Left: Valmor and Sweet Georgia Brown Beauty Products No. 27 (Yvonne Chireau Collection). Right: page from Charles Dawson’s ABCs of Great Negroes, Dawson Publishers, 1933 (Source: AIGA Design Journeys: Charles Dawson, Rights: Art Institute of Chicago)
Left: cover of Frank Marshall Davis, Black Man’s Verse (Chicago: Black Cat Press, 1935). Decoration by Calvin Brazelton. Right: interior page, with typography by Norman W. Forgue. (Images courtesy of the presenter)
Sat., Oct. 26 | Kinohi Nishikawa began by showing an image of a marbled black and white slipcase from a 1935 Frank Marshall Davis fine press edition. He used this object to pose questions about the contents it would hold, asking how viewers would perceive the value of those contents. [Read more]
(Photo: Lynette Spencer)
Fri, Oct. 25. | Visitors grabbed pencils and linocutters and returned to the world of relief printing in Lynette Spencer’s “Building Bridges” letterpress workshop. Hosted by BookLab, the University of Maryland’s one-year-old book arts and letterpress space, participants engaged in a four-hour intensive class designing and printing graphic two-color postcards reflecting on the APHA conference’s theme of social diversity and inclusion. [Read more]
Example of a class survey by a student at Ohio University. (Miriam Intrator)
Left: Charles White’s “My God is a Rock,” linocut. Right: David C. Driskell’s “Accent of Autumn.” 2016—a textured serigraphone with Dorit Yaron explaining.
Fri., Oct. 25 | On this afternoon, an intimate group of APHA members gathered at the front of the David C. Driskell Center for the Study of the Visual Arts and Culture of African Americans and the African Diaspora, for an introduction to the center, its mission, and a tour of the current exhibition. [Read more]
From the Contact form:
Lead found in vintage books’ ink: Should I be concerned? [Read more]
The American Printing History Association (APHA) is currently accepting applications for the 2020 Mark Samuels Lasner Fellowship in Printing History for the study of printing history. An award of up to $2,000 is available for research in any area of the history of printing, including all the arts and technologies relevant to printing, the book arts, and letter forms. [Read more]
Mathias Tusiime with some of his woodcuts on his handmade paper. (Casey Smith)
Sat., Oct. 26 | Casey Smith presented on his month-long trip to Kampala, Uganda as part of a cultural immersion program for artists through apexart. He explored the city and prestigious Makerere University in particular, where he learned about their printmaking techniques using hand-registered woodcuts on MDF. As Smith showed photos of the woodcuts (both blocks and prints), he pointed out that they typically depict domestic life or political subject matter. [Read more]
Pressure print form, wood type. and resulting print from workshop. (Photos: Melanie Leung)
Sun., Oct. 27 | Pyramid Atlantic is located in the Gateway Arts District in Hyattsville, Maryland. It occupies a space that has had several previous uses, including a church, arcade and duckpin bowling alley.
Our tour began on the ground floor. There is a small shop as you enter, which then transitions into an open floor plan, divided into the following studio spaces: letterpress, bindery, and printmaking. Down the hall, there are tables for classes and separate rooms for papermaking, screen printing, a darkroom, as well as separate office-type studios for artists. The second floor also has offices and a small library, though the majority of the space is used as a gallery for artists to exhibit their work. You can also see some elements of the building’s history preserved here in some of the architectural elements of the space. [Read more]
We are pleased to announce that members of both the Chesapeake and Northern California chapters of APHA have produced beautiful 2020 calendars for sale via the links above. [Read more]