Installation artist, type designer, stone carver, sculptor, and biomedical animator win MacArthur grants

Among the 23 people named 2010 MacArthur Fellows (winners of the $500,000 "genius grant"):

Nicholas Benson, stone carver
Drew Berry, biomedical animator
Matthew Carter, type designer
Jorge Pardo, installation artist
Elizabeth Turk, sculptor


Non-MacArthur Fellow Tim Kiser
Circulation Assistant, MCAD Library

Jody Williams Artist's Books Here and in New Show

Jody Williams, who teaches printmaking and book arts here, is having a show at  Form+Content Gallery 23rd Sept. - Oct 30th. She will have receptions on Saturday Sept. 25th and Wednesday Oct 13th from 6-9 pm. They will be showing her new artist's book Relative Remains with etchings of invertebrates and fossils.  

You can also find out more about Jody's work at Flying Paper Press.

The MCAD library has several of Jody's earlier works in our Artist's Books Collection which do not check out but you can look at them here if you ask at the library's circulation desk.  Here is a list of all the books that we have by or about her with their locations and call numbers: 

Bugs of Summer

Francesca Di Piazza ... [et al.]. [Minnesota] : Flying Paper Press, c1998.

MCAD Artists' Book Collection: N7433.4 .B84 1998

Time will tell

Jody Williams. Minneapolis, MN : Flying Paper Press, [1991]

MCAD Artists' Book Collection: N7433.4.W49 T56 1991

Marvel Ann's dream

Jody Williams. Rosendale, N.Y. : Women's Studio Workshop, c1989.

MCAD Artists' Book Collection: N7433.4.W49 M37 1989

Dualities

Nicole Ashley ... [et al.] Minneapolis : Out of Hand Press, 1991.

MCAD Artists' Book Collection: N7433.M564 D8 1991

There is no other way to speak

edited by Bill Holm. [Minneapolis, MN] : Minnesota Center for Book Arts, 2005.

MCAD Artists' Book Collection: PS571.M6 T3 2005

500 handmade books : inspiring interpretations of a timeless form

senior editor, Suzanne J.E. Tourtillott. New York : Lark Books, c2008.

MCAD Book Stacks N7433.3 .F2 2008

30 below : a juried competition for young Minnesota artists : January 18-March 15, 1987, University Art Museum, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis

[artists, Jon Anderson ... et al.]. Minneapolis : The Museum, c1987.

MCAD Pamphlets N6530.M6 T47 1987

WARM, a landmark exhibition

Minneapolis, Minn. : WARM, Women's Art Registry of Minnesota, c1984.

MCAD Special Collection: N8354 .W65 1984

We hope to see you here and I'm sure Jody would love to see you at her opening.

Eva Hyvarinen

Visual Resource Assistant

MCAD Library

Art of the Poster, 1880-1918

This collection of over one hundred and sixty digital images of historic posters from the “Golden Age of the Poster” (1880s through the First World War) was originally compiled to support the teaching of Design History and Graphic Design courses at the Minneapolis College of Art & Design. 

In the late nineteenth century, lithographers began to use mass-produced zinc plates rather than stones in their printing process. This innovation allowed them to prepare multiple plates, each with a different color ink, and to print these in close registration on the same sheet of paper. Posters in a range of colors and variety of sizes could now be produced quickly, at a modest cost. Skilled illustrators and graphic designers – such as Alphonse Mucha, Jules Cheret, and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec -- quickly began to exploit this new technology; the “Golden Age of the Poster” was the spectacular result. Many of the artists who designed posters during this period were already well known in other media, such as painting, printmaking, and architecture. Their creative success helped to bridge the gap between “high art” and popular visual culture, and to introduce even those who never visited museums or galleries to examples of innovative modern design. Today, these striking posters are highly regarded as being among the most distinctive examples of fin-de-siecle styles such as Art Nouveau and the Vienna Secession.

The Lawrence University Library is hosting the scanned images for the Art of the Poster collection for public access in collaboration with Library Visual Resources at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design where the images were scanned and cataloged.

http://www.lawrence.edu/library/contentdm/posters/index.htm

Allan Kohl

Visual Resources Librarian

MCAD Library

Read banned books. Celebrate the right to think for yourself!

September 25 through October 2 is Banned Books Week, the annual event established by the American Library Association (ALA) to celebrate the freedom to read and the freedom of the press covered by the First Amendment.  The MCAD Library staff invites you to join in the celebration of Banned Books Week by reading what you want to and enjoying free and open access to information, but also to remember that censorship and attempted book banning still occurs.

We're all familiar with many of the books that have been singled out.  Deemed 'unsuitable for many audiences,' were (and often still are) To Kill a Mockingbird, The Grapes of Wrath, The Color Purple, and more recently the Harry Potter and Twilight series to name only a few.  Did you know that one of the recommended books for the MCAD all-school project, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, by Sherman Alexie is on the ALA's top ten most challenged books for both 2008 and 2009? 

The MCAD Library's popular collection of of comics and graphic novels is a genre of literature that has historically been a target for censorship so it's not surprising the cartoonist or graphic novelist would address this topic in their work.  We'd like to bring to your attention to the online graphic novel, Americus, written by M.K. Reed and illustrated by Jonathan Hill.  It's the story of a "book-loving boy from the small Oklahoma town of Americus who grapples with the travails of high school and takes a stand when it looks as though his favorite fantasy series, starring a young sorceress (Apathea Ravenchilde, the huntress wytch) who hunts monsters and tyrants, might be banned from the local library."  Americus will be published in book form in its entirety in 2011 but can be read in weekly installments at:

http://saveapathea.com/

To read more about M.K. Reed and Jonathan Hill's collaborative project go to:

First Second Graphic Novel with Banned Book Theme Appears First on Web, Later in Stores

Read what you like and as the American Library Association says: "think for yourself and let others do the same."

See you in the Libary!

Kay Streng
Technical Services Librarian
MCAD Library

You Can Vote at ArtPrize

It may be too late to enter your artwork but it's not too late to vote for your favorite in the $250,000 ArtPrize 2010 competition. You will have to get to Grand Rapids, Michigan (about a ten hour drive) between Sept. 22 and Oct 6 if you want to take part in the ArtPrize voting. Last year they had 200,000 visitors with 37,000 people voting.  You can check out the voting rules at ArtPrize

The competition is open to any artist who can convince one of the event's venues to be his/her host. The top ten artists who are chosen by the popular vote of those attending will receive part of the total $449,000 with $250,000 to the first place holder, $100,00 to 2nd, $50,000 to 3rd and $7,000 to 4th through 7th place holders. This year ArtPrize will also have juried awards of $5,000 each for 2D, 3D, Performance/Film/Video, and urban space.  

The prize money, which is the largest art prize anywhere, is coming from the Dick and Betsy DeVos Foundation. Dick DeVos is the son of the founder of Amway. One of the foundation's trustees is Rick DeVos who came up with the idea of ArtPrize. The DeVos family is known in Michigan for their politically conservative views and for their philanthropy.

This year they have 1,713 artists showing at 192 venues around Grand Rapids, Michigan.  You can look at the artist's bios and their artworks on ArtPrize's Artist: Full list

To read more about ArtPrize, check out these articles:  Wall Street Journal Magazine: Critical Mass by Taylor Antrim and ArtDaily: Grand Rapids Awaits ArtPrize Crowds, Back for a Second Year by David Runk.

Eva Hyvarinen

Visual Resource Assistant
MCAD Library

Commemorate Labor Day!

Labor Day was created by the labor movement to recognize the economic achievements of American workers. It has been celebrated as day to lay down your tools and to come together with other workers.  To help you enjoy it, we are displaying selected books about the history of the labor movement and about some painters, printmakers, and photographers who depicted workers.

Look at the murals of David Alfaro Siqueros, Diego Rivera, Jose Clemente Orozco, the prints and drawings of Kathe Kollwitz, the photographs of Lewis Hine, Sebastiao Salgado, Edward Burtynsky and others.

Read about Minnesota's strong labor movement history and the violent reaction of business and police in response to strikes.  We even have songbooks so you can sing the workers' melodies.

Come in and take a look; check out a book for the holiday.  Samuel Gompers would approve.

Eva Hyvarinen
Visual Resource Assistant


from the "Significance of Labor Day" by Samuel Gompers in the New York Times, Sept 4, 1910
"Among all the festive days of the year, of all the days commemorative of great epochs in the world's history, of all the days celebrated for one cause or another, there is not one which stands so conspicuously for social advancement to the common people as the first Monday in September of each recurring year-Labor Day.

Labor Day is the day conceded by no one class or set of people to another: It is the day of the workers..secured by the workers for the workers, and for all.

The struggle of labor is to free man from his own weakness, from his own cupidity, from his own unfair, unjust, and unnecessarily cruel environments.  The struggle is for home and fireside, for a higher life, a noble manhood, womanhood, and childhood, which may look forward to the day of deliverance from absurd economic conditions and cruel burdens.  The future will substitute the college and forum for the arsenal and jail; the home, and not the factory, for motherhood; the playground, school; and sunlight, and not the mill or workshop, for childhood."
 

Lewis Hyde's books in the Library

As announced Lewis Hyde will give a lecture this Friday at MCAD.  His latest book is Common As Air, which was reviewed in the Sunday New York Times Review of books on August 22.  In it he addresses "the question of how our cultural commons, our shared store of art and knowledge, might be made compatible with our modern age of stringent copyright laws, intellectual property rights, and restrictive patenting." 

Click Here to read the review written by Harvard University Library Director, Robert Darnton



This week the MCAD Library is highlighting Common As Air as well as other books written by Hyde from the collection: Trickster Makes This World and The Gift. They're all on display at the Circulation throughout the week.  Don't miss this important, free event!


Kay Streng
Technical Services Librarian