Anderson Center at Tower View

Your School, an artist’s book (glass/copper)

Posted by Tom Virgin
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Your School
8 in x 45 in x 3 in (open)        artist’s book    2012
“Your School” is an accordion structure book created from fused glass and cut copper drawings, bound with multiple ply waxed linen thread, and text printed on bands of Hahnemühle Ingres with a Vandercook 3 Proof Press. The book employs the metaphor of keeping a low maintenance pet (a fish) to examine multiple challenges that schools, and especially young people, are currently facing in Florida and Miami. This book is an edition of two with the second book being sewn with a codex binding.

This book came from my admiration of a friend’s creative use of non-book-like media to create a book. The glass process was enhanced by the advice and guidance of Gail Dahlberg at the Anderson Center at Tower View. The color and glass inclusions fused into window glass created a transparent structure for a very opaque situation, the state of schools. The fish metaphor came from a continuing collaboration with Michael Hettich, a “gringo Magical Realist” poet from Miami.

Books without content, various bindings

Posted by Tom Virgin

Books using Long Stitch bindings (workshop with Rory Golden, Center for Book Arts, NYC), Books using quire bindings, simple and complex (workshop with Julie Miller, Oregon College of Art and Craft), Books using Coptic bindings (workshop with Marion Lavery, Holter Museum, Helena, Montana)

Your School, an artist’s book (paper)

Posted by Tom Virgin

9.5 in x 40 in x .25 in (open)        artist’s book    2012
“Your School” is an accordion structure book created from waxed Stonehenge paper, and text printed on bands of Hahnemühle Ingres with a Vandercook 3 Proof Press. The book employs the metaphor of keeping a simple, low maintenance pet (a fish) to examine multiple challenges that schools, and especially young people, are currently facing in Florida and Miami. This book is an edition of 17 with 3 artist’s proofs. This book is a scanned copy of the glass book that approximates the presence of the glass book.

It seems that most everything that I make for the last few years has been directed to teenagers. From the National Parks books that pass along places that many of my students have not been, to work that was created to record what has disappeared, my work archives my world. This version of “My School” is a larger edition than the glass book, that will allow it to live in more than two places.