Bookopolis 2014, Sept. 19-21

From a press release:

Bookopolis 2014, Sept. 19-21

Bookopolis 2014: Printmade Artist Books
Free and open to the Public on Friday, Sept. 19, 6-9 p.m. and Saturday, September 20, 1-5 p.m. at Asheville BookWorks, 428 1/2 Haywood Rd., West Asheville. 828-255-8444. Regular Studio Hours: M-F 1-5 p.m., Sat 1-4 p.m.
info@ashevillebookworks.com

BookWorks is excited to announce the 2014 BookOpolis with special book artist and guest speaker, Elisa Pellacani, from Barcelona, Spain. Elisa’s visit to Asheville BookWorks reciprocates a visit to Spain by Laurie Corral and Gwen Diehn earlier this year. This second segment honors a wonderful on-going exchange between book arts communities in both WNC and Barcelona, Spain, where Laurie and Gwen shared books from WNC book artists, sat on panel discussions and taught workshops. While Elisa is here, she will give a talk about her work in the arts as well as Ilde,, her book arts organization and the Barcelona book arts festival. Folks are invited to register for Elisa’s workshop entitled Book Seeds, small but powerful. Find more information about these events below.

BookOpolis opening reception begins Friday, September 19th at 6 p.m. Books by artists, both local and international, will be on display from 6-9 p.m. The BookWorks gallery space and all available table surfaces will be cleared to make way for the exhibition. Music will be performed by William Oldfather. Public is invited to attend.

On Saturday afternoon 1-5 p.m., September 20th, BookOpolis festivities continue with the exhibit and a printed ‘paper toy souvenir’ demo table will be set-up for visitors to fold and play, free and fun. At 2 p.m., Elisa Pellacani will give a talk, illustrated with photographs of her work and the Barcelona book arts event. Open to the public.

The grand unveiling of an exterior wall with screen prints by Molly Must, beloved area muralist and screenprinter, will be on view accompanied by documentation of the project in progress.

On Sunday, September 21, 1-5 p.m. Elisa Pellacani will teach a workshop titled, book seeds: small but powerful. This class will explore the small format as a process of research and building artists’ books, book objects and visual poetry. Like a seed changes into another thing, the artists’ book can be a transformer-object, which once opened, shows different possibilities of reading. Practicing with solid and flexible materials we will move from an idea, to its representation, to the creation of a new book form. Further we will discuss how to reproduce it in a small edition. Like a seed, a unique idea can grow into a series or an edition of small books.

BIOS of the featured artists

ELISA PELLACANI (Reggio Emilia, Italia) studied at the University of Parma (Italia) History of Contemporary Art and at the University of Barcelona (Spain) Anthropology and Ethnography, and at the Istituto Superiore Industrie Artistiche of Urbino (Italy) took courses in book design. While graphic design and illustration is her profession, drawing and photography continue to be central to her publishing plans. The realization of books in a craftsman-like form has brought her closer to other techniques, with which she realizes limited print runs and book-objects. Some of these, mixing bindings and jewelry processes in handmade form, she calls “Jewel-Books” and are useful as wearable accessories. Her graphic projects for books start with combining hand-drawn imagery, words and typography on paper. Elisa founded the “Book’s Itinerant School”, an artistic publishing workshop. The school visits different cities and venues encouraging knowledge and the practice of making books. In 2008 she created the first Barcelona “Artist’s Book Festival” and has been coordinating it ever since – celebrating the 8th edition in 2015. Elisa works between Barcelona (Spain) and Reggio Emilia (Italy).

MOLLY MUST, Asheville-based Muralist and community artist
Born and raised in a remote Appalachian community pre-internet and without TV, Molly learned to entertain herself at an early age drawing pictures and making up stories. Art was always a big part of her life and as a teenager, when visiting big cities, she became particularly drawn to street art.  As an adult, she came to appreciate the ways in which public art can be accessed by all people beyond confines of the commercial realm.  Seeing art outdoors can be surprising & inspiring, breaking the monotony of the built environment people are obliged to inherit.  For many years she combined a love of street-art and storytelling, by way of a “historical fiction” kind-of perspective.  Akin to the work of writers who weave evocative tales in between dry bits of history, she had long been fixated on illustrating unseen and under-acknowledged happenings of the past in order to find context, meaning, direction & hope in the present.

After attending UNCA Molly left to become involved on an intense level with the local non-profit Arts2People, with whom she volunteered for three years. During that time she coordinated the 3000 square foot Lexington Gateway Mural, located under the Interstate-240 bridge in downtown Asheville.

From 2010 to 2011 she worked closely with the artist Ian Wilkinson painting a total of six murals, three of them with Wilkinson.  Further pursuing an interest in community-arts organizing in the fall of 2011, Molly took a job as a VISTA/Americorps volunteer with the Asheville Design Center (www.ashevilledesigncenter.org).  She spent 2 years directing a large interdisciplinary story-telling art project in a small park on “The Block”, Asheville’s historic African American business district.  The project, called the Triangle Park Mural, was perhaps the most educational and meaningful experience of her life.