Investigating book collections and archives for content and structural inspiration is integral to a research-based artistic practice. This semester at the University of Nebraska Omaha, I decided to frame my undergraduate Book Structures class around archives. In mid-January, Patricia Silva posted to the Book Art Listserv a request for a list of artist books that utilize archives in some way. I was nearly finished designing my class for the semester and this list filled in many gaps in my own list of archival-adjacent works. Working with existing collections and archives isn’t only for academically based work; it has been a source of inspiration for projects for a long time, including projects that are made specifically about reference libraries, such as REF, an artist book by Shift Lab. This type of Archival Based Research Methods for artistic inspiration were new to my undergraduate students and the first step towards more independently driven research.
For their first assignment, my students looked at ways to create their own archives as artist books and bound as single pamphlets of Mohawk paper folios that they had manipulated in some unique and intentional way. The students needed to create a visual sequence and could tear, fold, puncture, layer, fold, cut, pierce, lump, register, crumple, jumble, fray, roll, scratch, clump, burn, dampen the paper to get these results. This book became A Material Archive of Action and asked students to think about the paper substrate as the main conveyor of the book experience.
For their second assignment, my students worked directly with images from the Public Domain Archive and created a lenticular accordion book based on those images. The resulting artist books were excellent examples of the structural possibilities of a lenticular accordion (fragmenting imagery, one book that allows for two perspectives) and gave students the opportunity to work from existing archival and out-of-copywrite images as inspiration. They worked outside of their own aesthetic tendencies while giving those archival images new life.
For the third artist book assignment, I worked with Tammi Owens who is the head the Director of Research and Instruction Services, the Fine Arts Librarian, and an associate professor at the University of Nebraska Omaha's Dr. C.C. and Mabel L. Criss Library. Tammi had taken a book arts class a while back and so had a greater understanding of the possibilities of connections between materials and content. Together we came up with an assignment that asked students to Use The Archive To Ground Their Imaginations.
This means, Grounding Their Imaginations in the following ways: 1) in academic research to have a touchstone to reality; 2) in existing historical texts to provide historical context, timelines, stories; 3) in the materials and book structures from the past to provide structural precedence; 4) in scientific fact to enable larger, more imaginative leaps that are based in logic.
Here are the steps we asked students to follow: 1. Go into the stacks, grab up to five books and bring them back into the room. Try to have them be from different eras in history. 2. Find something that you love and use the Form and Content Analysis Worksheet to conduct a SLOW LOOK of the book. 3. Narrow down what aspects of the book you would like to emulate, be inspired by, modify and use—start sketching! 4. You can use any aspect of the book but consider that we will be displaying your book and the library book side-by-side. 5. Final output will be an artist book and a small piece of writing for the exhibit text.
The initial free-for-all supermarket-sweep-type of book gathering was frenzied and fun. We visited the folio section of the book collection and filled our arms with giant books about the circus, magic tricks, and early maps and comics. Students then settled on a book that they wanted to work with for the remainder of the assignment. The next few weeks back in the classroom were dedicated to learning either the drumleaf or flatback binding structures and paper marbling, as well as preparing the exhibition installation.
The resulting artist books are colorful, structurally formal, and deeply connected to the library books. Asking students to conduct this object-based research in a library kept them away from predictable search engines and pinterest boards and asked them to create their own path forward in this artistic pursuit.
Images show students installing the exhibition in two cases in the library, plus some examples of their third assignment:
AB Gorham is Assistant Professor of Book Arts and Papermaking at University of Nebraska Omaha and serves at Chair of the CBAA Publication Committee. Her poems have been published in Puerto Del Sol, The Call Center, American Letters and Commentary, DIAGRAM, and Gulf Coast, among others. Her artist books are collected nationally.
