Anna Bernhard directs the Stanley G. Wold Resource Center within CSU’s Department of Art and Art History, a library dedicated to sourcing visual and academic resources to further scholarship and artistic expression. An academic librarian and archivist by training, she received her BA from Bates College in Maine, her MPhil from Trinity College Dublin in Ireland, and her MLIS from the Pratt Institute in New York City. Anna is passionate about the way we communicate and process ideas and information. While she first fell in love with book arts in graduate school, curating this exhibition has deeply immersed her in the vibrant and diverse set of book artists working here in Colorado.
Johnny Plastini
Johnny Plastini received his BA in interdisciplinary studio art from the University of California, Santa Cruz and received his MFA in printmaking from the Tyler School of Art and Architecture, Temple University. He is currently an Associate Professor and Area Coordinator of Printmaking in the Department of Art and Art History at Colorado State University. Professor Plastini’s research interests include sustainable printmaking, papermaking, and book arts processes that meaningfully link the arts and sciences together.
Panel Discussion and Reception
Join us for a panel discussion with artists from the exhibition on Wednesday, September 7 at 5 p.m. The program will be followed by a reception in the Robert W. Hoffert Learning Center.
Free and open to all.
Support for this exhibition at the Gregory Allicar Museum of Art has been generously provided by the City of Fort Collins Fort Fund, the FUNd Endowment at CSU, and Colorado Creative Industries. CCI and its activities are made possible through an annual appropriation from the Colorado General Assembly and federal funds from the National Endowment for the Arts.
This exhibition is also made possible in part through a grant from the Lilla B. Morgan Memorial Endowment. This fund works to enhance the cultural development and atmosphere for the arts at Colorado State University and benefits from the generous support of all those who love the arts.
