{"id":98,"date":"2011-09-08T20:34:56","date_gmt":"2011-09-08T20:34:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rring.wp.trincoll.edu\/?p=98"},"modified":"2011-12-13T20:50:03","modified_gmt":"2011-12-13T20:50:03","slug":"an-artists-book-and-her-studio","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/rring\/2011\/09\/08\/an-artists-book-and-her-studio\/","title":{"rendered":"An artist’s book and her studio"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>I have always had kind of mixed feelings about artist\u2019s books.\u00a0 I love fine press books; I love well-crafted, hand-printed books.\u00a0 Yet I just don\u2019t see the appeal of a book that seems to be trying desperately not to be a book, which is the feeling that I get from a lot of artist\u2019s books.\u00a0 I look at them and I see craftsmanship and artistry and even beauty, but I have trouble valuing them as books.<\/p>\n

I was therefore unsure what to expect when I set out to visit Robin Price\u2019s studio.\u00a0 I had looked at Ms. Price\u2019s website before leaving, and I thought her work seemed interesting enough\u2014but it\u2019s hard to tell with just a few pictures, you know?\u00a0 Especially since my favorite things about fine press books and artist\u2019s books are usually things you can\u2019t really see online.\u00a0 I, for example, like the way you can tell that they\u2019ve been through a letterpress and not a digital printer; I like the way the bindings feel in my hands; I like thinking about the choices behind this paper or that ink.\u00a0 That sort of thing interests me much more than clever or quirky designs.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>In any case, I was curious to see how I reacted to Ms. Price\u2019s works in person, since that\u2019s the best way for me to take anything away from them.\u00a0 Her work on her website looked interesting, but I wasn\u2019t ready to decide how I really felt about it until I actually held some of it in my hands.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>We got there in the afternoon; it wasn\u2019t a very long drive from Trinity.\u00a0 The studio is located in a building that was once a mill, so the floors can hold the weight of all the presses\u2014Ms. Price had many presses, at least four or five, all of them looking as though they could easily weigh as much as a car.\u00a0 Each one accomplished a different effect, too\u2014each press involved some variation in the printing process, and so made some subtle change in the finished product.<\/p>\n

Her studio was really very nice, the sort of thing you\u2019d imagine an artist\u2019s studio to be, with all sorts of interesting little bits and pieces stacked on every surface, onions and glass mobiles hanging from the ceiling, and posters and drawings and prints of every kind hanging on the walls.<\/p>\n

Ms. Price showed us \"\"<\/a>some of her work and spoke about how she did it, and what some of the complications were for making her book, 43.\u00a0 It\u2019s amazing how much work went into it. As it turns out, Ms. Price\u2019s books are the sort of artist\u2019s books I really do like\u2014there is so much attention to craftsmanship and detail in them, and while they\u2019re highly conceptual they\u2019re not so out there that a person can\u2019t hold them and know they\u2019re books and pamphlets.<\/p>\n

I can only hope that the Watkinson\u2019s new fellowship program will bring even more of this Ms. Price\u2019s sort of creativity to the area.\u00a0 Artist\u2019s books can be gorgeous, fascinating things, and to me at least their heart lies in the relationship between ink, paper, and the press.\u00a0 These three components create a seemingly infinite number of possiblities where art and expression are concerned, and once the press at the Watkinson gets up and running I am sure that it will cultivate even more book artistry in the Hartford area.<\/p>\n

[Curator’s Note: Carly Sentieri, who posted this, is a graduate student at Indiana University, pursuing a dual MA in ancient history \/ Master’s in Library Science.\u00a0 During her internship at the Watkinson we took several field trips, like this one to an artist’s studio in Middletown.]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I have always had kind of mixed feelings about artist\u2019s books.\u00a0 I love fine press books; I love well-crafted, hand-printed books.\u00a0 Yet I just don\u2019t see the appeal of a book that seems to be trying desperately not to be a book, which is the feeling that I get from a lot of artist\u2019s books.\u00a0 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":122,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/rring\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/rring\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/rring\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/rring\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/122"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/rring\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=98"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/rring\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":173,"href":"http:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/rring\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98\/revisions\/173"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/rring\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=98"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/rring\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=98"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/rring\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=98"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}