"Book Club" group show at Hermes Gallery

Hermes Gallery in Halifax is currently exhibiting a collection of book and text-themed works in a group show called "Book Club." Works on show are by several members of the gallery as well as a couple of special guests, including the Nova Scotia Book Arts Group. The Book Arts Group has contributed a wide range of handbound books including blank journals, a sculpural artist's book, and even a medieval wooden board binding. There are photos of all the books posted on the NSBAG website.

There are two books in this exhibit that I bound. One is my copy of Lock's Bookbinding Materials and Techniques 1700-1920 which is bound using a split board library binding in quarter leather. It also features my original marbling on the covers, as well as matching marbling on the edges of the textblock.


The second book bound by me is the NSBAG community art journal that was created in October 2023 during Halifax's annual Nocturne art-at-night festival. The public was invited to create the pages for this book following the prompt, "What is your favorite thing?" As the pages were finished, they were bound together into this book so the content and structure of the book were created concurrently. This is a photo of the book as it was being sewn during the event and then the finished book.


The finished book is currently on display at Hermes Gallery and members of the public are free to flip through the pages and see the artwork that was created by members of the community or find the work that they contributed at the event! There is more info about this project on the NSBAG website.

In conjunction with this show and on behalf of NSBAG, I conducted a little bookbinding workshop at the gallery last weekend. In this workshop, everyone bound their own miniature copy of The Raven. I created the textblock specifically for this workshop, formatting the text and preparing the colophon beforehand, so everyone had a tiny textblock ready to go at the beginning of the session. At the end of the workshop, we had produced this little edition of tiny books!



There are a few more photos of these miniature books on the NSBAG website.

The "Book Club" show also features a fabulous collection of letterpress posters made by Amos Paul Kennedy. They look amazing all displayed together like this.



There are also many other items to see at this show including art books, sculptural works, text-themed photography, prints, tiny text, a tunnel book, and a variety of printed matter. Well worth a visit! The exhibit continues until April 21, 2023. More info available on the Hermes Gallery website.

Visiting Letterpress Artist - Amos Paul Kennedy Jr

Amos Paul Kennedy Jr is a letterpress artist from Alabama. He has been visiting Halifax this month with his work exhibited in one of the NSCAD galleries coinciding with the recent city-wide "Nocturne" art event. He also presented a couple of public talks and attended some classes at NSCAD as a guest artist and teacher.

There is a gallery of some of his work on his website (www.kennedyprints.com). He designs and prints some terrific posters, including a great series on the virtues of coffee. Many of his posters are very clever and entertaining but many are also very serious in their message, dealing with a wide range of issues like racisim, civil rights, ecomonics, artistic freedom, etc. Apparently he served in the Peace Corps and also studied and worked as a computer programmer in previous lives, but left that behind to pursue the creative life of a letterpress artist. There is a very good article about him on the Daily Mountain Eagle website.

His visit to Halifax also happen to coincide with my last letterpress class earlier this week. He visited our class so it was nice to meet him and have a chance to talk to him a bit. And I saw him again today at the Gaspereau Press Wayzgoose where he was demonstrating one of their Vandercook proof presses and helping people print souvenir posters. I had packed up the whole family to go to the Wayzgoose, so my son got to print the souvenir poster - with some help from Amos.