Summertime Fun & Browsing in the Book Arts
- by Susan Halas
Our lead image comes from the Smithsonian Museum, one of a hundred cultural organizations offering coloring book pages for adults for free download.
It’s August and in the Northern Hemisphere it’s Summer. Time for a little bookish R&R.
With that in mind here are some large and small collections displayed online and brought together for your enjoyment. Just a little Googling reveals that there are subtle and not so subtle differences between the art of the book, book arts, books by artists and altered books. Not to mention art coloring books for grown ups cashing in on the latest publishing craze. Now on line are more than 100 museums and archives offering downloadable pages to color. Also available are video tutorials on how to color and the best art supplies for grown up coloring book efforts.
So sharpen your Prisamacolors, relax and click a few links to see things you probably haven’t thought of for a while or seen before.
Whatever your taste from traditional-historical, to modern-experimental the combination of “book” and “artist” is usually enjoyable and sometimes surprising.
100 COLORING BOOKS FOR ADULTS WITH DOWNLOADABLE PAGES
My Modern Met is a site that often has book related links mymodernmet.com/
Here’s their portal to a hundred different sources of coloring pages for adults: mymodernmet.com/free-coloring-pages-color-our-collections/
Our lead image comes from the Smithsonian’s coloring pages
Need art supplies for your new hobby, the Coloring Book Addict can give you some ideas:
coloringbookaddict.com/colored-pencils-adult-coloring-supplies-coloring-book-addicts/
Kind of rusty on your coloring skills? Here are a host of coloring tutorial videos:
Also at My Modern Met there is a portal to 200 Belle Epoque posters, all with free downloads.
mymodernmet.com/download-free-posters-belle-epoque-art/
Still at My Modern Met, not strictly book related, but gorgeous; check out one of the largest Archives of European Arts. Here’s an introductory article:
mymodernmet.com/free-digital-archives-europeana-collections/
Which takes you to the portal at www.europeana.eu/portal/en
------------------------
ARTISTS' BOOKS aka Books by Artists
More and more museums, schools, special collections and individual collectors are interested in artists’ books. The Victoria & Albert Museum in London calls itself the world’s leading museum in art and design. Here’s the link to their collection in this field:
www.vam.ac.uk/page/a/artists-books/
A more detailed and comprehensive list of libraries and collections of Artists’ Books - mainly American, can be found at this page hosted by Carnegie Mellon University Libraries:
www.andrew.cmu.edu/user/md2z/ArtistsBooksDirectory/ArtistsBookIndex.html
Still in the Artist Books genre: The Jaffe Center for Book Arts in Boca Raton, Florida provides a link for the book “as an aesthetic object,” complete with slideshow and many other related links:
www.library.fau.edu/depts/spc/JaffeCenter/collection/books_as_aesthetic_objects/index.php
The Otis College of Design in Los Angeles has a substantial artists’ book collection. Quite a few individual items are documented by videos::
-----------------------------
Book ARTS
The University of Washington Libraries has a substantial Modern Book Arts collection:
guides.lib.uw.edu/friendly.php?s=research/bookarts.
The site says, “The UW holdings include 21,000 historical & modern pieces encompassing all aspects of the physical book: typography, papermaking, letterpress and offset printing, illustration, book design, paper decoration, calligraphy, sculptural & conceptual work & artist's books. Major holdings documenting bookbinding history, especially 19th century publishers' decorated bindings. Substantial supportive reference collection.”
This link also displays connections to the UW holdings in Historical Children’s Literature featuring 7,000 titles from the 17th through 20th century. In addition it is the home of an Author’s Collection of 10,000 volumes, and 19th century American Literature including Longfellow letters.
Penn Libraries has a video presentation of over an hour titled The Art of the Book: Fine Print in the 21st century. Not very many hits, but lots of visuals and lots of information:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=SEojbGw_9Zw
Minnesota Book Arts celebrates the 30th anniversary of its oral history project with a variety of short videos of local practitioners. www.mnbookarts.org/oralhistory
Many other things going on at the Minneapolis based center; click on the link to their home page
---------------------
HISTORY OF CARTOGRAPHY in ARCHIVAL IMAGES
Interested in maps? Open Culture’s website provides links to one of the most ambitious map archives:
The home page of Open Culture is a good place to browse www.openculture.com/
SCI FI PULP IMAGES AMAZING & GALAXY
While you’re at Open Culture, Science Fiction fans can find the complete visual record of AMAZING STORIES: archive.org/search.php?query=title%3A%28amazing+stories%29+AND+collection%3A%28pulpmagazinearchive%29&page=3
Yearn for even for more lurid pulp? Try Archive.org, with its portal to the GALAXY sci-fi archives:
archive.org/details/galaxymagazine&tab=collection
POP UPS, COMICS and ALTERED BOOKS, free ART BOOKS
Here are a few additional links also worth a look:
Pop up books not just for kids - article with link to video
www.bowdoin.edu/news/archives/1bowdoincampus/008200.shtml
www.finebooksmagazine.com/press/events/ events from fine books
Comic books at Michigan State said to be America’s largest collection with over 200,000 items
www.lib.msu.edu/spc/collections/comic/
200 Free ebook downloads of art books from Met, Guggenheim and Getty
www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/download-200-free-art-books-courtesy-guggenheim-180963266/
Last but not least Altered books pix
What is an altered book? Here's the wiki:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Altered_book
Have a pleasant August, work on those coloring skills. Frequent coloring is said to calm the feverish anxious adult brain.
See you in September