Stop by and print a letterpress Christmas or generic Seasonal Holiday card for Free. (Additional cards can be printed for only $1 a pop!) and/or shop at our pop-up shop for books, cards, posters, broadsides, and even the new Wells Book Arts Baseball Caps!
When: Friday, December 4th from 1pm-5pm
Where: Wells Book Arts Center in Morgan Hall
Take Action Now! Come be a part of a hands on lecture and learn about the Book Arts In-Residence The Mobile Mill, a traveling paper-making studio on September 24th at 6pm in Stratton Hall at Wells College. Jillian Bruschera focuses her art practice on social change, community, and sustainability. After a short lecture you will be able to make your own sheet of handmade paper.
Jillian will be here for two weeks September 18th-October 2nd hosting pop up paper making workshops all over campus. If you are unable to attend her talk catch up with her on another day. Here is the schedule:
SEPTEMBER
19th Aurora Free Public Library 1-2:30pm
22nd Outside Dining Hall at Wells 11:30am-1:30pm
24th ‘The Mobile Mill: A Vehicle for Social Practice’ artist lecture by Jillian Bruschera, proprietor of The Mobile Mill, in Stratton 209 at 6pm
25th In front of Leach Dorm 9am-Noon
26th Aurora Farmer’s Market 9am-Noon
29th Near Stratton & Zabriske 9am-Noon
OCTOBER 1st
Gallery Opening in the String Room featuring: original posters from the Women’s Suffrage Movement, student-generated art & art-as-activism projects including The Mobile Mill by Jillian Bruschera, Lavender Menace by Angela Davis Fegan, & Seeds in Service by Melissa Potter and Maggie Puckett, 6-8pm This event also includes a round-table discussion with visiting artist Jillian Bruschera and faculty, 7pm
Admission is FREE
Stratton Hall Auditorium
Wells College
Aurora-On-Cayuga NY
The Mobile Mill is an automobile outfitted with portable machinery to enable “pop-up” hand papermaking production, moving the making experience to, well, anywhere.
With a focus on experiential learning and community outreach, The Mobile Mill is a space for physical, social, and artistic interaction — an alternative art-making space where new learners, practicing artists and potential collaborators can learn about paper and how to make paper. The Mobile Mill demonstrates ecological awareness through art education, which teaches participants how to repurpose waste.
At large, a studio-on-wheels has great potential to generate a type of interaction with community that considers a larger human ecology. As a moving-space able to interact between edges, The Mobile Mill considers art-making, in this case the making of handmade paper, as a way to engage in a variety of communities and dialogues.
A digital anthology of this project can be found at:
themobilemill.tumblr.com
The even is free and open to the public.
For more information, email bookartscenter@wells.edu
If you didn’t have the chance to pop in the Book Arts Center while Jen Farwell from Starshaped Press was here don’t worry we have a recap for you!
As soon as Jen arrived she hit the ground running! She only left the letterpress studio to eat and sleep! It is always a treat to see the responses of printers and binders when they visit the center without fail they are overwhelmed with joy and can’t believe the facility. This was the case for Jen. On day one she was already rummaging through our ornament collection and a lockup was beginning to take form on our composing stone. When I saw all the containers of ornaments everywhere she assured me she had a system and knew where everything lived. Each day her poster lock up began to transform. It was an exceptional experience to see how she brainstorms; problem solves, and executes her ideas.
She spoke to all the book arts classes and former students. They could not fathom Jen’s lockups and the intricate details. The students enjoyed learning about her process as an artist and her small business.
She gave a wonderful lecture and we released our co-published book The Alphabet of Sorts. During her lecture students came to understand that following your dreams and passions is not always easy but at the end of the day you get to do what you love with the ups and downs of operating your own company.
We hosted open studios days where students and community members stopped by and printed with Jen.
She completed two posters while she was here. First, The Alphabet Machine which was apropos since we released The Alphabet of Sorts. She also printed the poster for our next Susan Garretson Swartzburg ’60 Book Arts Lecture. She was a busy bee!
Also, check out Jennifer’s blog post with her side of the story.
If you dig Jennifer’s style and want to work with lots of metal type and ornaments fear not! She is teaching at our Summer Institute in July. You can spend an entire week with her and learn from a master. Click here for more info.
Alphabet of Sorts is a collaboration between Starshaped press in Chicago and Wells College Press here in Aurora-On-Cayuga NY. The Alphabet of Sorts book is now printed and binding has begun! If you have been following along on Instagram or Facebook, you may have seen various stages of the design and printing by Starshaped Press. The Sharshaped blog has been keeping the public up-to-date on progress, and you can see much more there. We have been taking pre-orders and still are until March 1st, at which time the price will be regular list price of $150. The book is a limited numbered and signed edition of 100 and is already more than half sold out! This is an exciting project and we will bring you images of the binding in progress and news of a special visit by Jennifer Farrell of Starshaped Press later this month.
Wells College Press recently released River Time, the 2nd chapbook of the series featuring Poetry on Place. What Longing Is by Janis Esch was the 1st chapbook. River Time, By Michael Jennings was designed and letterpress printed by Michael and Winnie Bixler, Nancy Gil, Richard Kegler, and Jenna Rodriguez.
Larry D. Thomas, member of Texas Institute of Letters wrote the foreword for River Time stating, I first became acquainted with the poetry of Michael Jennings when he graciously gifted me with a copy of his Bone-Songs and Sanctuaries: New and Selected Poems. I found the book a haunting evocation of “place,” of “places” indistinguishable from the human beings, flora, and fauna dependent upon them for their very existence. I found a poet of consummate artistry; a poet who knew early in his career that a “sense of place” was an effective tool for making manifest the universal human quest for finding meaning in existence and expression for the painful, inevitable yearning inherent in that existence.
In River Time, Jennings succeeds once again in conveying to his reader the relevance not only of “place” in a literal sense but of “place” as a realm of spiritual, historical, and cultural realization and fulfillment. Beginning his journey in the East Texas of his early childhood where he “keeps seeing a muddy, sometimes sun-baked road,” he travels to Bandera, as close to “the leathery heart of Texas” as he would get, and on to the Alamo in San Antonio where he ponders not only the mythological status of “heroes” many Texans revere but also their seldom referenced and more historically accurate status as “thieves of territory.” Later poems transport the reader to the southwestern deserts of Iran and the author’s current home in Upstate New York.
The long and masterfully executed poem near the end of the collection, “Winter Light,” demonstrates, in phrase after phrase, Jennings’s uncanny ability to render the essence of “place” with unforgettable power and precision. He writes of “pale winter light, listening”; of “the sky sluicing down into slumbrous bodies”; of “blood-soaked stone aching to be light”; and “the dark of sparks and fireflies.” The reader will return to the remarkable poems of this collection time and time again: for the sheer beauty of language, for reflection, and for what it means to be a human being in a transitory, terror-filled, yet exquisitely beautiful world.
View the gallery of images to see the process of the book being created from beginning to end. If you would like to purchase a copy of your own visit Wells College Press Store
Wells College Press and Starshaped Press are co-publishing a limited edition alphabet book. Each letter is made up of printers’ ornaments composed by hand and letterpress printed from metal at Starshaped Press in Chicago. Wells College Press will be doing all of the binding. The design and lock up of tiny ornaments for every letter in the alphabet is unimaginable but Starshaped Press has made it happen. The results are absolutely beautiful. This is a book that everyone will appreciate. Expect to receive your copy around Spring 2015. To pre-order now click here. The images below will help you understand the work that has gone into this project. To the left is a print of the prospectus and to the right is the metal type lock up used to print the prospectus. (A human did all of this with their two hands) A-M-A-Z-I-N-G! Reserve a copy today before they sell out!
Just Who Is Richard Kegler And What Is He Doing At Wells Book Arts Center?
If you are in the Central NY area you can Find out this Thursday at the 38th Susan Garretson Swartzburg ’60 Book Arts Lecture. The lecture is at 5 pm in Stratton Hall Auditorium (rm 209) at Wells College. This is event is free and open to the public so bring all your friends!
Self-taught artist Kore Loy stopped by the book arts center to share her work and experiences with the bookbinding and calligraphy students. Loy from North Carolina is a poet, letterpress printer, and an intaglio printer. She creates many layers and goes through many stages before a piece becomes complete. She showed the students a portfolio of 13 prints and poems all contained in a handmade clamshell box.
SAVE THE DATE!
We are pleased to announce the dates for the Book Arts Summer Institute of 2015! Excitement is building here at the Center! We recently decided to add a 3rd week.
Week 1 July 12th – 18th
Week 2 July 19th – 25th
Week 3 July 26th – August 1st
We are currently finalizing our classes and instructors so keep an eye out for the updates.
Join us this afternoon as we print holiday cards! As you can see, these students are having a wonderful time printing lovely holiday cards. We have 6 printing presses for you to print 6 cards of your choice for $10. And hot tea, coffee, and cookies too! Hope to see you here in Morgan Hall!
Wells Book Arts Center 
