This workshop takes place across three sessions:

• Mon, Aug 9th, 6–8pm ET


• Thurs, Aug 12th, 6–8pm ET


• Fri, Aug 13th, 6–8pm ET

In this three-day course with artist and writer Ellen Sheffield, students will learn techniques for generating text for artist's books through conceptual approaches of text usage: text as image, as narrative, as lyrical expression.

Participants will experiment with typographic systems, text itineraries, Dada and Surrealist approaches. Writing exercises will be assigned to be completed before, during and in-between the three workshop sessions. Various methods for getting text onto book pages will be demonstrated through mark making, transfers, stencils, stamps, rub-on type– in addition to demonstrations of how to make simple accordion book structures.

Required Materials:

• 3 x 5 notecards (a dozen)


• Sketchbook or 8" x 10" copy paper (two dozen sheets)


• Notebook + writing utensils


• Scissors


• UHU glue stick


• Old magazines and newspapers for collage


• 11" x 17" medium weight paper (2 sheets)

The following materials are optional:

• Alphabet rubber stamps, stencils


• Colored pencils, markers


• A few sheets of tracing paper


• Carbon paper

Optional Readings:

• 
  Text in the Book Format by Keith A. Smith, 2nd edition, 1995


• 
  Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art by Scott McCloud, 1993

About the Instructor

Ellen Sheffield’s works on paper and artist’s books use text and image intersections to create unexpected readings. Her interest in the juxtaposition of visual language: materials; design; mark-making; and printing processes, with written language: essays: poetry; and hybrid writing, continues to motivate art/word collaborations with Lewis Hyde, Fanny Howe, and Andrew Grace among others. Recently Ellen’s work explores themes of race and class in her rural community informed by research of local African-American history by her husband, Ric Sheffield, Kenyon College Professor of Sociology. Ellen’s studio, Unit IV Arts, is located in Gambier, OH, where she teaches in Kenyon’s Art Department. Her artist’s books have been collected by the Beinecke Library, Yale Collection of American Literature at Yale University, by the Ella Strong Denison Library at Scripps College and by many others.

All images courtesy of the instructor.