About This Guide
This virtual exhibition catalogue represents selections from the Baylor Book Arts Collection, exhibited in the Crouch Fine Arts Library from February 10th through March 2015. For additional information about the Baylor Book Arts Collection and artists books in general, please explore the tabs at the top of this page.
Please share your thoughts on this exhibit here.
What is an artist book?
What, exactly, is an artist’s book? You may not be able to tell just from looking at the object itself! The simple answer to someone not familiar with artists’ books might be: art in book form. But they are not quite so simple…
An artist’s book is a medium of artistic expression that uses the form or function of “book” as inspiration. It is the artistic initiative seen in the illustration, choice of materials, creation process, layout and design that makes it an art object. . . .What truly makes an artist’s book is the artist’s intent, and artists have used the book as inspiration in a myriad of ways and techniques, from traditional to the experimental. The book could be made through fine press printing or hand-crafted, the pages illustrated with computer-generated images or cheap photocopies; books became sculptures, tiny and gargantuan; books were sliced up and reconfigured, made from all kinds of materials with unconventional objects incorporated, in unique or limited editions, or produced in multiple copies. With all sorts of ideas behind them, artists continue to challenge the idea, content and structure of the traditional book.
Images from Exhibit (photography by Ben Johansen)
List of Artists Books included in the Exhibit
To see the libraries' catalog record for each of these works, click on the hyperlinked title.
1. Stephanie Stigliano. City sights and sounds
2. Sam Antonacci. Point of origin
3. Michelle Ray. God created the sea and painted it blue so we'd feel good on it
4. Karen Kunc. Ten thousand things
5. Brian Dettmer. Original fan
6. Susan Joy Share. Barefeet
7. Sarah Press. Evolve = unroll
8. Mark Head. Khorlo in blues
9. Zena Zipporah. Famous women as Victorians
10. Laura Russell. Anything helps
11. Amy Pirkle. Smoke
12. Jennifer Brook. Descendant
13. Elsi Vassdal Ellis. Altered state one
14. Guy Himber. V & A Steamworks
15. Linda Welch. Nothing's ever clear
16. Merike van Zanten. Bounties of nature
17. Lois Morrison. Incarnations
18. Alicia Bailey. Euxoa auxiliara
19. Carolyn Shattuck. The quilts of Gee's Bend vol. 2
Associate Dean for Research & Engagement; Librarian for Art and Theatre; Curator of the Baylor Book Arts Collection
