What a week! The election has come and gone, and if you prefer to not just sit and wait, but to keep busy while ballots are counted across the country, we have two great opportunities for you, plus some really cool stuff to look at from Special Collections at Fleet Library.
First, please consider participating in Post-Vote, Now What?, a public art project and "collective reflection on democracy, community, dialogue, and where we go from here." Responses will be added as they arrive to a display in the storefront windows of the Color Lab, at 30 North Main Street.
Second, how about channeling all those thoughts, emotions, recipes, incantations, data, nostalgia, suspicions, discoveries, drawings, diagrams, collages, and whatever else comes to mind and hand into an artist's book for the Seventh(!) Annual Baker + Whitehill Student Artists' Book Contest? For this, you have until Dec. 15.
In addition to these activities, we have an exciting new acquisition to announce, beautiful pochoir prints to immerse yourself in, and a movie to watch about some amazing book artists whose work you can then ask to see, in-person or virtually in Special Collections.
So, scroll down, read on, and enjoy!
Margot McIlwain Nishimura
Dean of Libraries
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ARTISTS’ BOOK CONTEST
The Fleet Library at RISD is happy to announce the 7th Baker & Whitehill Student Artists' Book Contest and Exhibition. All RISD students are welcome to submit a video of their artists’ book to the contest. Our juror this year is Nafis White, MFA 18 PR. Winners of the contest receive a purchase prize and their book is added to the Artists’ Book Collection. All entries are due December 15, 2020. For more information please see: risd.libguides.com/contest.
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SPECIAL COLLECTIONS APPOINTMENTS AND VIRTUAL CLASS VISITS
Have special items you would like to see, or a subject area you want to explore? Our staff are available to provide assistance using Special Collections' materials, which include over 20,000 important and rare books, periodicals, and artists' books that date from as early as the 14th century to the present. Make an appointment with us - either virtual or in-person - and prepare to be inspired!
Also virtual class visits are bookable now for Winter Session and Spring. See the Special Collections web page for more details.
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NEW ADDITION TO THE ARTISTS’ BOOK COLLECTION
We are thrilled to have recently acquired Black is Every Color, by Alisa Banks: "Black, the sum of all colors, mysterious, all-encompassing, a shroud, a swarm. Familiar but unknowable, coveted and uncontained. This book work considers the encompassing nature of blackness." Alisa Banks is a visual artist who creates sculptural books, textile collage, and mixed-media work to address identity politics.
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NEW IN OUR DIGITAL COLLECTIONS: POCHOIR DESIGN FOLIOS!
Among our most cherished objects at Fleet Library Special Collections are the pochoir design folios, produced mostly in Paris in the 1920s - 1930s. Pochoir is the French word for "stencil", and describes a highly specialized hand-stenciled printing process. This collection is just one of several new digital initiatives that we’re working on, we’re also in the process of digitizing artists’ books, and books on color, fashion, pattern, nature and more.
Images below, top & bottom: Séguy, Émile-Allain; "Insectes: Vingt Planches en Phototypie Coloriées au Patron Donnant Quatre-Vingts Insectes et Seize Compositions Décoratives" (1929). Pochoir. 4; Séguy, Émile-Allain; "Les Fleurs et Leurs Applications Décoratives" (1902). Pochoir. 5.
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